Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West.

• Author: Dahl, Carol

Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West, by Jessica Rolston (Rutgers University Press, 2014). 250 pages, ISBN: 978-0-8135-6367-1, paperback. Also available in cloth, epub, and pdf.

For those of us used to thinking of labor in the abstract as a capital L in a production function, this book gives labor a human face and a gender with many anecdotes from the Wyoming coal mining industry. Dr. Jessica Rolston takes us on an inside look to dispel some of the myths we might have about this traditionally male-dominated industry. She is well placed for this task. When she was growing up, her father worked as a mine mechanic in the Powder River Basin. To help pay for college, she worked a couple of summers in the mines driving haul trucks as part of the internship program for children of employees. She returned again to study gender in the mines for her Ph. D. (conferred in 2009) in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. The book, which was the winner of the 2018 Western Social Science Association Distinguished Book Award, arose out of her Ph. D. thesis.

The book is divided into three sections. The first is an introduction, the second focuses on the timing and rhythm of work in the mines, and the third focuses on issues of gender in the workplace. The first chapter notes the successful integration of women into Wyoming surface mining, where they average about 25 percent of each crew, receive equal pay for equal work, and are generally free from sexual harassment and discrimination. We are introduced to some themes in the literature that carry through to subsequent chapters: kinship in the workplace, constructing and undoing gender in workplace relationships, gender in mining, and women in nontraditional occupations. We learn a bit about open pit mining and the author's history with the industry.

In chapter two, Rolston places the Wyoming industry within two streams of mining history: unionization and corporate responsibility. Wyoming mine labor is not unionized and perceives themselves as part of the middle rather than working class. Corporate appeals and hiring focused on Western ranching ideals of independence, hard work, and perseverance likely contributed to the failure of unionization to take hold. Corporate responsibility also contributes to the atmosphere, with a focus on being better neighbors, listening to employee concerns, safety consciousness, and being in partnership rather than conflict...