Gendered governance and socio-economic differentiation among women artisanal and small-scale miners in Central and East Africa

ABSTRACT

Drawing on qualitative research data from two gold artisanal and small-scale mining sites (ASGM), one in Democratic Republic of the Congo, the other in Uganda, this paper explores the authority arrangements that govern mining livelihoods in these sites, tracing their gendered forms and operation. The inter-relationship between these arrangements and women’s mining livelihoods is considered to further explore some of the socio-economic differentiation among women miners. In the context of increasing emphasis on formalizing the ASM sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, including through licenses and formation of associations and cooperatives, both the gendered organization of mine site governance and social differential among women miners have important implications. Formalization efforts in the ASM sector are rightly critiqued for failing to account for social differentiation that may allow elites to control licenses and associations. But also important, our research suggests, is the gendered inequalities that characterize existing authority arrangements, and the differentiation among women that may allow some women to organize and not others.

KEYWORDS:

• Artisanal and small-scale mining
• gender
• women’s empowerment
• governance
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Uganda

Acknowledgements

Parts of this paper were published in the working paper “Gender and Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in Central and East Africa: Barriers and Benefits,” with co-authors Jennifer Hinton, Jennifer Stewart, Joanne Lebert, Gisèle Eva Côté, Abby Sebina-Zziwa, Richard Kibombo and Frederick Kisekka. We thank our co-authors of that piece for their excellent insight and substantive research that led to that working paper and for shaping our knowledge and understanding. This research was managed by Carleton University, Partnership Africa Canada (now called IMPACT), and the Development Research and Social Policy Analysis Center (DRASPAC) in Uganda. The field research was carried out by researchers with DRASPAC, Women in/and Mining Organization (WIAMO, Rwanda), and from ARED and RIO in DRC. Generous financial support came under the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) initiative. GrOW is a multi-funder partnership with the UK Government’s Department for International Development, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the International Development Research Centre, Canada. We also thank the editors of this collection and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful critical comments.

Notes

1. Hilson and Gatsinzi, “A Rocky Road”; and Huggins, Buss and Rutherford, “A Cartography.”

2. Hilson et al., “Female Faces in Informal,” 320.

3. IGF, Global Trends, 7.

4. Hinton, Veiga, and Beinhoff, “Women and Artisanal Mining”; Panella, “Je vais chercher”; Heemskirk, “Self-Employment”; Werthmann, “Working in a Boom-town”; Bashwira et al., “Not only a Man’s”; Bryceson et al., Mining and Social Transformation; Cuvelier, “Money, Migration and Masculinity”; Buss et al., “Gender and Artisanal”; Hilson et al., “Female Faces in Informal”; and Bashwira and Cuvelier, “Women, Mining and Power.”

5. African Union, Africa Mining Vision, 32.

6. Verbrugge and Besmanos, “Formalizing Artisanal and Small-scale Mining,” 135; and Fisher, “Occupying the Margins”.

7. Hilson, “Small-Scale Mining”; and Perks, “Re-framing the Nature.”

8. There is a growing academic literature studying formalization initiatives in various sub-Saharan ASM contexts (and in other parts of the globe). This emerging body of research offers a complex reading of the effects of formalization schemes, and ‘persistent’ practices of informality (see e.g., Verbrugge and Besmanos, “Formalizing Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining”; Hilson, “Creating Rural Informality”; Geenen “A Dangerous bet”; Geenen and Radley, “In the Face of Reform”; Van Bockstael, “The Persistence of Informality”. While nuanced in its reading of the governance dimensions of formalization, gender is largely unexamined in this research with only a few exceptions such as Fisher, “Occupying the Margins”).

9. Fisher, “Occupying the Margins,” 747.

10. de Haan and Geenen, “Mining Cooperatives.”

11. Verbrugge and Besmanos, “Formalizing Artisanal and Small-scale Mining.”

12. Bryceson and Geenen, “Artisanal Frontier Mining,” 300.

13. For an overview of this literature, see Buss and Rutherford, “Gendering Women’s Livelihoods”; and Jenkins, “Women, Mining and Development.”

14. Hilson et al., “Female Faces in Informal”, 335.

15. Ibid., 338.

16. Cooper, Challenging Diversity, 41.

17. See, e.g., Butler, Bodies that Matter.

18. This term comes from Iris Marion Young’s elegant analysis of gender structures and the constitution of women as a group for the purposes of political action. While her analysis is rooted in Sartre’s conception of seriality with which we do not engage, Young’s conception of gender as ’material structures arising from people’s historically congealed institutionalized actions and expectations that position and limit individuals in determinate ways” provides a useful means for examining how women navigate the “practico-inert necessities that condition their lives.’ Young, “Gender as Seriality,” 732.

19. See, e.g., Butler, Bodies that Matter; and Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment.”

20. Whitehead and Tsikata, “Policy Discourses on Women’s,” 95.

21. For more information, please see Buss et al., “Gender and Artisanal,” 8–11.

22. Malpeli and Chiricio, “The Influence of Geomorphology”.

23. Buss et al., “Gender and Artisanal,” 34–38.

24. Verbrugge and Geenen, “The Gold Commodity Frontier,” 8–9.

25. See note 3 above.

26. Hinton and Danielsen, “A Social Relations of Gender,” 2. See also Hayes and Perks, “Women in the Artisanal.”

27. Lund, “Twilight Institutions.”

28. Buss et al., “Gender and Artisanal,” 26–34.

29. For more information on the mother-chiefs, see Omeyaka et al., “Impact de l’exploitation minière.”

30. Hinton, Gender Differentiated Impacts, 6.

31. Ibid.

32. Sebina-Zziwa and Kibombo, “Licensing of Artisanal Mining,” 14.

33. Ibid.

34. Buss et al., “Gender and Artisanal”; Danielsen and Hinton, “A Social Relations of Gender”; Bashwira et al., “Not only a Man’s”; and Kelly, King-Close and Perks, “Resources and Resourcefulness”.

35. For a discussion, see de Haan and Geenen, “Mining Cooperatives,”, 824.

36. See e.g., Fisher, “Occupying the Margins”; and de Haan and Geenen, “Mining Cooperatives,” 824.

37. See, e.g., Jakimow and Kilby, “Empowering Women.”

38. See note 23 above.

39. See note 14 above.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) initiative. GrOW is a multi-funder partnership with the UK Government’s Department for International Development, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the International Development Research Centre, Canada.

Notes on contributors

Blair Rutherford

Blair Rutherford is a professor of Anthropology at Carleton University and a Research Associate at the African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand. For more than twenty-five years he has conducted ethnographic research in four African countries. Among other publications, he is the author of two monographs concerning farm workers in Zimbabwe.

Doris Buss

Doris Buss is a professor of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, cross-appointed to Carleton’s Institute of Africa Studies. Her research examines the socio-legal dimensions of international law and politics on women’s rights, resource extraction, armed conflict and its aftermath. She is the co-author (with Didi Herman) of Globalizing Family Values: The International Politics of the Christian Right (Minnesota Press, 2003), and co-editor of two volumes; one on feminist approaches to international law; the other on sexual violence and armed conflict in African contexts.