ABSTRACT

In focusing on the proletarianisation process of male miners and their entry into the masculine world of the mining community, historians have tended to neglect women’s roles and the gendered nature of workers’ communities ( Rothermund 1978:1–19, Simeon 1995, Klubock 1997:232). Indeed, mining communities have often been portrayed as reflecting ideologies of masculinity at various levels, but in doing so, scholars have often understated the ways in which gender ideologies have structured the formation of mining working classes, transformed relations between men and women, and generated specific ideas about masculinity and femininity. 2 This article will look at the way men and women from the Ombilin mining community have been defined by management and how they have responded to workplace and national politics. The shifts in the miners’ response from resistance to accommodation and to political protest and confrontation should also be seen in conjunction with the social position of women as workers, ‘entertainers,’ and wives. Changes in women’s social position are also inseparable from shifts in labour force recruitment policy by management. The problem is to identify the kind of ideology behind the changes in labour force recruitment policy that were imposed by the company.