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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Women Mining Asbestos in South Africa, 1893-1980
Author:McCulloch, JockISNI
Year:2003
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:29
Issue:2
Period:June
Pages:413-432
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:miners
women workers
work environment
asbestos
Women's Issues
History and Exploration
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Labor and Employment
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
Historical/Biographical
agriculture
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3557370
Abstract:In the period from 1893 to 1980 the asbestos mines of the northwest Cape and the northeastern Transvaal were important sources of employment. Until the industry's twilight in the 1980s, females comprised up to half of the asbestos mine workers in South Africa. During the first phase, the women who hand-processed or cobbed fibre did the most hazardous jobs for the lowest pay. Most women probably developed asbestos-related disease (ARD). Although according to employers, Department of Mines records and the few historians who have written on the subject, women were employed by tributers to process cobs only so long as production and investment remained low, and were replaced by machinery once industrial methods of production were introduced, the shift to industrial mining was uneven and some of the work processes used in the first phase of the industry's development, particularly cobbing, survived. Even by South African standards labour conditions for black and coloured workers were harsh. A mixture of political skills and the isolation of the mines allowed British-owned companies and their subsidiaries to escape the strictures of the various Mines Acts. Notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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