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The important reproductive tasks of miners’ wives and daughters in the mining family are closely related to the mechanization and rationalization of mining work, now performed exclusively by men, as their strenuous efforts, in day and night shifts, were possible only with a caring homemaker. There seems to have been a correlation between the mechanization and rationalization of the mining process with the removal of women because of the replacement of family teams, the intensification of mine work owing to technological change, and the relegation of women to housewives and homemakers. Footnote 125

Source: Adriana Eftimie, et al., Gender Dimensions of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining: A Rapid Assessment Took Kid (n.p., 2012), p. 7. Modernization of the mill and TMF: PEA study modernizes the existing Copper Rand mill and TMF so that they are productive and cost efficient and minimizes impact on the environment Although in mining communities, women and girls had limited options for paid work outside the home, Footnote 126 they managed the family budget or contributed to the family income through many informal activities. Invisible women's labour in the mines and in mining areas tended to take the form of informal paid or unpaid activities (such as taking in lodgers, taking in laundry, baking bread, sewing, being engaged in small-scale subsistence agriculture). Footnote 127 Women's contribution to family income was extremely important in times of crisis, illness, or unemployment. In the case of the Sardinian mines in 1940s and 1950s, women could contribute to the family's income through their waged work in the mines and by helping to buy the land on which to build the family house. Footnote 128 In South Africa's coal-mining areas, women were responsible for agricultural production and diverse forms of reproduction (from preparing food to selling sex). Footnote 129 The prostitution that developed in mining regions and company towns in diverse national and colonial contexts from the mid-nineteenth century seems a permanent and complex phenomenon of capitalist development. Footnote 130

Ernest Mast, President and CEO of Doré Copper will discuss the results of the PEA at a webinar on Tuesday, May 10, 10:00 AM EST. Smith KJ, McNaughton SA, Gall SL, Blizzard L, Dwyer T, Venn AJ. Takeaway food consumption and its associations with diet quality and abdominal obesity: a cross-sectional study of young adults. International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity. 2009;6:29.

Jacquet JB, Stedman RC. The risk of social-pscyhological disruption as an impact of energy development and environmental change. J Environ Plan Manag. 2014;57(9):1285–304. As a result of the protective laws and the exclusion of women from underground tasks, women's work became increasingly restricted to household work, while their pivotal role in reproduction and care work in mining communities was also insufficiently recognized. This process of “de-labourization” of women's work and the closely connected distinction made between productive and unproductive labour was in accordance with the classical political economy since Adam Smith, where unpaid care work and domestic activities were considered “unproductive” labour and underestimated. Footnote 7 You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

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This overview leads to more questions for the future than it can resolve. The emergence of large enterprises in coal, tin, iron, and other minerals, the creation of wage-workers in the mines, and technological advances necessitates a global history that could link these processes to the presence and eviction of women. The persistence, or growing importance, of women's work in small-scale and artisanal mining today, especially in the Global South as part of the globally connected mining industries, is a contemporary phenomenon that new research needs to historicize by focusing on ASM in the past. Given that the processes of proletarianization and industrialization have never been uniform throughout the world, small, artisanal, and independent mining might have been more important than we think in some regions, and the role of women might have been seriously underscored in the past, particularly in the Global South. Clearly, it is fundamentally important to analyse the role of ASM over time, and to study the long-run evolution of the gendered division of labour and the segmentation of demand and supply. We do not know, for example, whether the inclusion of women in mining today is due to a less sharp gendered division of economic activities or to a contemporary geographical expansion of extractive activities all over the world, requiring labour on a scale that did not exist before and within particular conditions. The transnational transformation of industry is now associated with flexibilized labour, subcontractors, and exploratory firms. This implies that the separation between “informal” and “formal” mining is somehow misleading because, as Samaddar has noted, throughout the history of capitalism there has always been a mix of the two. Today, contemporary capitalism uses cheap labour throughout the global supply chain, “ordaining” the informal condition of labour, particularly in the extractive industries linked to neoliberal policies. Footnote 106 In the case of Bolivia over the past decade, for example, a subsidiary enterprise of the Coeur d'Alene Mines Corporation used to buy the ores delivered by small artisanal miners without incurring the costs of extraction or the costs of labour. Here, there is a modus vivendi, with tensions between the state company, which has the legal lease of the mines and sub-leases them to the ASM (organized as cooperatives), which is characterized by informal, labour-intensive, minimally mechanized, and low-technology mining operations. Footnote 107 There are connections and even a vertical integration between the formal sector and the small-scale and artisanal mining of the informal sector. Newcomers were often described as transient people who were ‘coming for the economy with no intention to stay’. Community members in region 4 mentioned the under-utilised cemetery as an example of the few people who stayed permanently to retire and live the rest of their life in the region.

