Why gender matters - Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining ...

5
Case study 5: Rio Tinto in Indonesia
Gender analysis in action
Routa is in Sulawesi’s remote hinterland, in Southeast Sulawesi province.
Rio Tinto is in the early stages of exploration and negotiation with
national and local governments with a long term view to mine nickel in
Southeast and Central Sulawesi.
Rio Tinto’s Sulawesi Nickel Project began social baseline research in and
around Routa in March 2009. The research project has attempted to
model best practice in gender analysis and inclusion from its inception.
Sulawesi
Indonesia
42
Led by the Australian National
University (ANU), and conducted
in partnership with two Sulawesi
universities — Universitas
Tadulako (UNTAD) and
Universitas Haluoleo (UNHALU)
— the research project has placed
an ANU anthropologist in Routa,
who will be working with four
research teams from UNTAD and
UNHALU on a rotating
basis over eight months from
March to October 2009. The
four research teams will work
on smaller, contained projects,
which will be directly integrated
into the anthropologist’s long
term fieldwork.
The first research team consisted
of two young women researchers
from UNTAD and UNHALU,
who studied gendered property
relations, divisions of labour
and inheritance practices. Their
early observations highlighted
the importance of engaging
with women in the community
before deciding compensation
or community relations
strategies. The project also
underscores the need for action
based, participatory research
methodologies, which recognise
the diverse economic realities
lived by women and men in
communities around mine sites.
Ensuring a reasonable
representation of women on
research teams enables access
to women in communities.
The research schedule in
Routa has prioritised a gender
centred project as the first
discrete module for UNTAD and
UNHALU researchers. Running
such a project before all others
has enabled the creation of
methodological frameworks which
are both dynamic and gender
sensitive from the outset. The
data gathered will form a resource
for subsequent research teams
and other project social scientists
for the rest of the project’s life.
Some very early observations
indicate that labour market
and educational outcomes are
gendered, as are expectations
around the work women and
men perform.
These observations also
indicate that available data
often carry inherent gender
related assumptions, and
thorough baseline analysis at
the earliest stages can help
mitigate against the diminution
of women’s contributions to the
community’s economic security
and development. 5