Women in mining need a better deal

Tholakele Nene’s article (“Underground world of rape, abuse and the sex trade”, October 7) states that “women have been miners since 2012”. This is probably a typo for 2002, for the article continues: “Prior to 2002, an underground mine shaft was no place for a woman. Then the South African Mining Charter introduced a clause stipulating that women had to make up at least 10% of a mine’s staff, lifting the previous ban.”

The ban was actually lifted earlier than this, from 1January 15 1997, when the Mine Health and Safety Act of 1996 removed long-existing restrictions that prevented women from working in many mining jobs, particularly underground.

Until the 1990s the South African mining sector had in place legal regulations and a history of practice that discriminated against both black people and women.

In 1994, just 2% of the mining workforce were women, compared with more than 10% in 2015. The South African mining sector now leads the world in the high proportion of industrial mining jobs occupied by women. This is largely the direct result of the Mining Charter, which took effect in May 2004 and set the target at 10%. Women now work underground, in huge opencast operations and in mining research and development.

There remain many challenges in integrating women into a sector with such a long history of male dominance. These include the need to adapt safety equipment and changing facilities to women’s needs and the need to counter serious risks to the security of women from male coworkers.

One of the objects of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, 2002, is to expand opportunities for women to enter into and actively participate in the mineral sector.

The comparatively large number of women working on South African mines underlines the need for an integrated and comprehensive strategy for women in mining.

The past solution of protecting women by keeping them out of the mining workplace was simple, and discriminatory. This route of protecting women and girls (and young boys) from “unwholesome conditions” in coal mines by their removal from the workplace was applied in Britain in the 1842 Mines and Collieries Act.

Now that South Africa’s laws have opened up mining employment to all, there is a direct and pressing need for a positive strategy for women in mining.