Mining in focus
Artisan Training Institute
Sean Jones, MD of the Artisan Training Institute, is conducting a PhD study into the triggers of subtle and explicit discrimination towards women in traditionally segregated occupations. He believes upskilling to artisan level, for example, is important to retain the skills of female workers.
Like Benya, he is basing his study on underground mining in South Africa.
“ Asanda’ s research highlights how women are prepared to experience the hardships associated with underground mining, in an effort to dig themselves out of poverty. This important contribution also helps mines inform critically needed policy and practices to secure the future of women in mining,” says Jones.
As women progress to higher level skilled positions as artisans, for example, it will become increasingly important to retain their skills in the workplace.“ Understanding the gendered challenges highlighted by research in real-world settings is key to retaining these valuable skills,” he concludes.
Since my own underground encounter, I have been happy to learn that overalls are now hole-free, designed for the‘ female shape’, and gumboots come in small sizes.
Although sartorial improvements go a long way in addressing some difficulties, the sector needs to continue their focus on understanding the evolution of women’ s roles in the underground workspace. b
FOUR FEMALE IDENTITIES Mafazi
• Emphasises femininity that exaggerates femaleness / girlishness.
• Seen as‘ good and obedient’ women and in return, men willingly work for them.
• Adopts role of caretaker, by looking after men’ s physical needs, for example bringing them water.
• Allows and encourages views and attitudes that label them feminine, fragile, and in need of help and protection from men.
• Ironically, their presence and insistence on being underground, instead of on surface, challenges the notion that underground is solely men’ s territory.
Moneymakers
• Do not practice gender according to underground expectations and challenge masculinity.
• Appear to reject‘ rules of behaviour’.
• Unlike the mafazi, they prefer to work on surface.
• Considered lazy and opinionated and their performances of gender are seen by men and other women as subversive.
• Tend to be relationally and spatially alienated from their teams.
Real mafazi
• Known to be hard-working.
• Involved in‘ real’ mine work underground and not‘ domestic’ work like mafazi or refusing work like moneymakers.
• Engage in mine work on their terms as female workers and not as male mine workers.
• Challenge notion that only men and masculine workers can do mine work and be productive.
• Seen by their co-workers as‘ strong women’.
Madoda straight
• Referred to as madoda straight( real men), because their gender performances resemble‘ female masculinities’.
• Viewed by others and themselves as‘ real’ mine workers who can productively and convincingly mimic( masculine) miners.
• View femininity as antithetical to mining and productivity and, therefore, distance themselves from it.
Source: Women in mining: occupational culture and gendered identities in the making by Dr Asanda Benya.