Artisanal and small-scale gold mining continues to grow worldwide and is linked to gendered labor divisions, limited economic opportunities, and exposure to unsafe working conditions. Women and men often hold different roles in mining, and these gendered roles shape women’s safety, health, and economic opportunities. In 2025, a descriptive phenomenological qualitative study was conducted in mining zones in western Kenya. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 64 miners, including 39 women and 25 men. Both women and men contribute to household earnings, yet the findings show clear gendered dynamics around women’s income, their position in the household, and the implications of the roles they hold for power, safety, and income. Women primarily performed processing tasks such as drying, crushing, and washing ore, which exposed them to greater mercury risks and provided lower economic returns. These patterns also influenced household relationships and reinforced cultural expectations about gender. Persistent gender norms continue to shape mining work, limit women’s opportunities, and concentrate them in roles that offer fewer economic gains and greater vulnerability. These gendered roles limit women’s earning potential, constrain decision-making power, and place them in positions with greater physical strain and exposure to hazardous tasks.
Gender norms are ideas about how men and women should be and act. We internalize and learn these “rules” early in life. This sets up a life cycle of gender socialization and stereotyping. Put another way, gender norms are the standards and expectations to which gender identity generally conforms within a range that defines a particular society, culture, and community at that point in time.
Gender roles refer to social and behavioral norms that, within a specific culture, are widely considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex. These often determine the traditional responsibilities and tasks assigned to men, women, boys, and girls (see gender division of labor). Gender-specific roles are often conditioned by household structure, access to resources, specific impacts of the global economy, occurrence of conflict or disaster, and other locally relevant factors such as ecological conditions. Like gender itself, gender roles can evolve over time, in particular through the empowerment of women and transformation of masculinities.