What’s a Woman to Do? Globalized Gender Inequality in Small-Scale Mining

Abstract

Globalization represents an economic restructuring that exacerbates women’s impoverishment world wide. It involves a transnationalization of capital, ascendance of finance capital, decentralization of industry, and reorganization of labour (Sachs, 1996, p. 141). The resulting changes, which include the impacts of structural adjustment programs, low commodity prices, declines in public and private employment (including the closure of larger-scale mines owned by corporations or the state), modified patterns of trading and farming, and inflation, have drawn rural workers-particularly womenaway from their more traditional roles in subsistence agriculture, and toward more wagedependent types of employment (ILO, 1999, p. 29). However, as rural women have entered the industries of the cash economy, they have become even more marginalized than when they engaged in subsistence economies (Third World Network, 1998). At the same time, many more women are also becoming household heads upon whom their children are solely dependent. Thus, rural women are more susceptible to poverty unless able to secure paid employment in other industries, such as small-scale mining. In the rural areas of developing countries, small-scale mining is often the best-paying pursuit available to women, especially those providing for their families while remaining near to their children and husbands, and, in certain cases, when working alongside both.