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
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