In tracing women's roles and analysing their low status in the extractive industries in India, particularly coal mining, this paper highlights the need of sensitizing the Indian mining establishments ranging from educational, research and training institutions to the Ministries and Bureaus as well as the industrial organizations so as to provide equal work opportunities for women. It shows that mining is not a ‘non-traditional’ area of work for women as is commonly thought. It also raises the importance of class, caste and locational juxtaposition in understanding institutionalized sensitivities towards gender.
The author argues that the formal extractive industries continue to exclude women and remain sites of rewards of production for men because of the entrenched social bias as traditionally those working in the collieries were largely from lower caste, poorer classes and indigenous communities.
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