For decades in the studies about human displacement, the historical narrative was based on the mobility of the man, with the roles and the eventual protagonism of women being rarely considered. In many opportunities, historiography, which deals with migratory flows of the Portuguese people to Brazil, did not escape such reality. Given this historiographical context, this article aims to be a contribution to the knowledge of the presence of female Portuguese immigrants from Madeira in the state of São Paulo in the late nineteenth century. We will demonstrate that, the Madeiran women were a significant portion of the flows, considering numerical terms, unlike continental Portuguese reality, in this regard, and actively contributed to the phenomenon. For this purpose, we will present the quantitative data collected during our PhD research concerning the participation of women in the Madeiran migration towards São Paulo between 1886 and 1899 and retrace some Madeiran life trajectories.
women; Portuguese immigration; Madeira archipelago
