COAL RUSHES: PROGRESS REPORT ON WOMEN MINERS, MINERS' WOMEN AND THEIR COMMUNITIES

This paper reports on the first stage of a project that aims to give an authentic voice to Queensland’s women coal miners and women who are or were coal miners ' wives, daughters, mothers and sisters, and to help them articulate their rightful place in the history of Australian work. The voices sought and recorded are women and men talking about the role of women in their mining community, their workplaces, their union, their disputes and their homes. We look at the roles of women in their industry, in both paid and unpaid work. Mining work has meant very varied individual and collective experiences for these women. Through interviews, focus groups and written questionnaires, we identify the ideas and practices that inform the everyday experiences of these mining women and men; and how these change and how they go about identifying the changes they want. This paper presents the first results from the first phase of our research