This presentation focuses on the relationship between women and the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) of so-called ‘conflict’ commodities on the African continent. International policy makers have posited a causal relationship between rape used by militias in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the mining of certain minerals – tin, tantalum, tungsten (3 Ts) and gold – that are said to effectively fund and thus deepen armed conflict and sexual violence in the region. This research draws on feminist political economy to consider the multiple ways in which women’s active economic activities in ASM are effectively sidelined in dominant accounts of the ‘rape and conflict commodities’ nexus. This sidelining of women’s livelihood strategies not only perpetuates a very male, patriarchal conception of ‘work’, but it contributes to the invisibilization of women’s labour inside mining zones. Uncovering women’s mining roles, I argue, challenges dominant representations of the nexus between insecurity and mining.