I want to alert you to new articles, initiatives and research reports & projects that I’ve added to our library page dedicated to Women affected by Mining. Link to this page
I list the new additions from the last month below. If you want to share more articles or reports which I have missed contact me at barbara@womeninmining.net
International, Regional or Local Initiatives
World Bank: Gender in Extractive Industries
The World Bank Gender and Extractive Industries (EI) Program works with governments, communities and companies to better understand and address how mining, oil and gas differently impact women and men. Global evidence suggests that while the benefits of extractive industry projects are captured primarily by men, women often bear a disproportionate share of social, economic, and environmental risks. The Gender and EI program gathers knowledge and builds awareness of the gender dimensions of the extractives sector through research, analysis, and publications, and then deploys this knowledge to help mainstream gender in policy and operational activities.
International Finance Corporation (IFC)
IFC runs a number of programs in Africa, including the Growth Orientated Women Enterprise (GOWE) and the Gender Entrepreneurship Markets (GEM) programs, which help women entrepreneurs obtain the skills training and financing they need to establish and grow smaller businesses.
Publish What You Pay (PWYP) started looking more closely at the issue of gender, transparency and the extractives in 2013. In partnership with UN Women, they kicked off with a joint workshop in Tanzania to develop a common way forward between practitioners working on gender and those working on extractives. As part of this workshop, they created a gender-responsive version of our value chain to highlight how the question of gender intersects the goal for transparency and accountability at every step of the value chain. If we want all citizens to benefit from their natural resources, we must ensure that women are being taken into account too.
Shortly after the workshop, we widened the discussion to others in a live-chat edit of this value chain.
To analyse the extractive industry value chain, the Chain for Change, through a gender lens is new even if it has been done in other sectors of the economy.
Interesting case study from Papua New Guinea called We Want What the Ok Tedi Women Have! At the heart of a local mining deal is an earmarked minimum of 10% of the benefits controlled by women. This is a first, and while the study clearly shows that a lot of learning needs to be done it also shows, in the author’s words, that ‘establishing quality negotiation processes between the parties lends itself to more durable deals’. And this is exactly the impact we want to see – that women rock as a result of women’s rocks!
UN Women Eastern and Southern Africa continued their work on the extractives, hosting a virtual meeting in December 2013 on gender equality in the extractive equalities. UN Women ESARO was also invited as a panelist to the 3rd African Union Conference of African Ministers Responsible for Mineral Resources Development in Maputo, providing the opportunity to highlight the need for integrating gender in the extractive industry sector.
An incredibly exciting project was launched in October 2013: Womin. Womin, hosted with IANRA in South Africa, offers a platform of solidarity and co-operation for movements and civil society organisations working on extractivism and women’s rights in Africa. Already, Womin has undertaken in-depth research exploring a range of themes surrounding extractivism and women’s rights – from the impact of extractivism on Women’s bodies, sexuality and autonomy to how to empower women artisanal miners. Womin has also produced an advocacy tool summarising the various frameworks relevant to extraction and women’s rights, and how these could be used to support marginalised women.
Activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo remained busy in their fight for women to have a space at the table. Femmes et Justice Economique conducted field research to increase knowledge around how women interact with and are affected by the extractive sector. This ranged from examining the types of jobs women undertake in mining cities to collecting data on the violence women living near extractive sites are subjected to. You can read all about this in FEJE’s newsletters (French only) – Voix des Femmes. FEJE also worked on empowering women through trainings and capacity building so that they could be more involved in transparency initiatives such as EITI.
Articles and Research Reports
Managing the impacts of minerals development on women and men and their traditional livelihoods in Mongolia, CSRM, June 2013 – June 2015
Women share experiences of resistance to large-scale mining and extractivism, Committee for Human Rights in Latin America, 24 May 2014
What’s mining got to do with gender equity? RMIT-led study has the answer, Australian Anthill, 28 Apr 2014
Stduy focusing on Laos and Thailand
Indigenous women, farmers and irrigators are asking to be part of the negotiations of the Mining Law in Bolivia, which is currently being drafted, 24 April 2014
African Mining, Gender and Local Employment
Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, 29 Jan 2014
We use the rapid expansion of mining in Sub-Saharan Africa to analyse local structural shifts and the role of gender. We match 109 openings and 84 closings of industrial mines to survey data for 800,000 individuals and exploit the spatial-temporal variation. With mine opening, women living within 20 km of a mine switch from self-employment in agriculture to working in services or they leave the work force. Men switch from agriculture to skilled manual labor. Effects are stronger in years of high world prices. Mining creates local boom-bust economies in Africa, with permanent effects on women’s labor market participation.
Women and natural resources: Unlocking the peacebuilding potential, Dec 2013
Published jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Entity for Gender Equity and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), this report is the product of a two-year collaboration between the four partners to: (i) improve the understanding of the complex relationship between women and natural resources in conflict-affected settings, and (ii) make the case for pursuing gender equality, women’s empowerment and sustainable natural resource management together in support of peacebuilding.
More info here
Negotiating with the PNG mining industry for women’s access to resources and voice: the Ok Tedi mine life extension negotiations for mine benefit packages (Vol. 2 of 2), World Bank, Dec 2013
Barriers to the Inclusion of Women on Mining Sites in Chile: an analysis from the workers’ perspective, Dec 2013
Article co-authored with Salinas, P. and Al´Dajani, H. Presented in the 8th Iberoamerican Academy Conference on World in Transition: business, multiculturalism and society, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 8th– 10th December 2013
The objective of this article is to identify the principal barriers to inclusion that women face in mining sites in Chile. For that, in-depth interviews taking on different thematic focuses have been held with 70 mining workers (men and women). The information has been analysed based on the grounded theory of Strauss and Corbin (2002). The results show that women’s self-discrimination, family responsibilities, and male hegemony are the main barriers to the inclusion of women as workers in mining sites in Chile.
Women, gender and extractivism in Africa, Womin, Oct 2013
Mozambique’s Coal Mining Boom and Resettlements, Human Rights Watch, May 2013
Gender Equality and the Extractive Industry in the Lower Mekong Region, Dhaatri Resource Centre for Women and Children & International Women and Mining Network/ Red Internacional Mujeres y Mineria (RIMM), 2013
Pachamama: Gender, Mining Politics and Spiritual Protest in Andean Ecuador, Anthropology News