Gender & Development

ISSN: 1355-2074 (Print) 1364-9221 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgde20

Going underground in South African platinum

mines to explore women miners’ experiences

Asanda Benya

To cite this article: Asanda Benya (2017) Going underground in South African platinum
mines to explore women miners’ experiences, Gender & Development, 25:3, 509-522, DOI:
10.1080/13552074.2017.1379775

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2017.1379775

Published online: 01 Nov 2017.

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GENDER & DEVELOPMENT, 2017
VOL. 25, NO. 3, 509–522
https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2017.1379775

Going underground in South African platinum mines to explore

women miners’ experiences
Asanda Benya

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Women have worked underground in South African mines since 2003. Women in mining; mining
Their inclusion has been lauded by some as a step in the right charter; masculine culture;
direction – that is, towards gender equality in employment, as well as transformation in mining;
mining occupational culture
challenging gender stereotypes about work and women’s abilities. This
dominant narrative, however, fails to acknowledge and address the
challenges faced by women in mining. Using participant observation,
living and working alongside women miners over the course of a year,
I explored these challenges, and analysed their implications. I argue
that if the mining sector wants to fully include women in mining, it
needs to go beyond using quotas to achieve gender parity in numbers
of women and men workers. While access to these jobs is important,
retention depends on addressing the masculine culture which is
deeply embedded in mining, making this a very challenging
environment for women workers.

Desde 2003, las mujeres han trabajado en las minas subterráneas de

Sudáfrica. A pesar de que algunos comentaristas han elogiado su
inclusión como un avance hacia la igualdad de género en el empleo y
como una manera de cuestionar los estereotipos de género vinculados
al trabajo y las habilidades de las mujeres, esta narrativa predominante
no reconoce ni enfrenta los retos que deben experimentar en la
industria minera. A partir de la observación participante, y
considerando mis propias vivencias y el trabajo realizado codo a codo
con mujeres mineras durante un año, pude examinar dichos retos y
analizar sus implicaciones. Sostengo que si se desea integrar
plenamente a las mujeres en las actividades del sector minero éste
debe superar el uso de cuotas para lograr la paridad de género en
términos del número de trabajadores varones y mujeres. Si bien es
importante tener acceso a estos empleos, la retención de las mujeres
mineras depende de que esta industria enfrente la profundamente
arraigada cultura masculina, a partir de la cual se ha generado un
entorno difícil para las mujeres trabajadoras.

Les femmes travaillent sous terre dans les mines sud-africaines depuis
2003. Leur inclusion a été louée par certains comme un pas dans la
bonne direction – autrement dit un progrès vers l’égalité entre les
sexes sur le marché du travail –, ainsi que comme un aspect remettant
en cause les stéréotypes de genre relatifs au travail et aux aptitudes
des femmes. Cependant, ce fil narratif dominant ne reconnaît ni
n’aborde les défis auxquels sont confrontées les femmes dans le
secteur minier. En utilisant les observations des participants et en
vivant et travaillant aux côtés de femmes mineurs pendant un an, je

CONTACT Asanda Benya asanda.benya@uct.ac.za

© 2017 Oxfam GB
510 A. BENYA

me suis penchée sur ces défis et en ai analysé les implications. Je soutiens

que si le secteur minier veut pleinement inclure les femmes dans les
activités minières, il doit aller au-delà de l’utilisation de quotas pour
parvenir à la parité entre les sexes pour ce qui est du nombre
d’ouvriers femmes et hommes. Si l’accès à ces emplois est important,
la fidélisation dépend d’une lutte contre la culture masculine qui est
profondément ancrée dans le secteur minier, ce qui en fait un
environnement très difficile pour les ouvrières.

