“I have worked for 10 years defending our country, the smallest in Latin America, against metal mining”, says VD one of the women who with her activism encouraged the El Salvador government to ban open pit mining, defending the population’s right to access water. The consequence was that Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company sued the country before the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). “Now, we have to continue this struggle, because Pacific Rim sold its permit to OeanaGold and this company plans to go ahead with the lawsuit against our country”.

A Mayan woman, E recalls that opposing mega-projects in her ancestral territories in Guatemala has brought about death and repression, as the clashes between defenders and opponents to a Cementos Progreso expansion plan in San Juan show. “My son was arrested and I had to fight very hard to get him released,” she tells.

“Our community lost its traditional clothes but keeps the aboriginal language, Quechua”, affirms R a highlands indigenous women from Peru. She highlights that women have organised alongside male leaders locally to respond to serious health problems resulting from contamination associated with gold, silver and other metals. “But the worst thing is that companies come to the community and negotiate with men and they do not allow women to speak.”

In the second seminar supported by the Latin American Urgent Fund for Women, FAU, participants reflected on those factors that make business impacts more disproportionately and differentially felt by women, as well as girls, children and others in the community. “It is hard to say that women are the most affected, because that is not true,” a Mapuche indigenous woman points out. She lives in their ancestral territory of what is today Southern Chile and Argentina. “We think that the impacts are even for all”, she said.

“But there are situations in which women and girls do suffer abuses that are not seen as directly related to business, but they are,” adds F, a Mexican lawyer that defends native corn seeds. “Of course, yes”, supports I, a traditional healer who works alongside communities against companies that operate Eolic Parks in the Tehuantepec isthmus, Oaxaca. “Companies bring workers that sexually abuse girls, and alcoholism and domestic violence increase; and we are the ones who have to respond to those impacts that many don´t see,” she adds.

“Illegal miners arrived in my community and invaded our ancestral territory despite a Constitutional Court order that bans mechanical or industrial mining there and we now have two reported cases of girls being raped by men associated with these illegal companies,” adds Anna an Afro Colombian woman coming from a collectively owned land. Women participating in the event recognise that the situation is grave in several Latin American countries and that it is necessary to study in depth the differential gender impacts that are prevalent in the region.

Discussions are just starting for some of them in a dialogue that brings together women from human rights organisations, like the Resource Centre, environmentalists, like the Ecuador’s Environmental Clinic, feminists, like FAU itself and grassroots women, organised in a variety of struggles to defend their territory because they recognise that women’s bodies have become a place in which abuses by different companies, like mining, oil, energy, soy plantations, and others, take place.

For organisations with years of experience working with indigenous peoples, restoring dignity is essential. That is what business neglect through their operations when they don’t tackle human rights or the environment properly. “When we defined what health meant to us, we found that communities summarised it in only one word, dignity,” says a doctor who has responded to community complaints over psychosocial impacts derived from the loss of livelihoods. “Recovering dignity is key to be able to have a life as before, when we could move around our territory without fear of dying from contamination, or experiencing threats from foremen or business people that have humiliated us and taken our hopes away,” added an indigenous Ecuadorian.

Discussions turn to methods of preventing, mitigating, and remedying the disproportionate impacts of business activities on women. Three distinct compatible strategies emerged:

Initiatives like the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) undertaken from a gender and human rights perspective in Bolivia by the Centre for Human Rights Applied Studies (Centro de Estudios Aplicados en Derechos Humanos, CEADESC). This focused on seismic exploration by Total E&P and its impact on Guarani communities. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre invited this Company to respond and we published their response in our website.

Using feminist theories and approaches on the intersections between gender, class and ethnicity is valid; but even more positive is to hear the courageous, painful and resilient experiences coming from local Latin American women. This could open new avenues to “Abya Yala feminism” (Gargallo, 2013), which includes the struggles of grassroots, women’s, environmentalist and human rights organizations.

Additionally, continued efforts are needed by countless human rights organizations across Latin America to submit cases of economic and environmental justice before the Inter American Human Rights Commission on the disproportionate human rights impacts of business operations on local communities. These should start introducing women’s perspectives like those enhanced by FAU to make concrete cases, experiences, and documentation visible in order to highlight the particular impacts on the rights to health, housing, access to land/territory, free, prior and informed consent, enjoy a healthy environment and others, from the lens of women and girls.

Using these complimentary approaches will contribute to prevent, sanction and remedy these new forms of violence against women.