Contemporary Research Analysis Journal

This article analyses the gender games that structure daily interactions in artisanal gold and diamond mining in Batouri, East Cameroon. The objective is to understand how the gender division of labour is produced, reproduced and, on certain occasions, transformed through strategic interactions among actors. The methodology combines a quantitative approach (questionnaires administered to 200 artisanal miners) and a qualitative approach (semi-structured interviews with six categories of actors, participant observation over 2,000 cumulative hours, focus groups). The results show that the gender division of labour is highly hierarchical: men occupy the most remunerative positions (digging, amalgamation, wholesale trade), while women are confined to manual crushing and washing, with incomes five times lower. These inequalities persist because they constitute stable Nash equilibria: no actor has an interest in unilaterally changing their strategy. However, certain «choice opportunities» crises, police raids, arrival of new actors create windows of opportunity where power relations can be reconfigured. The article mobilises a theoretical framework articulating Goffmanian interactionism, Crenshaw's intersectionality and Nash's game theory, enriched by the contributions of Foucault, Bourdieu, Kergoat, Scott, Connell, Butler, de Certeau, Simmel, Weber and Tilly. It proposes five figures of mining femininity tolerated, transgressive, accommodating, resilient and subaltern which account for the diversity of women's strategies in the face of domination.

gender games, artisanal mining, gender division of labour, Nash equilibrium, face, intersectionality, Batouri.

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