The role of women as mineworkers and as household workers has been erased. Here, we challenge the masculinity associated with the mines, taking a longer-term and a global labour history perspective. We foreground the importance of women as mineworkers in different parts of the world since the early modern period and analyse the changes introduced in coal mining in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the masculinization and mechanization, and the growing importance of women in contemporary artisanal and small-scale mining. The effect of protective laws and the exclusion of women from underground tasks was to restrict women's work more to the household, which played a pivotal role in mining communities but is insufficiently recognized. This process of “de-labourization” of women's work was closely connected with the distinction between productive and unproductive labour. This introductory article therefore centres on the important work carried out in the household by women and children. Finally, we present the three articles in this Special Theme and discuss how each of them is in dialogue with the topics addressed here. Many thanks also to Marie-José Spreeuwenberg for her invaluable engagement.

中文翻译：

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矿山中的女性与性别：通过历史挑战男性气质：简介

女性作为矿工和家庭工人的角色已被抹去。在这里，我们挑战与矿山相关的阳刚之气，从长远和全球劳工历史的角度来看。我们突出了自近代以来世界不同地区女性作为矿工的重要性，并分析了 19 世纪和 20 世纪初煤炭开采中引入的变化、男性化和机械化，以及女性在当代手工艺和小规模采矿。保护性法律和将妇女排除在地下工作之外的效果是将妇女的工作更多地限制在家庭中，这在采矿社区中发挥了关键作用，但未被充分认识。女性“去劳动化”的过程 他的工作与生产性劳动和非生产性劳动的区别密切相关。因此，这篇介绍性文章的重点是妇女和儿童在家庭中所做的重要工作。最后，我们将介绍本专题中的三篇文章，并讨论每篇文章如何与此处讨论的主题进行对话。还要感谢 Marie-José Spreeuwenberg 的宝贵参与。