Beyond victimisation: Gendered legacies of mining, participation, and resistance

• Published in: The extractive industries and society 2021-09, Vol.8 (3), p.100870, Article 100870
• Main Author: Sinclair, Lian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Gender; Indonesia; Political participation; Resistance; Social reproduction theory
• ISSN: 2214-790X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.exis.2021.01.005

•The gendered social, political and economic legacies of mining are shaped by the interplay of mining, participation and resistance.•Mining and primitive accumulation have uneven gendered impacts, but the ‘women-as-victims’ view can further undermine women's agency.•Participation in corporate social responsibility programs may reinforce or compensate for unequal gendered impacts.•Resistance can create opportunities for more equitable gendered social relations to emerge.•Social reproduction theory conceptualises mining, participation and resistance as an ongoing process shaped by and shaping social relations of production and reproduction. Mining developments, corporate-community conflict, and participatory community development programs can have diverse gendered impacts on people affected by mining. Thus, changing gendered relations are amongst the social, economic, and political legacies of mining. Despite growing literature on the gendered impacts of mining, little explains how and why particular developments produce divergent legacies. This paper builds on feminist understandings of primitive accumulation and social reproduction theory to understand the rapid economic, social and political change that reconfigures gendered relations between and within groups of men and women. Drawing on research across three case studies in Indonesia, I argue that while mining developments can disproportionately disadvantage women, resistance work and participation in corporate social responsibility programs (CSR) may be empowering. This paper thus moves beyond the ‘women-as-victims’ approach to uncover the social, economic, and political foundations of inequality that may be disrupted or reinforced by mining, participation and resistance. The implications of this for mining governance policy, CSR and NGOs are that gendered legacies of mining depend on how resistance or participation create opportunities to overcome structural inequalities exacerbated by mining.