Introduction
As early as 1911 and as late as 1991, South African mining legislation explicitly prohibited
women from working underground. From 1994, however, when South Africa transitioned
from apartheid to democracy, these laws were abolished and substituted with inclusive
laws which paid serious attention to ending race, class, gender, and other inequalities.
The political system of apartheid was intrinsically patriarchal (that is, designed to further
men’s interests as a dominant social group). The adoption of various legislation in the
post-apartheid era emphasised the South African state’s commitment to upholding the
rights of all South Africans, and a commitment to diversity and equality. Various legal
reforms since have accelerated women’s inclusion in all aspects of South African life, as
equals with men (Benya 2009; Simango 2006). These include the Constitution which is
the supreme law of the Republic of South Africa, and the Bill of Rights (1996).
The mining industry has historically been extremely important to South Africa, and the
wider southern African region. A range of minerals are mined in South Africa, including
platinum, diamonds, and gold. In 2015 the mining sector contributed R286 billion (US
$22.1 billion) towards GPD, representing 7.1 per cent of GDP (Chamber of Mines of
South Africa 2017, 7). The mining industry remains a significant employer in South
Africa, directly employing 457,698 people Chamber of Mines of South Africa 2017, 1).
During the years of apartheid, a completely male underground labour force in the
mines was composed of migrant workers from the former homelands (mainly Transkei,
Ciskei, and Qwaqwa), and surrounding countries such as Lesotho, Swaziland, and
Mozambique.
In contrast, in the period after apartheid, policymakers focused on ensuring the rights
and prosperity of South Africans, and migrant work opportunities diminished on the
mines (Matlosa 1998). Legislation focusing on reforming the mining industry was enacted,
considerably improving the working conditions of mineworkers to reflect the transition
from apartheid to democracy. Legislation included the Mine Health and Safety Act
(1996), the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (2002), and the Broad-
Based Socio-Economic Empowerment Charter (Mining Charter). The Mining Charter
was negotiated in 2002 but only promulgated in May 2004.
While much of the post-apartheid legislation in the mining industry focused on addres-
sing race- and class-based inequalities in the industry, gender inequality was obviously also
an issue. Throughout the 20th century, women’s role in mining was limited to bureau-
cratic ‘support roles’ in offices – almost always taken by white women. However, black
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 511

South African women did in fact play a very meaningful role in the mining sector that was
completely invisible to accounts or statistics on the industry. They subsidised the true cost
of maintaining the male labour force on the mines, by providing unpaid care work and
support for mineworkers who were often living far from their families, as migrant workers
in hostels and camps (Ramphele 1993). In post-apartheid South Africa, this invisible
unpaid care work has increasingly been provided by migrant women, who live in commu-
nities nearby the mines (Benya 2015).
In 2003, after the adoption of the Mining Charter (2002), the South African mining
industry addressed the issue of gender equality by fully opening up minework – including
underground occupations – for women. The Mining Charter focused on a range of issues
such as the empowerment of the previously excluded and disadvantaged in the mining
industry, the housing and living conditions of workers, and the inclusion of women in
mining. The Charter had a quota system linked to specific time frames, to move towards
gender equity in mine employment. From 2004, the sector committed to attaining a 10 per
cent quota of women in mining within five years, by 2009 (Mining Charter 2002). The
target of 10 per cent women employees was further tied to the renewal of operating
licences for mining companies. The Charter stated that not meeting the targets could
lead to the withdrawal of a mining licence, so they should have been taken seriously.
The reality, however, was and continues to be murky, with mining licences not withdrawn
for companies that have failed to meet the target (Benya 2013).
This article explores the experience of minework from women’s perspectives, to con-
sider the ‘fit’ between the policy of targets for women’s employment on the mines, and
the reality of what women miners need before gender parity can be attained – including
the need to get minework ‘right for women’ (Goetz 1995, 1).
In this article, I draw on research carried out between 2011 and 2015 in Rustenburg
platinum mines. I examine women miners’ experience of two particular issues: training,
and sexual harassment at work. I argue that recruiting and retaining women workers in
a traditionally male sector like minework requires the mining industry to do far more
than conform to targets for recruitment. Experience in many different sectors – from
business to education – has shown that attaining gender parity and realising equal oppor-
tunities requires a range of different strategies.
In my research, I used a range of different methods. The primary method was partici-
pant observation: I worked and lived with mineworkers for close to a year. Mineworkers
and the mine authorities knew I was a researcher. I complemented these data with life his-
tory interviews, focus group discussions, in-depth formal and informal interviews. All
quotations and findings below are taken from this research unless otherwise indicated.
In the next section, I focus on minework as a livelihood option for women in South
Africa. I then go on to discuss some of my findings.

