• Informal sector employment

Informal sector employment

In the small-scale mining industry little is understood about the roles and activities of girls and the effect that this has on their lives and livelihoods. The issue of girl child labour in mining is largely unknown, it is often not fully recognized by the law, and missed by the intervention services and the media. This paper challenges the general understanding of gender roles in small-scale mining communities. It forces us to acknowledge a more intricate reality for boys and girls. Evidence shows that the involvement of girl child labour in mining is much more frequent and far-reaching than was previously recognised. The findings presented synthesise the result of a series of ILO field studies in Ghana, Niger, Peru and the United Republic of Tanzania.

The authors discuss how girls are involved in more and more hazardous occupations deeper into the interiors of the mine, but at the same time they are also upheld to their traditional female responsibilities in the home. The paper considers the dangers associated with girls work, their terms of employment and specific country case studies.

Findings and recommendations include:

• special attention must be directed to the plight of girls in mining due to the unique circumstances in which they find themselves
• girls are working longer hours, carrying out more activities and in some cases entering into even riskier underground work than in times past
• the growth in demand for their labour, driven by desperate poverty in the household, is not matched by a decline in the responsibilities of the girl child in the home
• development programmes and efforts on behalf of workers and children’s rights in small-scale mining communities must pay special attention to gender
  

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