On a recent morning in eastern Ukraine, miner Karina Yatsina was busy operating a conveyor belt in a dark, 360-meter-deep tunnel. Lights flickered at the end of the shaft, illuminating the miners digging out the coal seams.

A year and a half ago, 21-year-old Yatsina was still working as a nanny. Then friends told her that a mine in the eastern Polish city of Pavlohrad was looking for women to replace the men who had been drafted into the military. The pay was good and the pension generous. It wasn’t long before Yatsina was running through the mine’s labyrinth of tunnels, a headlamp attached to her red helmet.

“I never thought I would work in a mine,” Yatsina said, pausing briefly in the scorching heat of the tunnel. “I never imagined this.”

Yatsina is one of 130 women who have started working underground at the mine since the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. They now operate conveyor belts that transport coal to the surface, work as safety inspectors or drive the trains that connect the different parts of the mine.

“Their help is huge because many men have gone to war and are no longer available,” said Serhiy Faraonov, deputy head of the mine, which is run by DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company. About 1,000 of the mine’s male workers have been drafted, he said, about a fifth of the total workforce. To make up for the shortage, the mine has hired about 330 women.

They are part of a broader trend in Ukraine, where women are increasingly entering jobs long dominated by men as the large-scale mobilization of soldiers decimates the male-dominated workforce. They have become truck or bus drivers, welders in steel factories and warehouse workers. Thousands have also voluntarily joined the army.

In doing so, these women are changing the traditionally male-dominated Ukrainian workplace, which experts say has long been shaped by prejudices that originated in the Soviet Union. “There was this perception of women as second-class workers and less reliable,” says Hlib Vyshlinsky, executive director of the Kyiv-based Center for Economic Strategy.

Vyshlinsky said Ukrainian women had long been excluded from certain jobs, not only because of the physical demands but also because those roles were seen as too complicated for them. Women, he said, could drive trolleybuses but not trains. “It was full of stereotypes.”

The current influx of women into the Ukrainian labor market is reminiscent of the women who worked in weapons factories during World War I, the women immortalized in the iconic Rosie the Riveter posters, and the women who went to work in the United States during World War II.

But even if more women enter the workforce, they will not be enough to replace all the male workers leaving the country, economists say. Three-quarters of all Ukrainian employers are suffering from a labor shortage, a recent survey found.

Before the war, 47 percent of Ukrainian women were employed, according to the World Bank. Since then, around 1.5 million female workers, or about 13 percent of the total, have left Ukraine, said Vyshlinsky.

“The proportion of working women in Ukraine is higher today than before the war,” said Vyshlinsky. But too many have left the country for the country to overcome its labor shortage, he said.

The phenomenon of women’s employment in mining is particularly evident.

After the Russian invasion in 2022, the Ukrainian government repealed a law banning women from working underground and in “harmful or dangerous” conditions. They are now regularly found in the narrow elevator shafts that take workers to the depths of the mines.

“I was surprised. It’s unusual to see a woman with a shovel doing a man’s work,” said Dmytro Tobalov, a 28-year-old miner, shortly after a woman walked past him and other burly miners resting on benches in a tunnel waiting to take an elevator out of the mine.

Tobalov, who works at a mine in Pokrovsk in eastern Donetsk region, said 12 men left his group of miners and joined the army. They were replaced by 10 men and two women. “They are doing great,” he said of the women.

Several women said they joined the Pokrovsk mine, owned by Metinvest, Ukraine’s largest steel producer, because it offers stable jobs in a war-ravaged economy. Valentyna Korotaeva, 30, a former saleswoman in Pokrovsk, said she lost her job when a Russian missile struck near the workshop, prompting the owners to pack up and leave. She now works as a crane operator at the mine, moving large metal machines that are being repaired in a warehouse.

How long Korotaeva can keep her job depends on the situation on the front line, which is only 13 kilometers from the mine. In recent weeks, Russian troops have moved ever closer to Pokrovsk. Russia regularly shells the area and the mine management has drawn up evacuation plans in case it becomes too dangerous to stay there.

“It’s scary,” says Korotaeva, a mother of two. “But for now I’m staying here because there are schools and kindergartens here. I have nowhere else to go.”

Several women said working in a mine was a way to contribute to the war effort and keep the Ukrainian economy running while men were fighting on the front lines. Coal mines are a lifeline for many towns in eastern Ukraine, employing tens of thousands of people and contributing significantly to the state budget through their taxes.

Yulia Koba, a former child psychologist who started working as a conveyor belt operator at the Pokrovsk mine in June, described the action as a multi-pronged effort, with the women at the back supporting the men at the front. “They are there and we are here,” she said.

Koba said her male colleagues were skeptical when she started her new job. Some believed women had no place in the dark and dusty tunnels of the mine. “What are you doing? Why are you here and not somewhere above ground?” she said when asked.

But over time, Koba said, men overcame gender stereotypes and understood that women could do the job just as well as men. If women “go into the military, why can’t they take on traditionally male positions in the mine?” she asked.

In addition, companies are trying to integrate more women into the labor market through further training programs.

Earlier this year, the Pokrovsk mine launched a program that has so far enabled 32 women to work underground. Reskilling Ukraine, a Swedish nonprofit, offers accelerated training courses for women who want to become truck drivers. This year, more than 1,000 women have applied, but the organization only has the funds to train 350, said Oleksandra Panasiuk, the program coordinator.

“Many women wanted to become drivers, but for a long time society didn’t really allow them to do that,” says Panasiuk. “That’s changing.”

At the Pavlohrad mine, several women who were hired during the war now hope to make careers and climb the corporate ladder. Yatsina, the former nanny who now works as an assembly line worker, said she would like to become an electromechanic. “I’ve thought about it,” she said, a faint smile crossing her youthful face. “I like it here.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.