If talking about women's work in relation to employment issues and in a statistical way confronts us with problems, inequalities, long-term discrimination, something that seems to have never changed, a look that follows the evolution of the dilemma versus work makes us more aware of the multiplicity of phenomena and changes that have originated from its deconstruction, both in a vindictive sense and in the direction of a different recognition. We have seen, following Joan Scott, that the discursive construction of "the working woman" has carried with it and at the same time has produced the categories and motivations for the legitimacy of an inevitable difficulty on the part of women to fit fully into the world of work. By following this discursive construction through the fields of tension opened up in the field of feminist studies and politics in two specific periods of the movement's history, we have tried to highlight the positive outcomes of processes of renaming the experience of work and of working.