127 
The Exclusion of Women. 
The second important change recently made in the law relating 
to mines is the introduction of the regulations for the prohibition of 
employment of women underground. Power to make such regulations was 
given in the Act of 1901 and renewed in 1923, but it was not exercised until 
1929 when, after long discussion, the Governor General in Council made 
the present regulations. Their effect is to exclude women from underground 
workings forthwith, except in exempted mines, 7.e., except in coal mines 
m Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and the Central Provinces and salt mines in 
the Punjab. In these exempted mines the exclusion is to be gradual ; the 
employment of women underground after 1st J uly 1929 has been limited 
to a percentage of the total underground labour force, 29% in coal mines 
and 40%, in salt, to be reduced by 3%, and 4% respectively each year, so 
that after 1st July 1939 women will be entirely excluded from under- 
oround workings. 
Effects in Metalliferous Mines. 
The exempted mines included all but 3,000 women employed 
underground in 1928. Of these 3,000, nine-tenths worked in the mica 
mines. The owners informed us that they would find difficulty in re- 
placing the women workers, but the Chief Inspector’s report for 1929 
seems to indicate that this difficulty is being surmounted. In the 
Punjab salt mines, where we found some difficulty in obtaining accurate 
figures of the numbers of women employed, we were told that the ques- 
tion of exclusion was not expected to arise for one or two years : mean- 
while fresh women workers were being emploved. We recommend that 
this practice be discontinued 
Effects in Collieries. 
In collieries, the immediate results of the regulation have 
exceeded expectations and the table below gives the relevant figures 
of average numbers employed. 
Women. 
Men. 
Category of workers. 
Underground 
Open workings 
Surface 
w 5 
Total 
1998. 
28,408 
2 019 
a. 
= 
19.572 
1920 
21,880 ° 
7.945 
- R52 
te 
1928 
68,727 
9.443 
36,007 
5. 14.287 
1929. 
75,022 
10,793 
37,366 
423,181 
—— 
The effects of this change must be increasingly felt as time goes 
on, but in some directions are not difficult to foresee. First and most 
—