The end of the Second World War marked the new beginning for the Yugoslav society, which, with Marshal Tito as its leader, irresistibly, strongly and unitedly started to build and renovate the state. Within the framework of the socialist paradigm Yugoslavia started its industrially oriented development. The socialist society was founded on three principal rights – that each member was entitled to work, that each member of the society had the right to apply for any job in accordance with their abilities and that each member of the society was entitled to participate in management on equal terms. Companies were managed by the workers’ self-management, which for women meant leaving behind household duties and provided them with a feeling of emancipation from the patriarchal society in which they were brought up. The research is based on the ethnology of female labour in the context of the textile factory Arena. The complexity of the position of women in the society, in which they were given an equal role at work, as well as in the household and the community for the first time ever and their coming to terms with newly created changes provide a foundation to this thesis. Arena experienced times of great hardships since its establishment in 1948 until its bankruptcy in 2014. In spite of its ability to overcome economic difficulties during the Croatian War of Independence and the privatisation and its failure to adapt to a dynamic business market resulted in the permanent loss of job for many male and female workers, the job which they were taught was secure in socialist times.