ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the stages of renovation in the values referring to women’s work in factories through a study of the Fabricato textile firm. The region of Antioquia and its textile industry played a fundamental role in the formation of an industrial working class in Colombia. The modest industrial base consisting of small manufacturing companies that had been established at the end of the nineteenth century began to expand after the end of the Second World War. The interaction between family and factory took place in a larger arena in which the social, economic, political, and cultural transformations of the environment were to weigh increasingly heavily upon local dynamics, resulting in a further weakening of traditional relationships. Paternalism characterized the first decades of what would become the great Antioquian textile industry. The new nuclear family model centred upon itself and was the target of care, aid, and vigilance dispensed through the policies of private companies and the state.
