Gender Roles and Equality in the Latin American Mining Sector

Regional EGP meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, November 2023

By Environmental Governance Programme (EGP)

December 15^th, 2023

At the regional EGP meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, between 20 and 24 November 2023, delegates from Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru discussed and exchanged learnings about Participatory Environmental Monitoring (PEM), Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIA), mine closure and gender equality in the mining sector. The discussions and learnings about gender equality were pivotal to all other discussions.

Diana Cabrera, chemicals and gender specialist at UNDP Ecuador, explained how there is a clear role division between men and women in the mining sector in Latin America, and how this consolidates women’s poverty. One of the reasons for this is that in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – in this region, three out of ten miners in ASM are women, while in medium and large-scale mining, only one out of ten miners are women – popular belief is an essential factor, such as superstitions like "if a woman enters the mine, the vein is hidden in Ecuador".

Another reason for the gender role gap is the stereotype of men's physical superiority. “Which is still in force today, [it] is also part of the social construction of gender. This role division has set the tone for the social allocation of geographic space, tasks, access to resources for men and women, and consequently, created an asymmetry in power relations, which is still ingrained today,” Diana Cabrera explained. This is why mining may add to and deepen pre-existing gender gaps in a territory.

There are also differences between countries in the region. Countries that are more technologically advanced, such as Chile, have higher inclusion rates of women in the mining sector. Women in Chile drive heavy vehicles, which is not so common in other countries in Latin America.

Women’s work in the ASM sector, where most women don’t have access to official jobs, is made up of finding means of living by picking up remains from mining and trying to extract minerals and metals, such as gold, from that. Women carrying out these jobs in South America have different denominations, such as Barequera or Chatarrera in Colombia, Janchera in Ecuador, Pallaquera in Peru or Barranquillera in Bolivia.

The most common situation for women in the mining sector in Latin America, according to Diana Cabrera, especially in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, is that:

Women often have unstable incomes.
Women are usually invisible in mining process regulations and law, and thus have very low social recognition.
They are absent from governance, decision-making and leadership structures.
Women usually work in the informal sector, where there is more pollution and higher health risks.
They usually carry out unpaid domestic work and need to find other sources of income.
In many cases they lack access to education and health services.
Gender-based violence and sexual exploitation still exist.
Often, they are single mothers, which reinforces their poverty and dependency on others’ incomes.

There are, however, suggestions that aim to improve women’s situation in the mining sector. These include:

Create a gender equality policy in mining: women must be part of discussions and decisions.
Create business opportunities for local companies: which would lead to more indirect jobs.
Skills development, education and training for women.
Innovate forms of contracting that allow combining care and productive activities.

Learnings from mining and gender in the Cauca region

Gender Roles and Equality in the Latin American Mining Sector

Jenny Carabali, Agricultural Engineer, and Gloria Bermudez, Legal Advisor, both from ASOM, an association of afro-Colombian women in the Cauca region in Colombia, discussed how women in their communities are affected by mining. Their experience reflected Diana Cabrera’s description of gender issues in the mining sector.

Jenny Carabali works in Gaupi, a community in the southwestern part of Cauca where both indigenous groups and migrants from other parts of Colombia, attracted to this community by small-scale gold mining, live and work.

When describing socioeconomic structures in these parts of Colombia another factor has to be taken into account: the presence of armed conflicts.

Even though most of the mining in Gaupi is alluvial, stereotypes and beliefs associated with other types of mining are present in these communities too. Therefore women are secluded from work in actual mining processes, which leads to negative economic and social consequences for them. In many cases, they have to raise families and therefore secure an income in informal mining.

Gloria Bermudez brought up how when small-scale mining activities have been established in the northern part of Cauca neither consultations with local communities, nor environmental and social impact assessments have been carried out rigorously. This has led to negative consequences for the environment such as soil, air and water pollution.

But the arrival of external mining actors here has also caused a dependance, locally, on these mining activities as well as the seclusion of women from them and a reinforcement of gender roles. Afro Colombian communities have been settled in this area for centuries, in many cases living off artisanal and sustainable gold mining. Today, only men get employed at the mining sites, while women carry out the so called “barequeras” (or the more derogatory term “chatarreras”) work – obtaining gold from the sites’ mining waste.

In the Cauca community Buenos Aires, for example, most women are therefore barequeras, one of the very few economic activities they can carry out here. Barequeras need to walk half an hour to the mining sites whenever mining waste is available to be picked up, usually around once a week. Then they need to carry home the heavy stones on their heads or shoulders in hilly terrain, since the mine owners do not allow them to work the minerals on site, also limiting the amount of material the women can work with.

In addition, women usually have an informal role in the mining sector here. Often, they also take care of children, which furthers the reinforcement of gender roles and limits women’s inclusion in formal economic activities.

Furthermore, pollution from mining activities in the area have an effect on water and food resources.

“Communities here used to live out of fishing as well, now when water is polluted women have a harder time to provide quality-food for their families,” Gloria Bermudez explains.

“Previously women went to the river to clean their clothes, clean their children, bathe, and chat with each other. That space does not exist anymore – pollution has also deprived women from a social space that had previously belonged to them,” explains another ASOM representative.

All these factors make women more vulnerable and prone to ending up in poverty.

Footnotes

Top image: EGP visits members of ASOM, an association of Afro Colombian women in the Cauca region, Colombia. Photographer: Marie Wiktorsson at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Second image: Jenny Carabali, Agricultural Engineer, and Gloria Bermudez, Legal Advisor, both from ASOM, here at the EGP Regional Meeting in Colombia in November, 2023, explained how women in their communities are affected by mining. Photographer: Hugo Pedrosa Latorre at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Third image: The EGP field trip to Cauca and members of ASOM. Photographer: Hugo Pedrosa Latorre at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.