Heather Kopp
A Man's World: Women in the US Mining Industry
In nineteenth
century United States history, men made up the majority of the
publicly visible working class. Men tended to serve in the crafts,
industrial manufacturing, and manual agricultural labor. Though there
were women in these sectors as well, such as garment factory workers,
many women had positions in more private settings, such as domestic
servants, prostitutes, foodsellers, and boardinghouse operators. They
ways in which women became more visible in the working class changed
with westward migration during the “Manifest Destiny” period of
the mid-to-late 1800s. Many women took on the task of traveling
across the country with their families, facing hard conditions along
the journey and then helping to financially support their families
once they reached the West and Southwest. While some women became
entertainers or ran boardinghouses as their mode of income, many
women took on more physically laborious jobs, one of them being
mining.
The mining industry
in the Western United States was predominantly made up of white (or
“Anglo” men). Mexican and Latin American women trying to find a
place in the mining industries of California, New Mexico, and Nevada
struggled for equality (both in the workplace and socially), their
jobs, and their sanity. A multitude of challenges were posed to both
working women already residing in the west and to women traveling
cross-country to find work in the mines. Though gender and ethnic
inequality hardship did not fade away, more women began to take jobs
and infiltrate this masculinized industry as mining continued to boom
throughout the West. However, these women faced new
challenges—challenges that extended out of the harsh conditions of
the labor itself and into the cutthroat environment of labor unions
and strikes. Women who worked in mining during the twentieth century
struggled to fight for equality in unions1
and faced challenges against mining companies and law enforcement
when they were striking for better working conditions. Women of the
twentieth century also supported their mining husbands who worked for
mining companies by establishing auxiliaries and standing in picket
lines when their spouses could not. Women miners of the nineteenth
century and the twentieth century were both faced with gender
stereotypes, racism, but the latter group made an impact in their
working class by fighting for equality, better wages, and conditions
in the working place. These groups of women miners and women in
mining families contributed a great deal of their lives to their
survival, work, and activism.
At the end of the
nineteenth century, Ferminia Sarras arrived in Virginia City, Nevada
from Nicaragua. She brought with her four daughters but no
husband—historic texts speculate that she may have left her home
country a widow.2
Ferminia carried a pick ax for diggings and “bucking” boulders
and also a gun to ward off wolves and coyotes.3
The conditions of the landscape of the mining countryside were dry
and desolate—finding game and water was often difficult. Ferminia,
like the other mining workers at the time, had to carry a pack over
forty pounds containing provisions while she climbed the Nevada hills
in search of ore. She was noted for her remarkable strength despite
her short stature.4
Ferminia not only faced harsh climate and terrain conditions, but
social ones as well. The California Gold Rush masculinized the act of
mining so much, the women within the industry had to break through
the gender stereotype barrier.
As a woman in a
so-called 'man's industry', Ferminia was an exceptional women because
she was successful in her mining endeavors—this was a feat rarely
even accomplished by male miners. She became known as the “Nevada
Copper Queen”.5
Being both Latin American and female, odds were against Ferminia when
she set out in search of gold, silver, and copper. In addition to
dealing with general racism in all work industries, women like
Ferminia had to deal with the history of excluding Latinos and Latin
Americans from mines in the Gold Rush Period with the Foreign Miners
Tax. Despite these roadblocks, she asserted her independence as both
a worker and a woman. Ferminia did not depend on the men in her life
for her livelihood—she lived through her prospecting.
This way of life
was also followed by women such as Nellie Cashman, who braved the
extremely cold conditions in Klondike, Alaska. She worked alongside
men in her mines and coveted respect from the male mining community.6
Cashman was unique in that she was able to operate her
own businesses in the mining industry and men worked alongside her as
equals. Though she did not have a fortune as large as Ferminia’s,
she did make as many as twenty claims while she prospected in Alaska.
Following the lives of Ferminia Sarras and Nellie Cashman depict how
women miners broke through social, cultural, and political barriers
during their time. Though not all mining women were successful
in building their fortunes, (and neither were all men), some women
were able to blaze a path that allowed for future generations of
women to continue to break the mold of the 'domesticated housewife'
in a patriarchal, capitalist society.
The same gender and
ethnic discrimination was still intact in the mid-twentieth century.
Women were not considered as “full” participants in mining as men
were. However, a landmark event in which women showed their
contribution to mining was the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc
Company in Zinc Town, New Mexico. The Anglo and Mexican men who
worked in the mines were striking for better working conditions but
their efforts were halted when the Taft-Hartley Act prohibited them
from striking. However, as seen in Salt of the Earth the
movie, this did not bar women (wives and sisters of the male miners)
from holding the picket line.7
In fact, because women took advantage of this legal loophole and
replaced men on the picket line, their efforts to keep scabs away
from the mine was a success. Despite facing opposition from their
own husbands and fellow community members when they proposed taking
over for the men on strike, and despite being hit with tear gas,
harassed by the local sheriff, and even unlawfully arrested, these
“Salt of the Earth” women persevered and carried out a landmark
moment of labor activism for working class women. This event inspired
and influenced women (both Anglo and Mexican American) throughout the
U.S. to seek jobs in mining and other masculinized industries.