Minework as a livelihoods option for women in South Africa

Minework is an attractive option for many women in South Africa. South Africa has an
overall female unemployment rate of 29.3 per cent, according to the 2016 Quarterly
512 A. BENYA

Labour Force Survey (QLFS 2016, xvii). This compares to a male unemployment rate of
24.6 per cent (ibid.). Now that there are no legal barriers to female employment in the
mines, more and more women in mining towns are choosing to work in the mines.
The 2004 target of 10 per cent women in the mine workforce has now been met. The
Chamber of Mines of South Africa reports that as of 2015, 53,000 workers in the mines
were women (Chamber of Mines of South Africa 2017, 27). This translates to around
11.5 per cent of the workforce employed directly by mining companies.
Compared to jobs available to women in other industries, jobs in the mines remain
attractive; the remuneration is higher, with better working conditions and hours. Women
involved in my research highlighted some of their other options. These ranged from tra-
ditionally ‘female’ jobs – associated with caring and drawing on skills seen as womanly:
for example, domestic work or nursing – through a range of jobs which are not associated
only with men or women, for example being a cashier – to a group of jobs which are seen
as masculine, for example providing security services or operating heavy machinery.
While work in traditionally male sectors often pays more than traditionally female
work, even among traditionally male sectors, minework pays better than most.
Remarking on her wages when she was a security guard, a female mineworker said,
the wages were low and I worked 12-hour shifts … patrolling in the wind and sun.

According to workers interviewed, full-time mining jobs, at entry-level rates, pay between
30 and 40 per cent more than what they were getting in other sectors such as security
guard, machine operators, and domestic work.
Women mineworkers who I lived and worked with during my research listed a
number of other factors in their choice of employment. The entry requirements for
mining jobs are not seen as too stringent. As I discuss in this article, heavy emphasis
is given to training entrants to the industry. The entry requirement was a Grade 12
school leaver’s certificate. Without that level of education, women could not move
from primary occupations (as store keepers and issuing equipment, for example), to
higher levels, to become winch operators, locomotive operators, and miners. According
to the 2011 Census, 54 per cent of South African women leave school having attained a
Grade 12 certificate (Statistics South Africa 2011, 60). The other key criterion set by
mines when searching for women to recruit is that they must be able to commute
to and from work on a daily basis, living within a 60km radius from the mines (inter-
view with recruitment employee, September 2008).
The procedure is that when a woman meets the education and radius criteria, she is
then invited for a health and heat tolerance screening. Mining is obviously widely seen
as a physically strenuous activity, and the jobs in the mine where I worked for my research
demanded some level of physical fitness and endurance. As part of the recruitment pro-
cess, all workers undergo a health and heat tolerance screening, to assess whether they are
healthy and able to tolerate the working conditions underground, characterised by noise,
heat, and humidity. If a woman passes this screening, she can expect to be recruited and
offered a contract of employment. She then undergoes the training that I focus on in this
article.
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 513

When a woman arrives for her first day of training for minework, she can expect
to enter a very masculine world. In the next section I explore some of the reasons
for this.

Masculinity and mining

Masculinity is ‘present in the processes, practices, images and ideologies and distributions
of power’ (Acker 1992, 567), and ‘organises or structures how work is done’ (Fletcher and
Ely 2003, 3). Globally, mining is depicted as masculine, and mineworkers as exclusively
male, exhibiting strength and courage, collectively disregarding dangers and discomforts,
and at times wittingly putting themselves in harm’s way (Moodie and Ndatshe 1994). This
is a type of masculinity whose core elements include physical strength and even aggression
– referred to as ‘hypermasculinity’ (Harris 2000).
The culture of mines – that is, the values, norms, and practices – is informed by the
ideas about masculinity from surrounding society (Lahiri-Dutt 2006). The South African
mining occupational culture has clearly been shaped by the country’s colonial and apart-
heid history (Alexander 2007). In the past, mines relied heavily on cheap male migrant
workers from former homelands and neighbouring countries. The masculinity of
mines, mineworkers and mine culture has ‘enabled men to assert a specific form of cultural
masculinity’ (Lahiri-Dutt 2006, 165) in mining. This masculinity is marked by daily prac-
tices of risk-taking, an insistence that men be brave, a reliance on tacit knowledge, an
emphasis on gendered solidarity, and a disregard for dangers (Webster et al. 1999).
Even when mines required nurses – normally seen as a feminine profession – they pre-
ferred to hire men, and have been described as a ‘world without women’ (Breckenridge
1998, 975).
The logic operating in South Africa’s mines, the assumptions held by workers, the daily
practices, and the policies and discourses around mining, are all shaped by male norms.
The ways in which mines operate make it seem as if there is an exclusive and natural com-
patibility between masculinity and mining – and therefore one cannot be female and mine,
or be in mining and be ‘feminine’. In the following section, I explore these ideas in the
context of an exploration of the training new mining recruits undergo. I undertook the
training alongside other women miners and the discussion below therefore draws on
my first-hand experience, as well as the other methods outlined earlier.

