Creating and Responding to the Gen(d)eralized Other: Women Miners' Community-Constructed Identities

Abstract

An analysis of interviews with mining families reveals that gender identity construction is a collaborative process that draws upon broader community discourses. Male miners and non-mining women created a generalized other for women as “unfit to mine” (i.e., women are physically too weak to mine, are easy prey, and are ladies who do not belong in the mines). Female miners responded with gendered discourses that distanced themselves from and linked themselves to the generalized other.

Keywords:

• blue-collar
• gender
• identity
• symbolic interactionism
• organizational communication