With the entry of Istria into the Empire of Austria, ie the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in the middle of the 19th century, there was an economic upswing and in parallel with European trends, the development of Istrian tourism began. With intensive investments in infrastructure, promotion and opening policies towards Western tourists who bring foreign currency, Istria is positioned as a leader in tourism development in SFR Yugoslavia, which remains in modern Croatia. The overall global economic and technological upswing as well as the change of cultural paradigm in the second half of the 20th century resulted in massive tourist movements in search of 5S (sun-seks-sights-savings-servility) and a qualitative distinction from the business environment. In this context, Istria has established itself as a destination that, in addition to the sun, sea and sand, offers golden hordes of tourists a built tourist infrastructure and road accessibility just a few hours from the center of Europe. The mass of seasonal tourist movements generates a mass of seasonal demand for cheap labour. Given the patriarchal social patterns that reflect the gender dimension of tourism jobs, women workers are offered jobs that reflect (unpaid) family responsibilities and responsibilities. Tourism, as a product of capitalism based on the continuous consumption of constructed products and services, imposed labour on the workers and positioned them at the bottom of the class scale. The backbone of the research is the ethnology of women's work in Istrian tourism. In a declaratively equal modern labour market where the female workforce accounts for more than half of the tourism industry, women are still underrepresented in higher management positions, while their numbers dominate in seasonal jobs marked by high labour intensity, precarious working conditions, fixed-term contracts and low salaries.