ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book intends to begin filling that gap, with a view to engendering the mining related development processes, and put forth an interdisciplinary approach in examining women in the mine pits and quarries of the past and the present. It reconstructs the gendered histories of the mine pits through examples derived from a range of countries. The book looks at women miners in Asia at a general and contextual level during the modern period. It suggests that in the majority of instances women have always participated in small-scale, artisanal mining and, indeed, continue to do so in many countries today. The book shows how the 'double minority' of Korean women in prewar Japanese coal mines was shaped by gender and ethnicity. It describes the structural vulnerabilities of organizing women's labour in mining communities.
