(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Deep underground, where huge conveyer belts haul rocks to the surface, 33-year-old mother of two Bernice Motsieloa represents the quiet revolution transforming the macho culture of SouthAfrican mining.
Motsieloa is a shift supervisor at Anglo American's Bathopele platinum mine - one of several thousand female miners employed in a difficult and often dangerous environment traditionally dominated by men.
Despite an apartheid-era ban on women working underground only being lifted in 1996, 15 percent of all employees in the mining sector are now female, exceeding the government's own target of 10 percent.
But reports of sexual harassment are common, and some retired miners say female miners face pressure to offer sexual favours to their male colleagues.
Motsieloa recalls the verbal abuse she endured. "It was hard. We were openly called names by our male colleagues who told us 'this is not your place'," she said.
A few kilometres from the Bathopele mine, a female worker was raped and killed underground in another Anglo American Platinum mine in 2012.
Three months ago, another female worker was raped in the changing rooms at a different mine also owned by the firm, but escaped with her life.
"I was shocked and did not trust this environment anymore... Working alone, what if this happens?" said Motsieloa, who is always in radio contact with the control room at surface level.
Whatever the challenges, Motsieloa exudes authority as leader of her mainly-male team of 22 workers.
It is an unusual place to earn a living - in a pit as deep as 350 metres (1,150 feet), surrounded by heavy machinery and tunnels marked with danger signs.
Nozuko Ogyle, one of three women on Motsieloa's team, said women needed to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.
Anglo American Platinum, the mine owner, is South Africa's largest private sector employer and has 3,081 women working in underground operations.
It has introduced a "buddy buddy" system to ensure that women don't work alone when down the mines, as well as setting up a sexual harassment hotline.
"Women have been able to talk to us and say 'you should do this'... so I think there will be an ongoing process to make women feel safe in our mines," Chris Griffith, CEO of Anglo American Platinum said.
Research by Asanda Benya of the University of the Witwatersrand in 2009 titled "Women in Mining: A challenge to occupational culture in mines", collected witness evidence that shift bosses engaged in sex with female mine workers.
"Sexual favours are very common underground."
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