ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on different representations of women as acting subjects, that is on the vexed issue of women and political subjectivity. The political implications of the dual and different subject positions occupied by miners and their wives are complex. While miners are seen as having individual power in the structure of patriarchy, they are individually powerless within the structure of capitalism and can only claim power through collective organisation. The bodies, actions and political subjectivities of miners' wives are sites of this discursive battle at its most virulent. Restructuring in the Australian coal industry has recently highlighted some local differences in the political subjectivities of women in coal mining communities. The arrangement of shift work patterns became an important point of conflict for coal miners and their wives in Australia around 1988, when a new industry award was introduced as part of a process of industry rationalisation.
