Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670 to 2005

Mining Women presents eighteen new essays that illuminate how gender identities and inequality have been constructed historically and sustained in what could be hailed as the first truly global enterprise and arguably the most "masculine" of industries--mining. These essays explore gender relations and women's work and activism in different parts of the world and from multiple perspectives. They investigate not only gender's role in the domestic and cultural aspects of mining communities, but also its impact on the emerging industrial and capitalist system from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Each essay is important for understanding the ways in which gender is imagined, lived, inscribed, and contested in specific historical and material contexts. As a whole, the volume reveals that despite the tremendous variation between industries, cultures, and national experiences, women have challenged the constraints of gender definitions on their lives and work.