Training new recruits in the mine: a gender analysis

In South Africa, new mining recruits go through intensive training, to familiarise them
with the mines and mine work. Since most women are working in the mines for the
first time, the training is crucial in facilitating their inclusion in teams as it familiarises
them with the underground world and work. A significant part of their training is tech-
nical, mainly focusing on mining standards, productivity, and mine safety. Women’s
experiences at the training centre, therefore, were subtly but importantly different from
those of men.
514 A. BENYA

At the mine where I conducted my research, and at the shafts where I undertook train-
ing, men and women were in the same classes. All 32 instructors, moderators, and asses-
sors were men, whereas both underground and on the surface, administrators for the
trainee courses were all women. During practical sessions I attended, there were noticeable
differences in how men and women are taught how to do mine work. This ranged from
how workers were taught to occupy spaces, how to use their bodies in relation to machines
or equipment underground, and what kind of work they were allowed to do during their
training.
Each class at the training centre started with theory, followed by a practical or ‘staging’
session. Classes underground were divided according to occupations (for example, separ-
ate sessions for rock-drillers or winch operators. Trainees were also divided into groups
working towards ‘unit standards’ – that is, towards standards of attainment. Unit stan-
dards focus, for example, on harmful gas detection, installing and removing ventilation,
or the use of water and compressed air columns. Each unit standard was taught over
four to five days. Workers were assessed and given competency certificates once all rel-
evant unit standards have been completed satisfactorily.
As an example, in order to qualify as a winch operator one has to be able to operate the
winch, sew the winch ropes together when they are broken, and do all of this safely without
injuring the self or other workers. When the rope breaks, after sewing the ropes together, a
winch operator has to be able to connect the winch ropes to the scrapers which then scrape
out and pull the ore to the tip. At the training centre, workers were given the theoretical
knowledge on how to do these tasks.
I found that during the practical sessions, there were slight but important gendered
differences in the knowledge transfer process. Instructors at the training centre strongly
believed and suggested that women watch the process, rather than participate in it. I wit-
nessed women being encouraged to participate in the work process as ‘assistants’, holding
down the rope, passing material, or carrying equipment, while men did the actual physical
work. When a man showed signs of struggling, he would be told by instructors and other
male co-trainees to ‘try harder’, to not let ‘something that cannot talk defeat you’, to ‘man
up’. Women, on the other hand, were told to ‘watch and learn’, and avoid physically exert-
ing and exhausting themselves.
As a result of these gendered differences at the practical sessions, by the end of the train-
ing most men, even those who struggled significantly at the beginning, were better than
most women because they had the feel of the machines, and had practised consistently
over a number of days and sometimes weeks. They were thus able to carry out the
work. In contrast, women, through a protectionist discourse which reinforced female fra-
gility, had very limited hands-on experience, despite their physical fitness.
In addition to the formal training, I also observed and participated in informal training,
usually done during break times, by older men who had worked in mining over a long
period of time. An older man would sit and eat lunch with younger men, teaching
them how and when to breathe when sewing a winch rope, how to position the rope in
relation to their bodies when sewing it, the distance they should maintain between their
legs, how to use their hands effectively, between which digits to put the rope, and how
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 515

