While mining - both legal and illegal - is generally considered a male-dominated occupation, women are also present in the mining workforce in growing numbers. In particular, women, who (in some regions) are often excluded from physically intensive and traditionally masculine roles, may instead resort to illegal mining. This is exacerbated by the caretaker burdens that often fall to women in communities where men die young from working in the mines or from alcoholism. In Bolivia, for example, half of the female mining workforce is made up of divorced, widowed and single women with children, who are increasingly turning to illegal mining to provide for their families. Some work underground, penetrating mines at night, while others sort through discarded chunks of ore in the outskirts of mines.    This illegal work is frequently under the control or influence of criminal networks. Women may be forced to pay “access fees” to informal mine bosses or be subject to exploitation, including transactional sex, in exchange for mining access or protection.