Battling on multiple frontiers: an African feminist examination of women’s struggles in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM)

Abstract

This paper presents an African feminist response to the invocation of culture in the exclusion and marginalization of women from access to and participation in resource spaces such as artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). It explores the intersection between culturally endorsed patriarchal subjugation and the ongoing colonialities of an extractivist mining political economy enmeshed with local displacements, classed consolidation, male-centered tenurial arrangements and changing gender relations that continue to militate against the advancement of women. Building on the African feminist conceptualization of extractivist patriarchal capitalism, this paper addresses how women in ASM battle capitalist patriarchy from both formal state laws and informal customary legal regimes. It emphasizes the need for an African feminist intervention in re-imagining culture, not as opposed to women’s advancement in ASM, but as a crucial lever of liberatory possibilities for women seeking livelihood opportunities in the sector.