Self-Employment and Poverty Alleviation: Women's Work in Artisanal Gold Mines

Women, mining and development: An emerging research agenda

“…It is recognised that women do undertake a range of other roles within the ASM sector, including owning mines and mining equipment, and acting as mineral dealers but overall such roles appear to be much less common (Heemskerk 2003;Hinton et al 2003;Caballero 2006;Van Hoecke 2006;Werthmann 2009), though Maconachie & Hilson (2011) outline the noteworthy exception of gold panners in Sierra Leone, 90% of whom they suggest are female, with women also heading many of the camps.…”

De-agrarianization, re-agrarianization and local economic development: Re-orientating livelihoods in African artisanal mining communities

“…One non-farm activity that has been particularly overlooked is artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM): a low tech, labour-intensive industry comprised of activities with few barriers to entry (Dreschler 2001;Heemskerk 2003;Snyder 2006;Hilson 2008). Despite failing to garner much attention in the mainstream livelihoods literature to date, ASM has become an important topic in international development over the past 10-15 years, its social and environmental impacts spawning extensive discussion (see Hinton et al 2003;Kambani 2003;Maponga and Ngorima 2003;Kitula 2006).…”

Rice, sapphires and cattle: Work lives of women artisanal and small-scale miners in Madagascar

“…It paints a positive view of opportunities for women in ASM, but makes no reference to the specific health and safety issues faced by women on ASM sites. By contrast, in 2003, Heemskerk's detailed ethnographic study of the Maroon women artisanal miners working in rural Suriname found that if long-term social and health conditions were considered, work on informal mining was not likely to improve the quality of women's lives (Heemskerk 2003). Yakovleva (2007) presents a detailed, essentially descriptive, case study of the work, income, health and family of women miners in camps and villages in the Eastern Region of Ghana.…”