Americas

Citation:

Quam-Wickham, Nancy. 1999. “Rereading Man’s Conquest of Nature Skill, Myths, and the Historical Construction of Masculinity in Western Extractive Industries.” Men and Masculinities 2 (2): 135–51.

Author: Nancy Quam-Wickham

Abstract:

Writers, folklorists, historians, and others have long highlighted the gendered heritage of the American West, a region that one popular scribe has called the “He-Man Land.” Male workers in the West's extractive industries participated in the construction of these masculine ideals, but did so in ways that emphasized the acquisition of skill in the work-place. A manly worker was a skilled worker, one who could demonstrate the experience, ability, and ingenuity needed to accomplish a job. Occupational language, shop floor culture, rituals, storytelling, and folklore all reflected workers' belief in skill, not brute strength, as the defining characteristic of their manliness.

Keywords: manliness, skill, work culture, mining, oil, lumbering

Topics: Development, Extractive Industries, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 1999

Citation:

Li, Fabiana. 2008. “Negotiating Livelihoods: Women, Mining and Water Resources in Peru.” Canadian Woman Studies 27 (1): 97–102.

Author: Fabiana Li

Annotation:

“In this article I want to critically examine the relationship between mining, water use, and women’s role. However, instead of starting from the assumption that women have a more direct affinity with Nature and a privileged role in the protection of water resources, I want to provide a nuanced account of women’s experiences with mining and the ways in which they are affected by and respond to mining activity. While recognizing that women play an important role in defending their resources and ways of life, I want to show that their response to mining activity is sometimes marked by ambivalence and contradiction. As they struggle to negotiate their means of livelihood, people’s relationships with the mining company oscillate between antagonism and cooperation” (Li, 2008, p. 96- 97).

Topics: Development, Economies, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Households, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Peru

Year: 2008

Citation:

Jenkins, Katy. 2015. “Unearthing Women’s Anti-Mining Activism in the Andes: Pachamama and the ‘Mad Old Women.'" Antipode 47 (2): 442–60.

Author: Katy Jenkins

Abstract:

Women play an important role in social activism challenging the expansion of extractive industries across Latin America. In arguing that this involvement has been largely unrecognised, this paper explores Andean Peruvian and Ecuadorian women's accounts of their activism and the particular gendered narratives that the women deploy in explaining and legitimising this activism. These discussions contribute to understanding the patterning of grassroots activism and making visible the gendered micro-politics of resistance and struggle around natural resource use, as well as to understanding the gendered and strategic ways in which women contest dominant discourses of development.

Topics: Civil Society, Development, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Nonviolence, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Ecuador, Peru

Year: 2015

Citation:

Hecht, Susanna B. 2007. “Factories, Forests, Fields and Family: Gender and Neoliberalism in Extractive Reserves.” Journal of Agrarian Change 7 (3): 316–47.

Author: Susanna B. Hecht

Abstract:

This paper explores the theoretical debates on extraction and development in Amazonia, and the emergence of extractive reserves (ERs) as a tropical development alternative. It reviews the role of women in Amazonian rural economies and then analyzes the (often invisible) tasks of women within the reserves through an analysis of the gender division of labour in the collecting and processing of non-timber forest products and agriculture. It then considers how lack of attention to rural women's labour obligations played out in a development project, Projeto Castanha, that began as an urban factory, but was later recast as a neoliberal decentralized processing and outsourcing programme. The project failed to appreciate the demands on, and the opportunity costs, of women's time and thus had very limited success as women withdrew their labour. The paper argues that there may be many more options for supporting extractive economies (and the women who work in them) in more peri-urban and village projects even though extractive reserves are valuable ecologically and socially in the regional economy.

Topics: Agriculture, Development, Economies, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Brazil

Year: 2007

Citation:

Davis, Dona. 2000. “Gendered Cultures of Conflict and Discontent: Living ‘the Crisis’ in a Newfoundland Community.” Women’s Studies International Forum 24 (3): 343-53.

