“A Woman Can Also Speak Out”: Gendered Perspectives on Responsibilization

Abstract

Andrews delves deeper into the grassroots voices, facilitated by insights from in-depth field research in host communities, to examine the gender-specific perspectives around CSR and mining ramifications in Ghana. The chapter intends to not only show how CSR constitutes its responsibilized object (i.e. the corporation), but also expose the direct impact of this enactment on people’s lives, especially vulnerable populations. Andrews uses feedback from the women who formed part of his focus groups to show how CSR has, instead of making people’s lives better, reproduced different forms of abuse, dispossession, and subjugation, including sexual exploitation. Overall, the chapter highlights how instead of empowering impacted populations, as we are made to believe through CSR activities, the discourse reinforces the ‘feminization of poverty’ in local communities.