to turn their wrist in such a way that the rope would not snap again, to ensure it would be
tight and last longer before breaking again. This transfer of knowledge and tacit skills did
not appear in any written manual, yet it was a crucial part in building knowledge, skills,
and confidence and for inclusion in teams. Women were excluded from this, thus disad-
vantaging them further.
When I interviewed instructors about what I had experienced, they evoked ideas about
female bodies being ‘naturally different’, ‘weaker’, or ‘gentler’, suggesting it is biology, and
not gender, that shapes training. It was these slight differences in how workers were
trained that facilitated their full inclusion as real workers or partial inclusion as ‘second
class’ workers. The training centre teaching, therefore, has to be tailored in such a way
that invisible gender stereotypes and norms are done away with, and men and women
all encouraged to participate equally in the training.
While women could, technically, be trained as winch operators (despite the differences I
mention above in the training they received), women were completely excluded from rock
drilling, as they were not allowed to operate the drilling machines. Granted, these were big
machines that were heavy and difficult to control. However, the grounds of exclusion were
not based on a particular worker’s fitness level or body size, but on their gender. In the
mine where I conducted this study, there were over 5,500 rock-drilling operators
(RDOs), and none of them were female.
First, I had to fight to be allowed to drill. When, during my fieldwork, I asked to be
trained as a RDO, I was told drilling was not for women because ‘the drilling machine
vibrations will negatively affect your womb’. After I insisted on being trained, and was
eventually allowed to join the class, I was strictly instructed to only ‘observe’, and not
touch anything, because drilling was a male task and was incompatible with women’s
anatomy.
During our class, like others who were new recruits, I had to observe the first few ses-
sions of drilling. Sometimes the instructor or one of the (male) learner RDOs who had
been at the training centre in the drilling class for more than a month did the first two
holes, while the rest of us observed. Drilling is a highly-skilled task – not one which
requires mere strength. During the drilling session what matters most is not only that
one is able to drill, but how one drills, how one positions the body in relation to the drilling
machine, how one moves one’s legs, how long it takes for the drilling stick to go inside the
rock and whether one struggles to get it firmly inside. Sitting with feet straddled across the
machine, with thighs tightly closing in on the machine, was key to getting the drilling right.
During breaks, informal lessons continued. Both formal and informal lessons were key
to learning how to drill. Workers showed each other how to move their bodies. They
taught each other how to:
allow the rock to guide how you move the machine … listening to the rock.

Drilling draws on qualities and attributes that are commonly associated with masculinity,
even though they are actually found in both men and women. Throughout the process,
one has to display absolute bravado, while others observe and give guidance when the
new driller stumbles. I observed that drilling was more than just the ability to use the
516 A. BENYA

drilling stick, it was about ‘doing masculinity’ in a particular way that reinforced the
hypermasculinity of the occupation. Workers were not only drilling the rock, but drilling
a particular kind of mining masculinity into each other.
While women were barred from drilling because of ‘their fragile-looking bodies’, some
of the men had small body frames, and some had even smaller hands than some women at
the training centre. Yet these men were not told they could not drill; the instructor’s dis-
course when referring to male bodies was different. He said:
[Men’s] small bodies are good for rock drill operators (RDOs), they can easily enter small stopes
[locations in the mines where drilling occurs] and drill.

After a few sessions and a few days of observing, new recruits were then called to try out
the machines and encouraged to imitate the instructors and experienced workers to the
best of their ability. They are asked to sit with their legs straddled across, and thighs tightly
closing in on the machine. When it was my turn, however, when I was finally allowed to
drill, I tried to sit comfortably and properly, just like the instructor and experienced
workers had emphasised and demonstrated to the class – with my legs straddled across,
and thighs tightly closing in on the machine. But I was told I could not do that. Yet, to
insert the machine and to drill and carry the heavy drilling machine until the end you
have to be stable and straddle your feet.
My field notes of 25 April 2012 state:
As soon as I sat on the machine, the instructor jumped to correct my position, the boys were
also screaming, no! I was taken aback because I was only doing what I saw them do, at least
the sitting position … The instructor told me to bring my legs together instead of sitting on top
of the machine with my legs straddling it … he said my legs must both be on one side, like a
lady … I was totally baffled because what he was suggesting sounded strange, I had not seen a
single boy do it, if anything, I saw HIM push the boys down, telling them to open wide their
legs and feel the machine between their thighs, but here he was, telling me to close my legs
and move them to one side ‘ … otherwise you won’t be able to have babies … you are killing
your eggs’.

