Toxified Bodies: Women and Everyday Encounters of Mercury in Artisanal Gold Mining in Mazowe, Zimbabwe, c. 2000 to the Present

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Mazowe district of Zimbabwe, this article analyses how women navigate multi-layered toxic landscapes within artisanal gold mining. The article shows how women appropriated strategic ways of survival and negotiated Mazowe’s hazardous mining landscape. It argues that while most women do not typically work in spaces that present physical danger, such as disused gold mines or tunnels, their experiences in artisanal gold mining are primarily shaped by their everyday contact with chemicals such as mercury. The article further highlights that women’s experiences of toxic mining environments and their effects on their bodies can be gleaned from the different terms they deploy to describe the hazardous settings and their impact on their health. In doing so, it demonstrates that toxicity in artisanal gold mining is revealed not only by environmental pollution and occupational health diseases but also through women’s experiences of masculine power relations at mining pits and amalgamation sites. This article markedly deviates from existing literature that predominantly focuses on conventional meanings and understandings of toxicity in gold mining. Instead, it demonstrates that the interpretations of toxicity can be unpacked from a perspective that shows the complex connections of women, labour relations and the everyday politics of artisanal gold mining. In doing so, the article broadens scholarship on the environmental history of artisanal gold mining and labour relations in Zimbabwe and southern Africa.