In mining towns, such as Siglo XX and Potosi in Bolivia, women contribute to society in more ways than just one. In fact, women’s contributions to society and the economy are undervalued and under recognized in both the past and contemporary times. In particular, the undervalued contributions that women make in society take form as housework, involvement in the informal economy, employment in the mining sector, and resistance to mining. The content of this article will bring these contributions to society up from under the surface and recognize women as major contributors to society.

Housework

In towns centered around extraction, women make substantial contributions in the household. Within the home, women are responsible for taking care of the children and the household. However, living in a mining town can create significant hardships for women. For example, women are in charge of the agriculture and providing food and water for their families. The cleanliness of water and the environment surrounding them is extremely important for growing crops and feeding their families. Author Katy Jenkins claims in her article that “women emphasized that gendered patterns of water usage in their communities meant they would be most directly affected by the expected deterioration in water quality and quantity.” Since women use water to cook, clean, and nourish themselves and their families they would most directly be affected by the pollution of the water and the environment around them. Without clean water, the woman does not have the ability to provide for her family which deeply affects the dynamic of the household. The struggles that women face in the household, such as cleanly water, to uphold their role as a caregiver and housekeeper are under recognized.

Informal Economy

A great amount of the work that women do in the household can not be seen in the GDP because housework, selling homemade objects, selling food, and sex work is not economically recognized. However, women engage in labor in the informal economy frequently. Services such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, taking care of children, and sex are all services that people often pay for. In the testimony, Let Me Speak!, Domitila Barrios de Chungara argues that since the miner makes “such a small wage, the woman has to do much more in the home. And really that’s unpaid work…” Women do not get paid for this work and it is not economically recognized, but the labor is still equally as legitimate as any other form of labor.However, women also make handmade products to sell in the market, make food to sell in the streets, and sell their bodies for money. None of these transactions are recognized in the GDP of the country because it is done under the table. The economic contributions women, even if unrecognized, make a substantial impact on the community as a whole.

Employment in the Mining Sector 

In terms of economically recognized labor, women are consistently engaging more in the mining sector. Although it was not acceptable for women to work in the mines during the 20th century and earlier, the 21st century was a turning point for women being able to work in mines. In particular, women working as artisanal miner’s has become more widely accepted in Latin American countries. An article by Roseann Cohen describes hardships that a woman, Amparo, faces during her occupation as an artisanal miner. According to Cohen, although Amparo is a woman, she played a “crucial role in the Gold economy” of Colombia. This demonstrates how a woman who is an artisanal miner can make a difference in the mining economy. Women are unrecognized for their efforts in the mining sector. Yet in fact, women have the capability to make an impact on the economy just as Amparo did on the Gold economy.

Resistance to Mining

Mining deeply affects the lives of women and their families in mining towns, therefore this makes women the biggest activists in anti-mining campaigns. While women may have husbands who work in the mine, this does not stop them from actively protesting the environmental effects of mining projects. Katy Jenkins quotes women who recount their experience in anti-mining activism in her article, “we’ve been involved in this for many years … we have been fighting ever since the gringos arrived to do exploratory studies in our community. At that time we didn’t know what was good and what was bad, but later we realised that they weren’t doing things that were good for us, and so we became more alert and realised that if the mine arrived our lands would be damaged and we wouldn’t have anything to eat.” As previously stated, if the water or land is damaged through pollution from mining, women are unable to provide for their families. Therefore, creating activist groups against mining is essential for women. Women want a safe, healthy, and stable environment for both themselves and their families. Through anti-mining activism, women put their best effort into creating that environment. Both below and above the surface, women are fighting on a daily basis against mining projects in their towns.  Their contributions to keeping the environment clean and their families safe often goes unnoticed, but in contemporary times their voices are beginning to be heard and the media is noticing their efforts.

Conclusion

The women of mining towns hold very important roles in the community in the forms of housework, participating in the informal economy, employment in the mining sector, and resistance efforts to mining. Whether it be mothers or single women, each woman has an impact on these components of the community. It is important to recognize women for all that they contribute to society since an abundance of what they do goes unnoticed. The purpose of this article was to bring those unrecognized contributions out from under the surface and shed light on it. The way in which women are perceived in society is an important concept, especially in mining towns. Women are major contributors to society and much more and should be recognized as such.

 

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