In this lesson, it seemed to me that I was being instructed to ‘do femininity’ when drilling.
This was an indirect way of reinforcing stereotypes about women’s ‘incapable bodies’,
reproducing narratives about men’s bodies as the only fit bodies for drilling, consequently
reinforcing mining masculinity, particularly in the RDO occupation, while cementing the
idea that women, or female bodies cannot drill.
When I was sitting ‘like a lady’, I noted,
I was not even able to hold the machine properly, it kept dragging me, moving me sideways and I
almost fell when it dragged me to the side with no leg. When I switched it off to tell them that it is
impossible to drill in that position, before I turned my head back to them, the instructor said ‘you
see I told you that women cannot drill, I’ve been in mining for a long time, I know what I’m talking
about, women cannot do this, it’s impossible … this machine is heavy’ [all the machine boys I
could lay my eyes on were nodding in agreement]. (Ibid.)

Their special instruction in how I should sit made it impossible to drill.

 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 517

However, when I insisted on sitting like the rest of them … with my legs across the machine …
The machine wasn’t dragging me like before, I could easily control it. While the machine was
heavy, I doubt it was heavy because I am a woman, it seemed to be heavy because of the way I
was instructed to sit on it and because it was my first time. (Ibid.)

This example illustrates the significant, yet invisible differences in how men and women
are trained, how the way in which women are treated by male instructors at training
centres further seals their fate as ‘second class’ workers underground.
As I explore in my next section, the idea of women’s bodies as fragile and primarly
intended for reproduction is accompanied by other ideas of the same bodies as sexually
available to male miners for sexual harassment at work.

Masculinity, women miners, and sexual harrassment

One of the biggest challenges facing women in mining, directly linked to mining mascu-
linity and hypermasculinity, is sexual harassment of women above and underground.
While figures are not recorded by mines, in all the focus group discussions I conducted,
women confirmed that they face sexual harassment daily. My own experience confirmed
this. It happened in meetings above ground, inside the cage, in the dark alleys under-
ground, and – ironically – at the safety meetings which took place once a week to take
stock of the health and safety records of workers.
Harrassment is a reality from the moment women enter the mine shaft, when they are
inside the cage going underground, and when they are working underground.
I hate the cage … they touch you and you cannot even turn to check who touched you … it’s dark
and we are all pressing against each other.

it’s as if they target your breasts when they touch you.

Women reported that inside the cage they feel like ‘things’, in an objectifying space where
sexual touching is normalised.
Relaying a cage incident where she was the only woman, Bonang (a pseudonym) said:
It was in the morning and the cage was full, full, full, Mazembe was behind me and a lot of
other people around, but he was right behind me. As people were pushing to get inside [the
cage] Mazembe screamed, ‘you’ve awakened it, what do I do now?’. Everyone laughed in the
cage. I was so embarrassed because I could feel it [his penis], it was really up. The whole four
minutes going underground he was groaning, ‘oh no sister, oh oh oh, what am I going to do
now, ohhh’. He did that until we got underground, and everyone was laughing the whole time,
and I couldn’t even reach for my lamp to check or turn my head, it was full full [inside the
cage].

During discussions, several women also reported finding men ejaculating on their backs
during the three-minute-long cage ride from surface to underground. One woman during
the focus group discussion said, when exiting the cage she found her backside wet
with their white stuff [ejaculate] … I think he took his thing [penis] out and just used my back
side to relieve himself.
518 A. BENYA

