Gender-Sensitive Approaches for the Extractive Industry in Peru

Large amounts of ‘development assistance’ in the form of infrastructure and social programs are annually made available to communities across Peru due the presence of extractive industry companies. These investments however do not always achieve the social development impact anticipated. As one company pointed out: “our company has invested millions of dollars in social programs in our neighboring communities, however the indicators for child malnutrition and maternal health have seen no noticeable improvement”.

Communities base their support or rejection for extractive industry operations by weighing up the benefits against the risks; where the risk-benefit balance sheet does not look positive, conflict is likely. Companies, and the governments who benefit from their tax revenues, therefore work hard to reduce risks and increase benefits for communities: but this report confirms an overlooked aspect of the development outcomes: men are capturing more of the benefits and these are not necessarily reaching the wider family; whereas it is the women and children who experience more of the risks that arise from the presence of extractive industry projects.

The impact on women could be significantly improved by taking simple steps with little additional effort or cost – disaggregating data by sex, strengthening consultations with women, investigating issues of risk to women, improving women´s access to benefits.

Additionally this report challenges the “development industry” (those non-governmental organizations, community-based organizations, universities, research centers, think tanks, funders, foundations and training organizations for whom the development of theories and practices to alleviate poverty is a primary objective.) to work more closely with local government and companies, sharing its knowledge on thematic issues such as gender (and other areas such as Rights-Based Approaches or Community-Driven Development) and on programs (such as maternal health, bi-lingual education, or productive chain development) to achieve what the NGOs, civil society and local government have within their mandates to deliver, and what the EI sector seeks.