Mujeres y la minería a gran escala en El Pangui una aproximación desde la Ecología Política Feminista

Due to recent territorial reconfigurations in El Pangui, in this chapter we aim to deepen our understanding of the differentiated impacts of mining exploitation on women, using the lens of Feminist Political Ecology. This perspective enables us to get an impression of the different experiences of the women we interviewed around the Mirador case. Firstly, we describe the nature of the perceived changes in access to land and living conditions previous to the arrival of the mining project. Then, we show the influence of these changes on their labour relationships and their security as perceived by the women living in this context. Finally, we explain the role of women in anti-mining activism as a way of responding to these transformations. Our results show that mining has an impact on women which produces particular repercussions for women´s access to natural resources or stable jobs. The difference in mining’s impact for women, does not end with gender, but extends towards other fields where ethnic or class variants converge. Mining impacts will be hence different for Shuar or mestizo women, or for farmers and merchant women. Therefore, we call for attention to the incorporation of amplified this gender discussion in the academic and political agenda, and also of the company operating in area.