Creating Empowered Communities: Gender and Sustainable Livelihoods in a Coal Mining Region in Indonesia

This project asks how the empowerment of women within a mine-affected community in Indonesia can contribute to the development of sustainable local livelihoods, and aims to test the hypothesis that women’s empowerment is the key to wider community empowerment and the creation of sustainable livelihoods in mine-affected communities. The results of the research will contribute to the formulation of better strategies or models of good practice for the management of ‘community affairs’ by mining companies operating in Indonesia and other developing countries of the Asia Pacific region. It will also contribute to the small but growing body of literature which relates the mining-community interface to theories of gender and development.