Short Abstract:

This panel engages with engendered terrestrial futures for African women involved in mining of any scale (e.g., artisanal, small-scale, large-scale) and in different ways (e.g., as labourers, investors, family members, community members) in a constantly changing world and shifting policy landscapes.

Long Abstract:

Future-thinking inflects most scholarly and policy analyses of women and mining in Africa as they lay out pathways to a desirable future. Such a future tends to emerge out of framings of diverse domains such as cultural, economic and health conditions, governance and authority practices, conjugal and family relations, and ecological dynamics, among others, through assessments of how such progress can emerge for women within or beyond mining (of different scales). Future-oriented reflections may also emerge in the narratives of African women who mine or who interact with mining activities as these women often seek some sort of betterment through mining or its cessation. Both forms of future-thinking - the analysts of African women and mining and the women themselves involved in mining - often acknowledge or grapple with various uncertainties, risks, and contingencies that emerge from the political ecology of mining (from, e.g., markets, environments, social conditions, politics), which are even greater since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the wider recognition of adversities (and paradoxical promises) emerging from climate change.

This panel calls for papers that engage with the varied gendered future-making imaginaries and materialities involving women and/in mining in Africa. They could be theoretical explorations or empirical studies from any discipline that examine some aspects of such engendered terrestrial futures for African women involved in mining of any scale (e.g., artisanal, small-scale, large-scale) and in different ways (e.g., as labourers, investors, family members, community members), in a constantly changing world and a shifting policy landscape.