Women earning a living in small scale mining face physical and sexual violence by the their male counterparts.
Trymore Tagwirei
The increase in the number of women in small scale gold mining activities has resulted in a rise in grave risks that expose them to severe forms of exploitation and abuse, EnviroPress can report.
In Ward 36 of Mberengwa district, women miners complain about rampant Gender-Based Violence (GBV) particularly at Dining Farm where male artisanal miners harass their female counterparts.
Some women in the are informed EnviroPress that their work was made difficult by the risks of robberies and sexual violence.

Mary Maseko (24), a single mother and miner, shared her harrowing experiences at Damning Farm where she pans for alluvial gold along Dhove River together with other women.
“Armed robberies targeting especially women are a constant threat we face. It’s hard to work in an environment where you can easily lose all that you have worked for the whole day,” said Maseko.
She said some male miners make perverted sexual advances on defenseless women miners.
“Some girls have even been raped along the river by miners from Gwanda and Insiza,” she said.
Gladys Masuku described how artisanal miners have disrupted not only women’s safety but also the community’s traditional way of life.
“Most of these incidents happen in isolated places along the rivers and in the bush where rape and harassment are widespread. We are now even afraid to even tend to our gardens because these miners are also stealing from our fields,” said Masuku.

A 2022 study by the Tariro Youth Development Trust conducted in Mberengwa, Shurugwi, and Zvishavane found that women and girls in mining communities suffer forced labour, physical violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse, and various forms of GBV.
The report notes that teenage girls are preyed upon by small scale gold miners who lure them into sexual exploitation using money or material goods. This has contributed to rising cases of child marriage and sexually transmitted infections.
Zimbabwe Miners Federation President Henrietta Rushwaya acknowledged the growing concerns, admitting that women in the sector were prone to abuse.
“They face verbal and sexual abuse perpetrated by their male counterparts. This makes the success of women in this important economic sector extremely difficult,” said Rushwaya.
A report by the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG) covering the years 2016–2019 found that women in the mining sector were frequently subjected to domestic and sexual violence.