Women Miners in Developing Countries: Pit Women and Others

Contrary to their masculine portrayal, mines have always employed women in valuable and productive roles. Pit life is generally perceived as a uniquely male world, where the sharing of risks contribute to the formation of a particular form of male solidarity. This portrayal legitimises men as the only mineworkers and large, mechanized, capitalized operations as the only form of mining.Bringing together a range of case studies of women miners from past and present in Asia, the Pacific Region, Latin America and Africa, this book challenges these assumptions. Not only does it engender the mines, but it also highlights the small and informal ways mining is practised in the developing world. The book shows women engaged in various kinds of mining: on the surface as well as underground, in both large and small, modern and traditional, artisanal and small mining practices. In doing so, it illustrates how gender and inequality are constructed and sustained in the mines, and also how ethnic identities intersect with those gendered identities.