SAGADA/PARACALE — Gold mining in the Philippines is a male domain – but women fare the worst.
Whether cooking in pans filled with toxic mercury, scrubbing mud puddles in search of cheap hope, or washing swampy soil, women do the hardest work and are paid the least.
One in three illegal miners is a woman – and the risk of dying at work is 90 times higher for women than for men.
“There are many women in the mines, but they are invisible,” Meggy Katigbak, a small-scale gold mining expert, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The work is illegal, makeshift – and not even well paid.
But in Paracale, a colonial coastal town whose name means “canal diggers” after gold-hungry colonial powers invaded there to make their fortunes, mining has been going on in this way for centuries.
They are still looking for opportunities today – and have big dreams.
“Life is hard here, but my children give me the strength to get through it. They are my life,” Christy Ortiz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Like any other day, Ortiz, 44, rose at dawn to cook first thing in the morning for her seven children, then went to search for gold in a homemade mine she dug in rice fields and filled with muddy water.
Ortiz and her husband practice compressor mining – the most dangerous method of gold mining in the world, used only in their small corner of the Philippines.
Manila banned it in 2012 due to serious safety and health risks – but the Ortiz family didn’t care.
Ortiz watched as her husband dived 10 feet below the water’s surface, breathing through a hose connected to a compressor that pumps air underwater and is her family’s most prized possession.
Ortiz paid 29,000 pesos ($515.92) for the machine, using money she had accumulated over years of thrift, carefully saving her government welfare payments: money that only benefits the country’s poorest.
While her husband spent hours wading underground, filling buckets with dense soil, Ortiz performed all the rituals above ground to extract all the gold shards she could find.
Since she was not wearing any protective equipment, she worked in the same white shirt and skirt she wore at home.
Your professional and private life are hardly separated from each other.
“Sometimes I forget to eat breakfast because after I take my children to school I have to go straight to the mine,” Ortiz said.
Her feet soaked in muddy water, she stamped the earth and ran mud through a sluice box made of wood and banana leaves, hoping that the water might extract just a little bit of gold.
Ortiz then extracted the nuggets from a lump of earth and rocks using a traditional wooden tool and then boiled the gold with mercury, a toxic metal used to separate gold from ore.
Their loot – a tiny piece of amber worth less than 200 pesos (US$3.56) – was enough to get them through the day.
Happier than yesterday, she said, when no gold came.
Ortiz said her earnings range from zero to 1,000 pesos a day, so on lean days she has to work a double shift and sell charcoal to neighbors to feed her large family.
“I didn’t want to do this forever – I wanted to return to my hometown,” said Ortiz, who lives more than 1,000 kilometers from where she was born. “But I didn’t want people there to know that I’ve been having problems since I arrived here.”
Your health, the health of your baby
There are approximately 15 million women worldwide working in the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector, and approximately 18,000 to 20,000 Filipino women and children work in this sector.
Since there are no official surveys, industry experts say the numbers could be much higher. However, everyone agrees that work has a disproportionate impact on women’s health and income.
Gender discrimination and disregard for health, safety and social protection limit the rights and economic opportunities of female miners, according to a 2023 World Bank report.
Women are often excluded from top jobs and are paid less than men for the same work, according to the report by the bank, which analyzed mining laws in 21 countries.
Deep-rooted cultural prejudices can also stand in the way of broader sector reform.
Despite facing increasing risks, Filipino women still struggle to access capital, the report says.
In Paracale, many families mix backyard digging with domestic life, forcing women to balance housework and caregiving duties with risky gold panning and mercury mixing.
A field study conducted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) found that nearly 73 percent of women surveyed in the Philippines had handled mercury, which is often linked to pregnancy risks and birth defects such as cerebral palsy.
Janice Galero, who mined, mined and cooked gold in Paracale, said seven years after she stopped mining, high levels of mercury were still found in her blood.
Official tests in 2022 to assess the risks of mining found mercury in the blood of a large number of women.
However, a representative of planetGOLD, a United Nations-affiliated program working to eliminate mercury from the gold supply chain, said both the national health ministry and the local government of Paracale had “agreed not to publish the results to avoid panic among the population.”
“The DOH has made recommendations to the concerned departments and the local government has developed an action plan to resolve the issue,” said Dawn Po Quimque, planetGOLD communications officer.
