The person who makes this request is a woman. What she wishes would disappear are the earth’s minerals. Why would a woman make this request?
There’s no doubt that some women have benefited from humanity’s interest in extracting resources. Health and technology are just two important areas of contemporary life where we have seen rapid improvements and astounding inventions, and the lives of millions of women have been improved as a result. The idea that mining is bad for women or anti-women, therefore, is too rash a conclusion to make.
Mining can also have very negative impacts on men. More men are injured or die while carrying out work on mine sites. Men can find their previously independent livelihoods are destroyed when mining operations open up near or in their communities. Any suggestion that mining is good for all men, therefore, is equally overly simplistic.
The reality is, however, that women more so than men suffer from the impacts of mining. Sexual violence against women, disempowerment of women, and economic exploitation of women appear to accompany extractive industry operations in countries as diverse as Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Peru, Guyana, Papua New Guinea, and Canada. In a recent keynote speech at the State of Extraction conference, journalist Chris Hedges caused both angry upset and supportive applause when he declared that “In every boomtown that rises up around extraction industries, you will find widespread sexual exploitation by bands of men”.
There’s a deep connection between gender and the practice of resource extraction. This connection is evident in the capitalist model that dominates in extractive industries today, in the techniques that are used to mine out the minerals, in the leadership and management styles in extractive industry workplaces, in the safety practices on mine sites, and in the relationship we maintain with the natural environment in order that we can continue to mine what we want. Extractive industries are governed by a particular model of masculinity which does not respect women or femininity. This is their history that continues to influence how they function today.
We are however seeing a lot of work being done to address and change this. The World Bank recently signed an agreement with the Mineral Resources Authority in PNG to invest US$2 million in a project to address family sexual violence in extractive industry communities. Organisations like SWE MineTech Net are exploring what a feminist politics of minerals extraction might look like. Academics continue to research ways to ensure women are more included, men are less aggressive, and the environment is better protected wherever the extraction of resources occurs.
In some strange and perhaps unpredictable way, mining is fast becoming a very feminist issue.