ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a better knowledge of Portuguese women’s involvement in universal exhibitions through a study of the exhibits of girls’ work attending public “industrial” work schools. The examination of school archives in combination with the reports from universal exhibitions highlight the contradictions of women’s presence in these events that sought symbolically to celebrate the economic and industrial strength of the nation through the presentation of work done by girl apprentices. In 1908 in Rio, the work produced by girls outnumbered that done by boys in these schools, and yet the published reports did not include them. As definitions of what constituted “industrial” changed at the end of the century in Portugal, so too did representations of industrial training. In the process girl students and apprentices have tended to vanish from the historical record.
