ABSTRACT
This chapter examines an equally important aspect of the 1984/1985 Miners’ Strike; the role played by the women of the mining communities. The issue of gender relations and the sexual division of labour is an important one because of the particularly patriarchal nature of mining communities. Loretta Loach believes that the important point about the miners’ wives was that ‘as women they were visible and active in their own right, separately and apart from men and not simply tagging along behind them’. The fact that the women did not conform to the stereotypical role of being merely passive supporters of strikers is highlighted by A. Callinicos and M. Simons, ‘From the very start of the strike the women of the mining communities have refused to play the role that the press usually ascribes to the wives and girlfriends of strikers’.
