More and more women entered mines as underground
workers after 1994 and today, an estimated 1 837
women are employed underground.
Mining in focus
I vividly remember my first crawl in
a stope. I was a third-year student
doing holiday work for Mponeng’s
Communications Department. In
the changeroom, before our plunge, I
agonised over the holes on the sides
of my overalls, how the heavy battery
pack hurt my hip bones, and how I
might trip in my oversized gumboots.
Shaking down a chain ladder, I kept
my fear to myself, barely containing the
onset of a panic attack in the depths
of the Witwatersrand’s narrow reefs.
The experience etched my first
understanding of the marvels and the
mechanical genius of underground
gold mining. It also made me grasp, if
only partially, what it took to daily do
a 3km drop in an overcrowded cage,
considering the exhaustion, muscle ache,
extreme heat, and prospect of injury
and death that came with the territory.
I framed my perspective of
underground mining solely from the
notion that “this must be incredibly
tough for men”. Granted, it was
2002 and female mine workers were
still a sparse minority then.
– Nicola Theunissen, 2017
Although the number of women employed in high-skilled jobs, such as
chemical engineers and geologists, has increased exponentially, only
1 837 women are currently working in low-paid, unskilled jobs in the
underground mines of South Africa.
MARCH 2018 MINING MIRROR
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