Intersectionality in resource extraction: a case study of sexual violence at the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT

This article uses the lens of intersectionality to analyze secondary data gathered by international human rights organizations investigating women’s experiences of sexual violence near Barrick Gold’s mine in the Porgera valley of Papua New Guinea. This case study provides an example of how an intersectional framework can be useful to feminist researchers exploring North–South power relationships in the context of resource extraction, by helping us ask nuanced questions about the benefits and costs of resource extraction in the Global South. In this article, intersectionality helps to trace the transnational relationships of power that shape women’s experiences of violence in Porgera, and Barrick Gold’s remediation policy for survivors. Intersectionality serves as a useful tool to map the systems of power at work in Porgera and to make visible the structural violence implicit in the relationship between Canada and Papua New Guinea created by Barrick Gold’s operation.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• sexual violence
• mining
• Canada
• corporate social responsibility

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Deborah Stienstra for her helpful feedback on early versions of this manuscript, and to the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions to strengthen my analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Susan M. Manning was a Master of Arts candidate in Women and Gender Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University when this research was conducted. She is now a PhD student in the Political Science department at Dalhousie University. Her research interests include intersectional methodologies, gender-based violence and the gendered and intersectional impacts of resource extraction. Her work has previously been published in Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice.

ORCID

Susan M. Manning http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6331-2923

Notes

1. I come to this project as a white Canadian settler woman with an academic background in Gender and Women’s Studies and International Development Studies and a feminist political affiliation. I have done previous research and activism in the areas of gender-based violence, resource extraction and the actions of Canadian mining companies in the Global South using an intersectional lens.