Negotiating Gender: Experience from Western Australian Mining Industry

Abstract

Despite its economic benefits, mining can also negatively impact on local communities and the environment. Fundamental problems associated with gender discrepancy and power negotiation can marginalise women and traditional owners of the land where mining operates. The Leonora Western Australian case study reveals a desert mining settlement where population numbers are declining in a period of mining boom. It has become ‘a men’s town’ where fly-in/fly-out mining operations flourish offering limited opportunities to women and the local younger generation. A gender analysis based on ecofeminism and feminist political economy reveals the urgent need for the mining industry to transform itself in order to meet sustainability imperatives