Well, lookee, lookee at what I found on Google on a site devoted to women and coal mining songs:
In the early 1970s women began to apply for coal mining jobs.
Traditionally women did not work in the mines in this country, though they had a
long history of dangerous and back-breaking work in the pits of Great Britain.
During World War II, women were recruited to work on the surface sorting coal.
Women were not only legally excluded from underground mining, but a whole
series of superstitions developed about "bad luck," accidents or tragedies which
would occur if a woman went underground. As Florence Reece remembers, "They
told us that if a woman went underground, men would be killed. We didn't go
underground, and plenty of men were killed anyway."
To prevent their working in the mines, it was claimed that women should
not work underground because of the dangerous dirty conditions, and that women
could not physically carry out the arduous labor required. As mining became
mechanized and easier, women continued to be excluded which kept them from
the best paying jobs in the coalfields. Finally in the 1970s, largely through the
efforts of the Coal Employment Project in Tennessee, they legally and
successfully challenged discrimination in hiring and have now begun to enter the
mining workforce in moderate numbers. By 1980 there were approximately 4,000
women miners nationwide. They were active in the union, on safety committees,
and in the community.
With a new wave of mechanization and mine closures in the mid `80s,
women were the first to lose their jobs because of the last-hired/first-fired rule of
union retirement. Today their numbers are small and many are nearing
retirement. However, they leave us an important legacy, a story of courage and
tenacity, an inspiration to women today who are seeking a decent paying job
through which they can support themselves and their families and gain and
dignity and self respect. |