A similar moment of
labor activism came thirty years later. The Arizona Copper Mine
Strike of 1983 happened during the worst United States recession
since the Great Depression. Flossie Navarro was hired, along with
many other women during World War II, by the Phelps Dodge Mining
company. According to an interview with Navarro, “On our shift it
was all women... Those women kept that mine going.” 8
In 1981, in an attempt to keep running during the recession, Phelps
Dodge Mining laid off hundreds of workers. When the mines finally
reopened the next year, the company and unions were unable to reach
an agreement and miners went on strike in 1983. Phelps Dodge wanted
to freeze workers' wages and end cost-of-living protection. When
injunctions barred men from picketing, their wives and daughters—as
well as women miners—turned out for the picket lines in order to
keep the union alive.9
Women miners during Navarro's time were seen as unladylike and
unwomanly (by both men and women) for working and picketing in such a
masculine industry. Women on the lines endured naming calling and
were unlawfully arrested. Both women and men were injured during
riots between strikers and strikebreakers/authorities.10
Despite dealing
with these hardships, many women were still able to organize
themselves. The Morenci Miner's Women's Auxiliary stepped in to do
mass picketing during the Arizona Copper Mine Strike. Although
auxiliaries were often 'domesticated' (i.e. they fed and clothed
children and families during the strike), the MMWA actively
maintained the picket lines and organized rallies to raise awareness
of the miners' plight. Although the women's contribution to the
Phelps Dodge strike was ignored by much of the media, it greatly
impacted the women involved. One of the leaders of the MMWA at the
time of the Arizona Copper Mine Strike was Anna O'Leary, a woman of
Hispanic descent. O'Leary and women like her faced opposition on both
sides of the workforce spectrum: sexism and racism. O'Leary's outlook
on the strike (which eventually failed when the mining union was
decertified in 1984) was one of hope. “Through the strike, I have
learned to appreciated my culture and myself.”11
This ideology applied to many women who were part of the 1983 strike.
“"Nothing can ever be the same as it was before," said
Diane McCormick of the Morenci Miners Women's Auxiliary. "Look
at us. At the beginning of this strike, we were just a bunch of
ladies."”12
Women who worked in
the mining industry endured not only negative responses to their work
from the people around them, but also the physical aspects of such a
demanding, traditionally “masculine” labor. Both women miners of
the nineteenth century and women in the twentieth century faced these
adversities, but they were persistent in their attempts to succeed in
this industry and to defy the gender and ethnic biases in place.
Although women like Ferminia and Cashman did not organized themselves
into labor unions or women's auxiliaries, their independence was one
of the factors that kept women in the mining industry. Without women
in the 19th century braving the dangerous conditions of
mining and break their social molds, it may have take much longer for
women of the 20th century to find their place in the
unions, in mining, and in working class history.
1 Michael
Seitzman, North Country, film,
directed by Niki Caro (2005; USA: Participant Productions, 2005.)
2 Jan
Cleere, More Than
Petticoats: Remarkable Nevada Women,
(Guilford, Connecticut: Morris Book Publishing, 2005), 17. This book
is a collection of brief biographies that profile the lives of women
who lived and worked in Nevada during the late 19th
century.
4 Sally
Zanjani, A Mine of
Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950,
(Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 60-63.
5 Sally
Zanjani, A Mine of
Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950,
(Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 60-63.
6 Sally
Zanjani, A Mine of
Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950,
(Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 8-10.
7 Michael
Wilson, Salt of the Earth, film,
directed by Herbert Biberman (1954; Bayard: Independent Production
Company/Independent Productions, 1954.)
8 Barbara
Kingslover, Holding
the Line: Women In The Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983,
(New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 3-10 . Kingslover’s
interviews with women of the Phelps Dodge Copper Mine allows the
reader to get a new perspective on unions and strikes during the
late 20th
century.
9 Barbara
Kingslover, Holding
the Line: Women In The Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983,
(New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), 64-70.
10 Rosenblum,
Jonathan. Copper Crucible,
(New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), 3-10. The Copper
Crucible focuses on the
brutality of both the employer and law enforcement against the
workers and strikers during the 1983 copper mine strike. It also
depicts how the strikers were treated on the lines and how they
interacted with strikebreakers.
11 Lee,
Heller. "Women and Mining: Holding the Line." Off
Our Backs Vol. 20, No.5, The Work Issue ,
May 1990, 22.
12 Barbara
Kingslover, Holding
the Line: Women In The Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983,
(New York: Cornell University Press, 1996)
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