woman wrote an anonymous story about sexual harassment that appeared in the newsletters of the United Mine Workers of America and the Coal Employment Project. More women began to contact CEP with their stories of harassment, expressing relief that the subject was out in the open. At a November conference of female miners sponsored by the United Mine Workers of America in Charleston, West Virginia, female miners for the first time spoke out about sexual harassment (Prieto :). The Second National Conference of Women Coal Miners in May of was a major turning point. Sexual harassment emerged as a major theme of the conference. CEP offered a sexual harassment workshop, which ran twice, packed to capacity both times. In the workshop, women broke the silence about the common practice of sexual harassment inside coal mines. One woman exclaimed, ‘‘At last! Somebody else has been going through all this! I thought it was just me!’’ (Coal Employment Project ). The female miners passed several resolutions on sexual harassment. They asked CEP to conduct a study of sexual harassment in coal mines and to produce a brochure about women’s legal rights. They resolved to demand that unions and employers adopt policies against sexual harassment and incorporate information about the issue into training sessions. They also asked CEP to produce information about the issue to be sent to new miners, to be posted on bulletin boards, and to be distributed through newsletters (Coal Employment Project ). Through these efforts, activists gained an understanding of the scope and effects of sexual harassment. The CEP survey showed rampant and violent sexual harassment against female coal miners in ten states. More than half ( percent) of all female miners were propositioned by their bosses at least once, percent were propositioned by coworkers, and percent had been attacked physically (White, Angle, & Moore ). The findings reported three forms of harassment unique to female coal miners. When women began to enter the mines, male miners revived a traditional initiation rite that had more or less been discontinued by the s in which miners 254
DOMINANCE, HARASSMENT, AND WOMEN