Author: Dona Davis

Abstract:

Longitudinal, participant observation research in a small southwest coast fishing village in Newfoundland, Canada, shows the dramatic and profound effects that the North Atlantic fisheries crisis can have on those who have made their living from the sea, and through forces largely out of their control, find themselves no longer able to do so. Data collected during the initial stages of the crisis show how the impact of the crisis is strongly gendered. From the perspective of everyday life as lived in the local context, gender affects both worlds of meaning and interpersonal relationships. Description and analysis of changing gender ideologies, alterations in the sexual division of labor and use of community space, and the gendering of social class demonstrate that the crisis does affect men and women in significantly different ways. However, escalating levels of conflict and violence and an emergent ethos of demoralization affect all community members in ways that transcend gender. This portrayal of a community's transition from a once successful inshore fishery to an unemployment and welfare culture of conflict and discontent calls into question the supposedly rational policies and intent of government and fisheries development planners and challenges their notions of “transition” and “adjustment” costs.

Keywords: fishing community, gender role, labor division, power relations

Topics: Class, Economies, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2000

Citation:

Davidson, Debra J., and Michael Haan. 2012. “Gender, Political Ideology, and Climate Change Beliefs in an Extractive Industry Community.” Population and Environment 34 (2): 217–34.

Authors: Debra J. Davidson, Michael Haan

Abstract:

This paper presents results from a survey on attitudes toward climate change in Alberta, Canada, home to just 10% of Canada's population, but the source of 35% of the country's greenhouse-gas emissions (Environment Canada 2011). Results show high levels of awareness, but much lower levels of perceived climate change impacts for one's self or region. Women expressed significantly greater awareness and sense of perceived impacts about climate change than men; however, gender differences appear predominantly associated with socioeconomic factors. Indeed, in all, political ideology had the strongest predictive value, with individuals voting for the conservative party significantly less likely to anticipate significant societal climate change impacts. This finding, in turn, is strongly associated with beliefs regarding whether climate change is human induced. Particularly notable is the finding that the gender gap in climate change beliefs and perceived impacts is not attributed to gendered social roles, as indicated by occupational and familial status. Instead, gender distinctions appear to be related to the lower tendency for women to ascribe to a conservative political ideology relative to men.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Roles, Governance, Elections, Political Participation Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2012

Citation:

Caxaj, C. Susana, Helene Berman, Jean-Paul Restoule, Colleen Varcoe, and Susan L. Ray. 2013. "Promises of Peace and Development: Mining and Violence in Guatemala." Advances in Nursing Science 36 (3): 213-28.

Authors: C. Susana Caxaj, Helene Berman, Jean-Paul Restoule, Colleen Varcoe, Susan L. Ray

Abstract:

Keywords: colonialism, conflict, dispossession, indigenous health, mining, peace, poverty

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Poverty, Extractive Industries, Gender, Genocide, Health, Indigenous, Rights, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights, Violence Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Guatemala

Year: 2013

Citation:

Tinsman, Heidi. 2002. “Good Wives and Unfaithful Men: Gender Negotiations and Sexual Conflict in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1964-1973.” Hispanic American Historical Review 81 (3-4): 587–619.

Author: Heidi Tinsman

Topics: Domestic Violence, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households, Justice, Livelihoods, Political Participation, Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, SV against Women, Sexuality, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Chile

Year: 2002

Citation:

Lastarria-Cornhiel, Susana. 2011. "Las mujeres y el acceso a la tierra comunal en América Latina." Revista Estudios Agrarios 18 (52): 19-38.

Author: Susana Lastarria-Cornhiel

Abstract:

El artículo se refiere a los derechos a la tierra por parte de las mujeres en los territorios comunales. Luego de hacer una reflexión regional sobre la estructura de la tenencia de tierra en América Latina, la autora realiza un análisis comparativo entre Bolivia y Guatemala. En ambos casos, analiza cómo han cambiado prácticas y normas legales y tradicionales, cómo dialogan entre sí, pero también cómo han impactado en los derechos de las mujeres en tierras comunales.

Topics: Gender, Gender Roles, Men, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Americas, Central America, South America Countries: Bolivia, Guatemala

Year: 2011

Citation:

Fuentes López, Adriana Patricia, Javier Lautaro Medina Bernal and Sergio Andrés Coronado Delgado. 1993. Mujeres rurales, tierra y producción: Propiedad, acceso y control de la tierra para las mujeres. San José, Costa Rica: Asociación para el Desarrollo de las Mujeres Negras Costarricenses.

Authors: Adriana Patricia Fuentes López, Javier Lautaro Medina Bernal , Sergio Andrés Coronado Delgado

Topics: Gender, Women, Men, Girls, Boys, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Americas, Central America, South America Countries: Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua

Year: 1993