Measuring Women’s Empowerment Within Traceable Artisanal Gold Supply Chains

In the Just Gold project, IMPACT supported artisanal gold supply chain actors in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to realize a conflict-free and traceable supply chain. The project began regular international exports in 2017 which continued until 2020.

During the project, IMPACT found itself asking how to know whether responsible sourcing of artisanal gold was having a positive impact on miners and their community. While the organization began with an incentive-based approach to responsible sourcing, it wanted to ensure that everyone in the supply chain benefited. Importantly, they wanted to better understand the impact on the community and especially the women whose livelihoods were dependent on the artisanal gold mining sector.

Sourcing data for each gold export was assessed alongside gender-disaggregated, community-wide, socio-economic data. The resulting analysis provided a holistic and accurate picture of what was working, not working, and needed to change.

By moving beyond a “doing no harm” approach to “doing good,” IMPACT was able to quickly course correct when data showed how responsible production and trade were inadvertently contributing to gender inequality. For example, the introduction of mining equipment intended to increase gold yields replaced the manual work that had largely been carried out by women. In addition to this loss of their revenue, the equipment itself also tended to be the owned and managed by male supply chain operators.

The monitoring and evaluation analysis allowed IMPACT to address gender equality head on and eventually to demonstrate how complementary activities were positively contributing to women’s empowerment, especially improving incomes and leadership capacity.