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This paper describes the gender practices of men and women who work in the mining industry in the north of Chile. This ethnographic research was conducted in masculine spaces for social interaction in Calama. We ask about the structure of gender relations in the Schoperías, and how this economic and cultural context favors a type of gender relationships based on a normative patriarchal system. In this paper the researchers argue that there is an association between mining and the symbolic and imaginary reproduction of the worker, who is socially valued according to his physical strength and economic power. Schoperías are privileged homosocial spaces for the performance of hegemonic masculinity. However, although homosexual desire is continuously performed in these spaces, a strong and constant homophobia is also exhibited by the mine workers at the Schoperías. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes of the liberalization of markets, which have accompanied the recent global economic dynamics, have led to significant changes in the production of commercial crops. These changes have widened the inequality to access resources and income from commercial agriculture between men and women. Some women have organized themselves to respond to this situation and to improve various aspects of their lives. The aim of this paper is to analyse the processes of economic empowerment of rural women in Soni (Tanzania) when facing the mentioned unequal access to the production and distribution of income. These processes arise from the awareness of shared strategic interests. The data have been obtained from documental research and fieldwork, and the subsequent application of qualitative methodology to analyse data in the particular case of a village in the municipality of Soni, District of Lushoto, Northern Tanzania (2006-2009). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]