MINING-ENVIRONMENT: Women Suffer Adverse Consequences of Mining

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 8 1997 (IPS) - The serenity of the sagebrush desert in Crescent Valley, Nevada was broken last summer, when the Canadian mining company, Oro Nevada, arrived to prospect for gold. Today, the night sky is filled with the lights and sounds of the drilling rigs, as the miners dig deep under the hot springs.

Carrie Dann, a traditional Western Shoshone elder from the valley, is outraged at the drilling. She argues that her family has used the springs for generations. Wearing a cap with the slogan, “Air and water are life. Gold is greed,” she has embarked on a vigorous campaign against the mining.

“To dig under the earth to get to that gold, to pump out that water to get to that gold, is a crime; it’s a crime against humanity, a crime against life,” she complains. “We have the deer, we have the eagle, we have the rabbits, we have all life out there, and the gold mining today is going to destroy the life for the future generations.”

Around the world, women have often discovered that the social and environmental costs of mining have a disproportionate impact on their lives. From the United States to Papua New Guinea, and from Bolivia to South Africa, women miners labour under harsh conditions. Many are fighting job-related illnesses; others like Dann try to prevent large companies from polluting water supplies and other resources with their mine waste.

“We have seen fish floating in the sea and we do not know what are the causes,” says Mary Paulisbo of Papua New Guinea, who lives close to a dumping site for a local gold mine. “Traditionally, when our women were pregnant, we advised them to drink s alt water to ensure that the baby was healthy and strong. Now, we don’t do this, as the sea water may not be safe.”

For the women working as ‘palliris’ in the silver mines of Cerro Rico de Potosi, Bolivia, conditions are formidable.

“The palliris are women who manually pick out muck or mine waste,” explains a paper written by the organisation, Centro Promocion Minera in Bolivia. “These women work under unhealthy conditions 4,000 metres above sea level at the low temperatures in the dry, windy environment of the Andes. In 1996, Conception Mining Company blasted the palliris’ work site in order to open a road. Hundreds of palliris declared a state of emergency and climbed to the top of the mountain.”

These Bolivian women also belong to mining cooperatives. “At present, the women work harder and earn less than the men, doing the same job,” according to Centro Promocion Minera.

Women in mining towns also work as prostitutes.

“Amerindian and Maroon women are now working as prostitutes in the communities where gold miners come in regularly to buy gasoline, food, mercury, and necessities,” says Kris Wood of the Association Culterelle et Sportive des Amerindiens Arawak in Fr ench Guiana.

In the ex-mining community of Mafefe, in the North Eastern Transvaal in South Africa, women who worked on the asbestos mines have discovered that they now have asbetosis, a disease that attacks the lungs. Doctors say the illness typically develops as m any as 10 years after exposure.

And studies published by the U.S. Public Health Service last year on the women who worked in the Bunker Hill mine in the north- western United States in the 1970s show that the women start menopause early. Former smelter workers also reported earlier an d greater frequencies of osteoporosis than other women. The same women also reported more cases of hypertension, anemia, and arthritis.

Local women say that the study proved what they already knew. But they fear the results represent only the tip of the iceberg.

“When the federal government sent a team from back east to study our health three years ago, we went up to Spokane to be tested,” recalls Sylvia Sjogren, who worked in the industry for over a decade. “The results showed I was healthy, but I have kid ney and back trouble which has been confirmed by my doctor.”

“Today, many women in our community are sick,” Sjorgren adds. “The children are sick, but the study team has never sent us any help after they took their tests, nor did they even bother to come back to discuss the results with us.”

Like Sjogren, many women have spent years battling mining companies to get fair treatment. Becky Horton of Missouri, who lives near the biggest lead mines in the United States, has spent a decade informing communities of the impact of mining on local w ater.

Last September, Horton was beaten by unknown assailants and left bound with duct tape in her van overnight.

“I believe in the work we do to withdraw the rivers from mineral (exploitation),” she told journalists following the incident. “We have a right to do this honorable work. If someone disagrees, they have the right to say so — but not to beat and ter rorise me.”

Horton follows a proud tradition of women fighting the mining companies in the United States. One of the first women in that fight was Mary Harris (better known as Mother Jones). Harris organised miners who worked in desolate conditions in the state of West Virginia during the 19th century.

Mother Jones marched at the head of the miners during the coal mine strikes. She was the first to meet the sheriff and the soldiers and last to leave the field of battle. Today, one of the leading liberal magazines in this country is named in her honour.

But Mother Jones was probably not the first woman to fight the mining companies. Indigenous women have often opposed mining because of the conflict with traditional beliefs, according to Julie-Ann Stoll and Doris Kelly Nakamara who have seen the impact of gold mining on the Walpiri peoples in the Tanami desert of Australia.

“Aboriginal women…are afraid of the big holes and tunnels and cavities that remain in the earth forever,” they recently wrote. “The fear is aroused by cultural beliefs that powerful ancestors reside underneath the ground, and once disturbed by min ing, may unleash powerful forces with terrible consequences both locally and globally.”