It gets worse, in some cases women have faced more than sexual harassment, they have
been raped and in one incident a woman was murdered underground (Masondo 2012;
NUM Media Release 2015). These toxic masculine practices are accepted, and strength-
ened by an unwritten code of silence between men, have enabled men to grope women,
ejaculate on their backs, rape and murder them underground.
Rospenda et al. (1998) argue that structural aspects of organisations promote power
inequalities between women and men, and set the stage for discrimination and particularly
sexual harassment. James Gruber (1998) also argues that sexual harassment for women is
influenced by organisational tolerance to harassment, perceived commitment of organis-
ational officials to deal with harassment problems, and policies implemented to address or
combat such problems.
In the mines where this research was conducted, there were organisational policies and
procedures in place to deal with sexual harassment and protect those who experienced it.
Yet, from observations, the informal discourse among male workers (both above ground
and underground and across races and occupational levels) about sexual harassment
deviated from the formal discourse. The informal discourse accepted that men can catcall
women, pay them unwanted compliments while touching and whistling at them. In other
words, the informal discourse excused sexual harassment or brushed it off as ‘men talk’,
underground and mine language, appreciation of women and their bodies, and thus dis-
missed it as nothing serious, something one ‘will get used to’, as they ‘learn more about
mine culture’, which accepts as normal this treatment of women, and that ‘it means no
harm … none at all’ (this was also picked up from informal interviews with men and
women).
The reporting lines for those who attempted to address sexual harassment were ineffi-
cient. While the mine has policies in place and videos playing daily at cage waiting stations
to educate workers and ultimately to eradicate sexual harassment, these have not yielded
the desired results. To start off, the policy and practices in place presume that the main or
only perpetrators are men who work underground, not those who work on the surface in
management. This is an incorrect premise. While it may be prevalent with underground
workers, it is not exclusively perpetuated by them.
A number of women in interviews reported that their mine overseers and in some cases,
mine managers sometimes used their power as a ticket to harass them. A number of
women who worked as an assistant (also known as a pikinini, a term originating in colo-
nial times) above ground reported letting mine overseers touch them, so that they are not
sent to work underground. One woman said if one wants a promotion you cannot refuse
sexual advances by those who have the power to promote you. These are commonly
referred to as ‘panty-down’ promotions or ‘carpet promotions’.
According to the mine’s sexual harassment policy women have to report incidents of
harassment to their miners (the person in charge of a team) underground, union or safety
representatives, and the Human Resource (HR) officers. However, these reporting struc-
tures did not necessarily lead to addressing of sexual harassment, especially if the offend-
ing worker is highly productive. According to women, the HR and union officials or safety
representatives and miners are the first to defend the offender (focus group discussions,
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 519

October 2011, June and September 2012). When the ‘offender’ is known to be highly pro-
ductive, rarely do they get disciplined.
If the case is not outright dismissed by these parties, and the harassed woman not
accused of ‘asking for it’ or ‘tempting men’, what also happens is that the woman reporting
sexual harassment is either moved to another gang or to the surface and they often carry
the stigma of bringing the productive worker into disrepute (focus group discussions, June
and September 2012). The stigma alone deters women from reporting sexual harassment.
The possibility of being moved to the surface ‘where you can be protected’, is also another
deterrent, especially for women who want to work underground and gain underground
experience which is essential for promotions.
While all women face sexual harassment, women who are sexually liberal, those who are
gender non-conforming, or who identify as lesbians, face further victimisation. A lesbian
woman I interviewed remarked that not only do workers harass her like they do with
others, but they also threaten to violate her sexually to ‘remind’ her that she is a
woman. Another woman who described herself as ‘free sexually’ said that when she
worked underground (she worked above ground during the time of the interview) men
often told her that since she does not behave like a ‘good woman’, in other words
since I was not scared of them and I did not obey them and I talked freely about sex … that I enjoy
it … they were going to teach me a lesson on how women should behave … like drag me to a
madala site.1

Women are made vulnerable to attack not only because of their gender and pervasive
homophobia, but also by refusal to conform to gendered social norms about ‘respectable’
femininity. They are seen as deviants who need to be brought in line by any means necess-
ary, including sexual violence.

Discussion: what is needed to transform mines for women?

The evidence from my research shows that to make a fundamental shift and open up
mining to women workers, extractive industries need to be aware of gender issues operat-
ing in their sector, and the ways in which they limit its ability to attract highly-skilled and
motivated women into the industry.
Removal of discriminatory legislation and enforcement of quotas are useful in so far as
they open up spaces and create an enabling environment, but not in radically transforming
spaces (Scribner and Lambert 2010). In South Africa’s mine industry, the 10 per cent tar-
get in the Mining Charter will not address fundamental issues of gender bias and gender
discrimination in the mines. The 10 per cent women target has been seen by most mining
companies as a end goal, rather than as an initial way of opening the door to women. This
means when a mining company meets the 10 per cent quota, as is the case with most big
mining houses in South Africa now, there is an underlying assumption that women have
been included, and that all is well in mining (Chamber of Mines of South Africa 2017, 27).
The 10 per cent figure limits the debate to numbers, and not mine culture which
remains stubbornly masculine and unaccommodating to women or female bodies. As I
520 A. BENYA

