IGF Case Study: Leveraging Technologies for Gender Equality in Mining Communities

While it has become an accepted practice for mining companies to share roads, electricity, and other traditional infrastructure with nearby rural communities, sharing new technological infrastructure, such as Internet access and mobile phone reception, is a more recent development.

This publication looks at how sharing technological infrastructure can support gender equality and serve the broad betterment of mining communities. It illustrates how mining companies in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are sharing technological infrastructure with local communities and how partners are collaborating in Peru to add stakeholder voices to mining-related impact measurements.

This research shows that while programs might not be initially designed exclusively for women, an unintended consequence of making the technology available to all is that women who are traditionally underserved in technology and technological infrastructure benefit from its presence.