Left:
Blessing ceremony performed on 4th December for HS2’s TBM Emily and Anne SOURCE HS2 LIBRARY
prize winners, princesses, queens, and even local female teachers who would be chunking the ground, and in their own way, protecting those working inside the machines. The protective function seems to be somehow
related to Saint Barbara, who became the Saint patron of miners as far back as the 16th Century. According to legend, Barbara was imprisoned by her father for converting to Christianity. After she escaped, she hid in a rocky cliff that miraculously opened to shelter her. Her dramatic story was considered a sign of resilience, making her a fitting symbol for those working in dangerous conditions underground. Saint Barbara, celebrated on 4th December every
year, now presides upon tunnel projects in the Christian World from a shrine at a tunnel portal. This is often followed with a dedication and an invocation for protection of all who work on the project during the construction period. Despite this tradition, it has also been clear, to those
of us working in the trade from the beginning of our careers, that the industry has been surrounded with a deep rooted superstition: the belief that the presence of a woman in a mine or tunnel is bad luck. The belief could be seen even during the 20th Century in some countries, and when a group of women couldn’t tour a new bullet-train tunnel in Japan, in 2001. Several explanations tried to justify this belief such
as the fact that women only descended into mines in times of tragedy or that Saint Barbara is a jealous lady and did not want to share her domain with any other women. This superstition was even more poignant if the woman had red hair, as even seeing a red-hair woman in your way to the mine was an especially bad omen, as she was considered a portent of imminent death. As late as in 1970, a tunnel official in the US told Life
magazine that a tunnel was “no place for a woman.” Aside from not wanting women to hear the bad language the men might use or see them relieving themselves wherever they were, there were questions over physical suitability and stamina. In the UK, the Mines and Collieries Act 1842 prohibited
females from working underground, aiming to keep them and also children away from labour exploitation
and poor working conditions. The effects of the Act went international around 100 years ago. This journey of conflicting protection and superstition
was finally legally settled in the early 1970s - just over 50 years ago - after Janet P. Bonnema, who was offered a job with the Colorado Highway Department (CHD) but denied access to the tunnel for being a woman. She brought a challenge. The U.S. Department of Transportation ruled “after a year-long investigation that to bar a woman from the tunnel was to practice sex discrimination.” Yet the CHD refused to abide by the decision. Bonnema filed a lawsuit. After Colorado’s voters approved an amendment to
the State’s Constitution to guarantee equal rights for women (finally approved in 1973), CHD settled, and in November 1972, Bonnema, in coveralls and a hard hat, made her first walk into the tunnel, accompanied by reporters. More than 60 men walked off the job. Most miners returned to work the next day. She persevered. A week later her entrance to the tunnel became normal practice. In 2012, Janet P. Bonnema was inducted into the
Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. At the time Bonnema’s case made headlines, the
British Tunnelling Society (BTS) was constituted here in the UK. The first female engineer to become Chair of the BTS was Kate Cooksey, over 2020-2022. We are writing this now to celebrate that we are
here, we are here to stay, and for our contribution underground and our voices to continue to be heard. Rosa Diez
REFERENCES ● ‘Women’s History Month: Boring women’. (2022)
The Brunel Museum, 1 March 2022. https://
thebrunelmuseum.com/news/
● ‘Janet P. Bonnema: Women - bad luck?’. US Dept of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (FHA).
https://highways.dot.gov/highway-history/ general-highway-history/janet-p-bonnema- women-bad-luck
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