showed from my discussions of training and sexual harassment, the presence of women at
this level does little to change the masculine mine culture. In fact, in some instances it
seems to me that the training is contributing to a two-tier system, where sexist beliefs
about women, their bodies, and their social roles are resulting in a discriminatory system
where women miners are seen as second class. This means women are isolated from their
teams and alienated from their work.
For women to feel included in mining from the onset, it is important that mines have
female instructors and assessors, not only administrators. These female instructors should
not only be in occupations deemed less arduous, but especially in those that are seen as bas-
tions of masculinity like rock drilling and winch operation. Seeing female instructors will not
only facilitate the inclusion of women and make them feel more welcome, but will also help
in ‘de-gendering’ some of these occupations that are seen as exclusively and hyper mascu-
line. It is important that women see bodies like theirs from the onset at the training centre.
It is not only the training given by the mines that we should pay attention to – we also
need to focus on the universities which train students for mining companies who will ulti-
mately be engineers and managers of these mines. Transforming mines is not only the role
of mines and their training centres but all those who service the mines. It is therefore
important that we look at all these different connecting points to address the gender chal-
lenges in mining and to disrupt masculinity in the mines and facilitate the full inclusion of
women.
Once women are inside the mines, they still have to fight gender norms and stereotypes
inside the mines. Sexual harassment is an extreme method used by men to police and con-
trol women who stray out of their roles and challenge men. To report sexual harassment
may be a waste of time or have adverse consequences, as discussed in the previous section,
and knowledge of this discourages women from coming forward. The policies, therefore,
need to be rethought and drafted in such a way that the lines of reporting safeguard, rather
than further victimise, women. Currently, the fact that men who perpetrate sexual harass-
ment are often not disciplined if they are productive members of the mine team, and the
need to have underground experience if a woman is to be promoted, both operate against
reporting sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment policies which are premised on heterosexuality are not only not era-
dicating the appalling problem of sexual harassment, described above, but are even further
away from addressing the harassment faced by sexual minorities and women who do not
conform to gender norms underground. The policies have to appreciate the diversity of the
mining workforce and not perpetuate heterosexuality in how they frame sexual harass-
ment. Finally, when someone needs to report sexual harassment, they should not have
to use a male reporting line, so the power lies with men to adjudicate over sexual harass-
ment cases.

Conclusion
In this article, I aimed to show how the process of masculinisation takes place in the South
African mines. To address these issues is going to require a progressive reformulation of
 GENDER & DEVELOPMENT 521

policies and an insistence on different practices that fundamentally ‘disrupt’ masculinity

and masculine power and practices, not only underground but also above ground in
the mines. It is going to take breaking the back of the appalling practices noted above,
which are enabled by the deeply patriarchal order. This is not only critical for women,
but also for the rights of sexual and gender minorities.
I have argued that if the sector is to truly open up mining to women (beyond legis-
lation), it needs to understand how gendered social norms, roles, and relations are at
the root of mining culture, and realise the importance of disrupting the process and valor-
isation of masculinity. To do that, policymakers need to deconstruct how the process of
masculinisation operates, and how it is reinforced and reproduced in a variety of ways
in the mines, particularly in underground occupations. They need to understand that
skill and bravery are attributes available to women as well as men, and to recognise that
the sex and physical build of a human body does not determine its capacity to train
and work. In order to take advantage of the skills and hard work of women workers,
the sector needs to ensure it treats women as equal workers with the same rights and
responsibilities as men.

Note
1. A madala site is an abandoned stoping section. This area is usually covered by ventilation curtains
and one cannot see what is happening on the other side. The madala sites are hardly visited and
almost never used by workers, hence those threatening this speaker said they would use this
unused madala site.

Notes on contributor
Asanda Benya is a lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South
Africa. She is also a research associate at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) based at
Wits University, Johannesburg. Postal address: Sociology Department, University of Cape Town, Rhodes
Gift 7707, South Africa. Email: asanda.benya@uct.ac.za

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