Women’s bodies, gender meanings and symbolic limits in large-scale mining in Chile

Abstract

This article seeks to unveil the ways in which women mining workers signify their bodies, as a symbolic barrier that produces segregation, discrimination and marginalization, interpreted from the notions of symbolic violence, differential value of the sexes, gender inequality, precariousness and social stigma. Using a qualitative methodology, through the analysis of 31 interviews with operators and supervisors, perceptions are interpreted and triangulated around trajectories and experiences of gender relations in large-scale mining. Corporality as a limit and violence is expressed in the sexualization of their bodies; judgment and undervaluation due to less physical force; rejection, stigmatization and trivialization of the reproductive body; as well as in demands for personifying hegemonic male traits to inspire respect, but without «losing femininity», which is classic, causing distress and confrontation.