Though mining is an infamously masculine industry, women make up 20% of all production crews in Wyoming's Powder River Basin - the largest coal-producing region in the US. How do these women fit into a working culture supposedly hostile to females? This is what anthropologist Jessica Smith Rolston set out to discover. Her answers offer a rich and surprising view of the working "families” that miners construct.

Preface and Acknowledgments

Part I: Orientation
1. Putting Kinship to Work
2. Labor Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility

Part II: Putting in Time
3. Shiftwork as Kinwork
4. Interweaving Love and Labor

Part III: Undoing Gender at Work
5. Tomboys and Softies
6. Hard Work, Humor, and Harassment
7. Conclusion

Notes
Glossary of Mining Terms
References
Index

 JESSICA SMITH ROLSTON is the Hennebach Assistant Professor of Energy Policy in the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies at the Colorado School of Mines. An anthropologist by training, she also publishes on corporate social responsibility in extractive industries.