CRAFTING KINSHIP AT HOME AND WORK: WOMEN MINERS IN WYOMING

Abstract

The article traces the institutional policies and social dynamics shaping women's participation in the northeastern Wyoming mining industry. Ethnographic research suggests that the women's successful integration into this nontraditional workplace is predicated on their ability to craft and maintain kin‐like social relationships in two spheres. First, women miners have addressed the challenges of managing their home and work responsibilities by cultivating networks of friends and family to care for their children while they are at work. This finding denaturalizes the masculinization of the mining industry, showing instead how institutional policies such as rotating shift schedules have systematically made it difficult, though not impossible, for women and especially single mothers to participate in this industry. Second, women miners craft close relationships with coworkers in what are called “crew families.” These relationships make their work more enjoyable, and the ways in which they create camaraderie prompt a reconsideration of conventional accounts of sexual harassment in the mining industry.