The DOH did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, ASGM is the world’s largest user and emitter of mercury.
Mercury can damage the nervous system, kidneys, liver and immune system, but is widely used because it is cheap and effective.
Galero, now a board member of a local mining association, said she wants to raise awareness about the health risks of mercury and end illegal mining in her town – a difficult task when so many locals rely on gold for survival.
Folklore and tradition
In the mountain town of Sagada in the Cordillera region, the country’s least populated area, women are forbidden from entering the mine tunnels during their menstruation to avoid “bad luck.”
However, female elders are also expected to lead the Sagada rituals for a bountiful “harvest” in the mines – a nod to the traditional, sacred role of women in agriculture.
Eliza, a respected elder and one of the first women allowed to work in the sector in the 1980s, said she was still barred from entering the tunnels and could only get work as a smuggler, shoveling rocks to search for overlooked gold nuggets or cooking meals for the miners.
The men focused on working in the mine, while the women were “jacks of all trades” who looked for odd jobs to support the family, she said.
So Eliza works as a tour guide, raises pigs and sells homemade rice cakes and sweet potatoes on weekends.
Gold mining is poorly paid for women like Leny Lieo, who was hired in February as a gold slinger, a job normally reserved for women from Sagada.
Lieo, 49, said she works eight hours a day at the mine in the village of Fidelisan and is paid 300 pesos, less than the daily minimum wage in her province.
She had no choice. Rice farming could no longer feed her family.
“At least here I can earn money to buy makeup or lipstick,” she joked. “Money is important to me so my family can eat.”
Jobs like hers come without any health or social benefits – she is considered a supplementary job.
“I’m not a miner because I’m a woman. Only men are considered miners,” said Lieo, picking up her second basin of earth to sluice. “If you’re a normal worker, you have advantages. And your salary is higher.”
And yet, in mining, which has so far been slow to develop, change is finally underway: activists see room for female leaders in the sector.
“We see female politicians, women heading local government offices… but we need more. We really need more pressure, especially where women are discriminated against,” said Gloria Pilamon-Langbayan, gender officer for Sagada City.
Mining reforms
The World Bank is calling for new laws to recognize the role of women in mining and urging politicians to address the dangers faced by female miners in particular.
But reform is difficult in a sector that is largely illegal and unregulated – even though it produces 80 percent of the country’s annual gold reserves and feeds two million Filipinos.
In the Philippines, the industry is regulated by the People’s Small-Scale Mining Act of 1991, which limits small-scale mining to manual labor and prohibits the use of heavy equipment.
Many small-scale mines were banned in 2012 when the government required locals to form mining cooperatives or certified associations instead.
About 100 mines have now received approval, but the application process is lengthy and resource-intensive, and fees can be as high as two million pesos.
In Paracale, gold mining, compressor mining and other informal gold mining methods are still widespread and have replaced agriculture as the main source of income for local people.
More than half of the city’s 60,000 inhabitants are employed in mining, yet there is only one certified public mine.
“People ask, ‘Why isn’t Paracale rich when it’s rich in gold?'” said the city’s deputy mayor, Bernadette Asutilla, in an interview with Context.
The reality on the ground has distanced itself from the laws, said Asutilla, as the old mines have dried up and artisanal miners therefore have to dig deeper and work longer to earn a living.
Asutilla said this would require modern equipment or explosives, both of which are prohibited by law.
“Mining has become a gamble in Paracale,” she said.
“With the revival of small-scale mining, we are seeing women becoming more involved in mining work and taking on leadership roles,” said the deputy mayor.
Back in Paracale, Shirley Suzara is a typical example.
Often immersed in paperwork, the 51-year-old works from her home in Paracale to improve access to capital and markets, verifying the legality of local business operations and promoting equal pay for men and women under her supervision.
“We don’t dive underground, but women are important in every aspect of (gold production),” Suzara said.
Katigbak, the industry expert who works with mining communities on gender reform, said these are – so far – only small steps.
“Although women still do not have much influence in decision-making, we see that they are now finding their voice. But it takes a long time,” said Katigbak.
“We still have a long way to go.”
(1 US dollar = 56.2100 Philippine pesos)
—Thomson Reuters Foundation
