Going underground in South African platinum mines to explore women miners’ experiences

Benya, Asanda

doi:10.1080/13552074.2017.1379775

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Traditionellt har genusforskning om mansdominerade arbeten och verksamheter ofta tagit sin utgångspunkt i kvinnors erfarenheter och fokuserat på de hinder och extra arbetsmiljöproblem som kvinnor får av det som Kanter (1977) kallar minoritetseffekter. Dessa handlar om såväl öppet som passivt motstånd (från manliga arbetare, chefer, fack och samhälle) mot kvinnor och jämställdhet (Benya 2017). De handlar även om hur kvinnors strategier för att hantera minoritetssituationen bidrar till olika konstruktioner av femininitet (Rolston 2010;Johansson med flera 2020).…”

Section: Genus Arbete Och Plats I En Gruvkontextunclassified

“…Det är en typ av manlighet som har en hegemonisk, överordnad position lokalt på gruvarbetsplatserna och den reproduceras i arbetarkollektiven, i de omgivande lokalsamhällena och genom gruvföretagens arbetsorganisation. I den internationella gruvforskningen återkommer motsvarande förståelse av gruvan och gruvsamhällen (se till exempel Harris 2000; Eveline och Booth 2002;Benya 2017;Kesküla 2018;Musonda 2020;Heimann med flera 2023).…”

Section: Genus Arbete Och Plats I En Gruvkontextunclassified

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Maskuliniteter i förändring på mansdominerade arbetsplatser. Exemplet gruvindustrin

Abrahamsson,

Johansson,

Tosser Franklin

et al. 2024

TGV

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This article discusses how changes in male-dominated work are connected to changes in gender constructions in the workplaces. The discussion is based on results from research conducted 2001–2021, mainly qualitative empirical studies of mine work. Although the development of the mining industry will not be as technologically deterministic and rapid as the usual dystopian and utopian visions predict, our research shows that there has already been changes that have affected mine work and workplaces. These changes have challenged the old, gendered mining workplace cultures and the implementation of new technology and reorganisation initially met resistance in the workplace. Workplace cultures seemed to be lagging behind in their acceptance of technological and organizational changes. The resistance was shaped in relation to intertwined masculinities and miner identities linked to the old ‘macho masculin-ity’, a form of local hegemonic masculinity built upon overarching myths and discourses about both mining and rural communities. The subsequent changes of mining work resulted in new gender encodings of the new technology and the new spaces of work – which created new organisational gender boundaries and new forms of inequality. At the same time, there are new forms of masculinities and feminini-ties emerging in mining organizations, which can provide openings for gender equality. Although mine work continues to be male dominated, we can see that new places, new technology, improved work environment and increased gender equality seem to imply that it has become difficult to preserve the old (‘macho’) miner masculinity and to maintain the gender marking of mining work as male and the image of the miner as male. As of now, the ‘green transition’ and the acceleration of new digital technologies implemented in mine work is beginning to shape the industrial workplaces of northern Sweden. The discourses of “green” and “technological transformation” are permeated by gendered preconceptions, by some expected to reshape the masculine workplace of the mine. Yet, our conclusion is that transformation of gendered structures in mining is not foremost dependent of technological change. Rather, we have seen complex connections between gender, technology, work and place for these male-dominated industrial workplaces, including processes of both stability and change, suggesting that changes in workplaces does not only challenge but also reproduce and reconfigure gender-based preconceptions and social constructions of gender.

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Section: Genus Arbete Och Plats I En Gruvkontextunclassified

Maskuliniteter i förändring på mansdominerade arbetsplatser. Exemplet gruvindustrin

Abrahamsson,

Johansson,

Tosser Franklin

et al. 2024

TGV

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“…The fragmentation of the labour force along lines of skill, ethnicity, settlement and gender emerging as work processes changed, produced new forms of solidarity and violence, which he argues undermined trade unions' institutional capacity to control the strike. Through participant observation of underground women mineworkers, Benya's (2017) research shows the production of gendered identities through an ethnography of women's labour in specific locations within the labour process, where different situations demanded different forms of embodied labour and gendered identities. Machinya's (2019) study of undocumented Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa shows the connections between vulnerability to the temporalities of 'deportability', workers' experiences of forms of precarious labour in construction or domestic labour, and willingness to withstand abuses generated through how this work is organised.…”

Section: The Return To Labour Process Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The return of the labour process: race, skill and technology in South African labour studies

Kenny

Webster

2021

Work in the Global Economy

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From its beginnings, the sociology of work in South Africa has been preoccupied with three enduring themes: skill/deskilling, racism in the workplace, and Fordism/racial Fordism. With the advent of democracy in the 1990s there was a shift away from studying the labour process. We argue in this article that there has been a return to taking seriously the ways new forms of work in this postcolonial context pose new questions to the global study of work. A central preoccupation in the study of work has been the racialised reinscription of post-apartheid workplace orders, now in the context of new dynamics of externalisation and casualisation of employment. Another important theme is the shift away from studies of the formal sector workplace and toward the broader implications of the precarianisation and informalisation of labour. This focus coincided with the growth of new social movements by mostly unemployed (black) township residents around state services provision. This includes studies on working-class politics more broadly, with attention focusing on questions of organising and mobilising. More recently this interest in precarious labour has grown into studies of the gig economy, returning to earlier themes of technology and skill, as well as new forms of waged labour and wagelessness. We argue for the ongoing salience of labour process studies for understanding the specific issues of the securing and obscuring of value, and through the articulations of ‘racial capitalism’ offered by the long tradition of labour studies in South Africa.

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New directions in research on women and gender in extractive industries

Lahiri‐Dutt

2022

The Extractive Industries and Society

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Going underground in South African platinum mines to explore women miners’ experiences

Cited by 11 publications

References 6 publications

Maskuliniteter i förändring på mansdominerade arbetsplatser. Exemplet gruvindustrin

Maskuliniteter i förändring på mansdominerade arbetsplatser. Exemplet gruvindustrin

The return of the labour process: race, skill and technology in South African labour studies

New directions in research on women and gender in extractive industries

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