The Challenge of Women in Mining

 

Women constitute about 25% of the Small Scale mining population according to International Labor Organization (ILO) and other studies. This is due to the nature of the sub-sector becoming a livelihood option for over 1 million Tanzanians as of 1990s as agricultural and pastoralist economies struggled to pick up.

Women miners face the challenge of exclusion in the male dominated mining sector due to policy practice challenges that states to encourage women to participate in mining activities without showing a clear strategy on how to empower them. These has been an obstacle in promoting and graduating women into higher ranks within the socio-economic  ladder.  Small scale women miners have had little opportunities to benefit from back and forward linkages  as well as having weak women institutions. This has been a limitation in women miners’ progression and rise into key positions in all public and private institutions working around mining.                                                                                                    

Extension services under the Ministry of Energy and Minerals has been ineffective in addressing this gap due to limited financial allocation and absence of expertise within the regulatory bodies. No major efforts have been put in strengthening small- scale women miners’ engagement in mining sector.This resulting to un equal distribution of mineral resources in and around mining communities which leads in becoming more poorer and  increases the disproportion between the have  and the have not.  it's a curse because  mineral wealth rather than benefiting all equally seems as of discriminating in nature.

With this and other hundreds of challenges facing women participating directly in mining sector, there are more thousands of challenges facing women living in and around mining areas. Industrial mining owned by foreign companies bring in both social, economical, political and cultural challenges. While foreign companies profiteering over resource in from our land, women are left with diseases, hunger, poor social services and the list goes on. This is the cost of revenue calculation at  expense of women and children lives.