Cash operating cost and AISC are non-IFRS financial performance measures with no standardized definition under IFRS. Refer to note at end of this news release. Doré Copper has included certain non-IFRS financial measures in this news release, such as capital intensity index, initial capital cost, cash operating cost and AISC per pound of copper equivalent produced, unit operating costs, and EBITDA which are not measures recognized under IFRS and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. As a result, these measures may not be comparable to similar measures reported by other corporations. Each of these measures used are intended to provide additional information to the user and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with IFRS. AISC includes cash operating costs, sustaining capital expenses to support the on-going operations, concentrate transport and treatment charges, royalties and closure and rehabilitation costs divided by copper equivalent pounds produced. See Table 3. Women created diverse networks of sociability and solidarity in the mining communities. Valerie Gordon Hall has challenged the strict division of labour among male miners and housewives even in “homogenous” patriarchal coal-mining communities by pointing to the variability of female identities among “housewives” and “political women” and activists. As she argues, in the period 1900-1939 women in Northumberland adopted new ideologies, such as feminism and socialism, while forging new political identities. Footnote 131 Before World War II, in Yubari, a coal-mining town in Japan, women created networks of sociability, with gatherings for tea, discussions, and sewing lessons. Because of the cramped space in the houses provided by the mining company, these women had to leave their homes and go somewhere “to kill time”, to allow their husbands to sleep quietly after a night shift in the mines. Gradually, these women's gatherings and informal support system became a formal system of mutual aid when the mine workers’ unionized. At the end of World War II, women supported union organization among miners. Footnote 132 McCrea R, Walton A, Leonard R. A conceptual framework for investigating community wellbeing and resilience. Rural Soc. 2014; 23(3):270–82.Over the past forty years, feminist critique has repeatedly reconsidered the Marxist dichotomy between “productive” and “reproductive” labour, expanding the concept of work to include non-monetized subsistence and family activities illustrating the diversity of ways in which “reproduction is production over time and space”, challenging the “naturalization” of homework. Footnote 110 Feminist historians have also recognized the gendered division of labour within the forms of subsistence production and highlighted “the power relations within family and home”, while they have also investigated the “structural impact” of non-paid labour by women in families and households. Footnote 111 Moreover, research has often questioned the significance of the sole male breadwinner family, focusing on the workforce that had been neglected, specifically women and children. It is noteworthy that the male breadwinner family has its origins in Western family ideology. Footnote 112 The following paper forms part of a larger Health Needs Assessment (HNA) research project conducted in regions were CSG development was occurring. The purpose of the larger project was not to specifically identify the direct impacts of mining activity, but rather to assess broader population-level health and wellbeing issues in the communities and explore trends and possible determinants. Health is defined as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ [ 14]. In conjunction, wellbeing is used to describe elements of life that impact on its quality, determining an individual’s level of personal satisfaction, happiness and psychological health. Wellbeing may also include community-level factors, such as satisfaction with one’s environment, and the level of social connectedness and belonging. This study reports on the findings from a recurring theme that emerged from the qualitative component of the analysis: that health and wellbeing needs were associated with the development stage of nearby CSG mining. The PEA was prepared by BBA Inc. (“BBA”) with several consulting firms contributing to sections of the study. BBA Inc., the leading consulting firm for this study, recently completed the refurbishment of Eldorado Gold’s Sigma mill that included upgrading most of the existing mechanical equipment and preparing a detailed commissioning strategy. Consulting Firms Franks DM, Brereton D, Moran CJ. Managing the cumulative impacts of coal mining on regional communities and environments in Australia. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal. 2010;28(4):299–312. During the study period, participants in regions 1 and 4 were concerned with increasing cost of services in the community and subsequent stress and outmigration, and the perceived burgeoning division between those who benefited economically from the CSG development, and those who didn’t.

I had the idea that I could get enough gold to go to Europe,” he says. “I didn’t care which country I went to. My dream place was somewhere where there is peace, serenity and a good living.” Solomon F, Lovel R. Social dimensions of mining: research, policy and practice changes for the minerals industry in Australia. Resourc Policy. 2008;33:142–9. As the Devlin mine become depleted, the Joe Mann mine would be restarted. Once the mine would be dewatered, the Corporation would start an underground exploration program with the objective of augmenting the mineral resources to increase the mine life beyond the PEA study. House of Representatives; Standing Committee on Regional Australia. Cancer of the bush or salvation for our cities? Fly-in, fly-out and drive-in, drive-out workforce practices in Regional Australia. The Parliament of the Conmonweatlh of Australia, Canberra. Report. 2013.AISC includes cash operating costs, sustaining capital expenses to support the on-going operations, concentrate transport and treatment charges, royalties and closure and rehabilitation costs divided copper equivalent pounds produced. Includes contingency of 15% for all initial capital, owner’s costs, construction indirects, and EPCM. The activity of mining as centred on the work of men ignored the important domestic work carried out by women and children. The association of work with value in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries meant that only those “activities that were performed for pay or that generated income” were regarded as value-producing. Work was progressively perceived as a commodity. Labour was defined as such only if it had market value, that is, if it could be measured in monetary terms. Activities necessary to individual and collective survival and well-being which had only a socially useful value were ignored and regarded as counter-productive work, because they did not produce goods destined for the market, and, being unpaid, were not considered an “occupation” or “employment”. Footnote 108 CSG exploration and drilling occurred on private land and there was concern related to the disruption caused by flares, and the effects of CSG on water bores. There were issues raised relating to the environmental effects on fresh water sources in regions 2–4, which deterred participants from fishing for both recreation and consumption. CSG infrastructure also caused increased noise pollution and traffic, which affected community satisfaction with their environment and perceptions of safety.