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Many things are obscured in the darkness and discomfort of a coalmine, but the traditionally blackened face of a miner tends to be masculine — tough, tired, brave and uncompromising. The language of the industry is ‘gendered’. It is a male industry, women don’t belong down pits — it’s too hard a life. Even the superstitions of the industry talk of women being bad luck, while men have traditionally taken pride in protecting womenfolk from these harsh conditions.
However, despite these misleading traditions and stereotypes there are many ‘pit women’ working alongside their male colleagues. This is not some recent innovation — in fact, women have always been miners, according to Dr Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, whose recent workshop on the topic attracted participants from all over the world.
“People in the pit are almost invariably seen as being ‘pit men’, as though pits are, and always were, inhabited by men,” she says.
“However, once our eyes are accustomed to the darkness of the pit, we begin to see them as gendered places. We begin to see figures of women working alongside men.
“These near invisible pit women are crucial to building a gendered understanding of mining.
“Women and their work in the mines have increasingly become obscure and hidden, forgotten and devalued.
“These ‘queens’ of coal — originally ‘cole’ — remain unsung, whether in Australia, Britain or in Indian collieries.”
Efforts have been made in the past to protect pit women. In 19th century Britain, a commentator of the day quoted a 16-year-old windlass woman as saying “we wind up eight hundred loads (a day). Men do not like the winding. It is too hard work for them”. Laws were later passed excluding women from the pits. This offered little comfort to women who were thrust into unemployment and poverty. They came back into the mines to work, only with fewer rights than before.
Women still work in the mines, although laws in some countries prevent them from going underground. The numbers of pit women dramatically increase (historically and today) when one includes other operations like surface mining (from huge quarries to informally collecting minerals from the ground by hand) and panning in the definition of ‘the mine’. In informal and unorganised mines, for example, women comprise between 10 and 60 per cent of the workforce, working in a range of jobs involving digging, loading, carrying, transporting, sorting, and panning. In large and formal mines, as mechanisation brings in global forms of work, women who were initially excluded from mining begin to find new ways of entering the job market.
Conditions have improved for pit women in the developed world, with the thousands of women who entered the industry in the United States following affirmative action laws in the 1970s blazing a trail for feminism. In Canada, the giant earthmoving vehicles that one might expect to be a male preserve, are often driven by women.
Mining is beginning to find new ground in the developing world; understanding this as a gendered process helps us redefine roles of women in these countries. With mineral resources fuelling the Asia-Pacific economies, the ranks of women miners are growing in our region — like their sisters in Canada, sari-clad Indian women are operating large mining vehicles in their country.
“Are they really weak and vulnerable, victims of patriarchy?” asks Dr Lahiri-Dutt.
“These enquiries encourage us to find policy solutions that will empower women and bring them into the mainstream of the development process that mining intends to trigger off.”
Dr Lahiri-Dutt and her colleagues hope that by unearthing the historical and contemporary contribution of pit women, they can bring them the recognition they deserve and raise the profile and status of today’s pit women.
“We intend to make women’s past and present work in the mines more visible and by doing so, sensitise the mining industry as well as empower these women and highlight their agency,” she says.
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