GENDERED RELATIONS IN THE MINES AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR UNDERGROUND

Abstract

This article focuses on how men's sexualization of work relations and the workplace contributes to job-level gender segregation among coal miners. The findings suggest that sexualization represents men's power to stigmatize women in order to sustain stereotypes about them as inferior workers. In particular, supervisors use stereotypes to justify women's assignments to jobs in support of and in service to men. Once in these jobs, men's positive evaluations of women workers become contingent upon their fulfillment of men's gendered expectations. These processes foster the gender typing of jobs and lead to the gendered division of labor underground.