Regarding women in mining. this is really a cultural matter involving
both gender attitudes and expectations and sometimes religious
beliefs. In Latin america historically women were not allowed in
underground mines because that was a region associated with a masculine
god "Tio" (Uncle), while the Virgin Mary shrine would be placed outside
the mine. Some really interesting accounts of this are found in June
Nash's We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us and in Michael Taussig's
The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Yet Latin American
even today we go through slag piles outside the mine.
then there's the older women miners in Barbara Kingsolver's
Holding the Line. They gained the respect of men, did t physically very
challenging tasks. In both situations women have come to the support of
miners by supporting strikes, keeping strike lines or marching in
support, or other forms of organized resistence (see Janet Finn Tracing
the Veins and Klubock's Contested Communities.
that's a start.
Anne Browning
Dept. of Anthropology
University of Arizona
On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Tony
Brewis wrote:
> The Comment section in last Friday's Mining Journal (October 6, 2000)
> happens to have the title "Women in Mining".
>
> Reference is made to a breakfast meeting held during the recent
> Mining 2000 conference in Melbourne. The keynote speaker was
> Jane Slack-Smith, technical services manager, Australia, for Orica
> Quarry Services, blasting technology specialists. Jane began her
> career in coal mining and was the first woman to work underground
> in a New South Wales coal mine. At the time, the Journal says, she
> was told by management "you can't do that, you're a girl".
>
> There were other such stories, it seems. Annette McIlroy, the first
> woman to work underground at Broken Hill, was told grudgingly by
> management that a woman could work in such an environment but it
> was "no place for a lady". On her first day, the miners staged a protest
> strike -- and that was in the mid- 1980s!
>
> Back in 1979, at a conference in Brussels, I met Patricia Petty, then
> secretary of the US organisation "Women in Mining". She later told
> me that on a visit soon afterwards to the Selby complex the spine
> tunnels for which were being developed, she was taken underground
> by the NCB's PR man. On their way down the drift, they passed all the
> shift workers walking out. "No disrespect, Missus," the men told her,
> " but there's no way we can be underground while you are!"
>
> Taking a different view was the manager of an (admittedly open pit ) iron
> ore mine near Mo i Rana, Norway, in 1980. Haul trucks from a new
> pit had a five kilometre downhill drive to the primary crusher. Some of
> the truck drivers were women. "Don't print this," the manager implored
> me," but between you and me, the women are the better drivers. They
> take good care of the trucks, and observe the speed limits. On the
> downhill run, some of the young men try to see how fast they can go,
> and with a truck carrying 150 tons of iron ore, that's not a good idea!"
>
> Tony Brewis
>
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|