“Patchwork Quilt of Patriarchies”: Women Mineworker’s Experiences of Violence Underground

Labour feminists have long criticised trade unions for embracing and reproducing a culture that valorises androcentric norms and logics, functioning as boys’ clubs with ‘brotherhood’ solidarities that exclude or marginalise women. Like their global counterparts, South African trade unions and federations, especially those organising in male-dominated workplaces, have also faced similar criticisms. While much has been said about transforming unions and taking seriously women’s struggles in workplaces, the recalcitrant masculine culture of unions remains. Women’s experiences are still coloured by marginalisation, and they continue to be seen as ‘outsiders inside’ and as invaders.

Using data from participant observation where I worked full shifts underground for almost a year while living with mineworkers in their residences, and interviews conducted between 2008 and 2019 at a platinum mine in South Africa, I outline women’s experiences in three mining unions: the United Association of South Africa (UASA), the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). I reflect on their responses to violence and sexual harassment targeted at underground women miners. I argue that unions as boys’ clubs with brotherhood solidarities are not only complicit in the production of unequal power relations and gender inequity at work, but also perpetuate violence against women by reinforcing hetero-patriarchal norms and by reproducing a culture that disempowers women. To serve women, To serve women there needs to be a rupture from androcentricity, and unions have to appreciate the connection between pocketbook issues and women’s day-to-day workplace struggles, or what some scholars have called the ‘sex of class’. This reckoning is critical for the future of the labour movement, as women are a permanent feature of work.