They are often subject to sexual abuse and health risks such as HIV/AIDS. Women's contributions to mining enterprises are often invisible because they perform unrecognized and undervalued care and domestic work. Despite heavy involvement of women in ASM, men control and own most of the family's assets, including land, the income from mining and farming, tools, homes, crops and the benefits yielded. Contamination by mercury used in gold recovery has significant impacts not only on women, men and children working at ASM sites, but on other people in the vicinity and those living in downstream areas (specifically young children and women who are pregnant and breastfeeding) (AU and AMCC 2015, Cordy etal.