By Ken Stapylton
Today, women comprise just 15% of the mining industry’s
workforce, compared to 46% across other industries. Women play
a critical role in ensuring the industry has the skills and
talent to build and operate major resource projects well into
the future. By developing this talent pool, the mining sector
increases its overall competiveness, productivity and economic
growth opportunities.
And mining companies have noticed.
As concerns continue to rise over efficiency, profitability and
competiveness in the industry, businesses are seeing the
importance of attracting more women to the sector and are
activating more initiatives to accomplish this.
In fact, the Australian Mines and
Metal Association (AMMA), in partnership with the Australian
Women in Resources Alliance (AWRA), recently combined resources
and developed a series of workshops to help employers attract
and hire more women, with a goal to increase the number of
women in the mining sector by 10% by 2020. The programme allows
female employees to have e-chats and web-based training with an
individually appointed mentor for nine months (see
box).
At the Sandvik Mining facility in
Alachua, a mentoring programme was created to coach emerging
women leaders to develop their career paths. In 2013, Donna
Burdge, human resources business partner for Sandvik surface
drills, was inspired to start the pilot programme after
attending a lecture on mentoring.
The group met several times over eight months to discuss
different tasks and topics. Specifically, Sheryl
Sandberg’s Lean In was used as a catalyst for
conversation on challenges that are specific to women in
leadership. While the mentoring programme was designed to coach
female employees, it also featured a course in which the
participants were taught how to coach others, so the
participants could then take on mentees of their own.
The relationships and empowerment
that resulted for the members of the programme were invaluable.
By simply having the ability to discuss challenges and share
experiences, the group were able to build off of one another
and grow professionally. In fact, since the beginning of the
programme, the members have all seen growth within their roles
in the organisation, with two of them already shifting into
global positions.
While initiatives such as these are
instrumental in both developing current female talent and
attracting more talent to the field, the support of male
leaders is critical. Men have to understand the value women
bring to mining and provide opportunities and tools for
success. At the most basic level, men should view female
colleagues as team members and extend to them the same respect
they would to any of their male counterparts.
The industry can do more to make
mining an attractive and lucrative occupation for women, and
shatter the stereotype that mining is a men-only profession.
There are a few ways this can be done.
First, the industry should aim to
increase the presence of women in managerial roles and open
traditionally male-held occupations such as production and
engineering.
The industry may also expand
recruiting efforts and devote resources to promoting companies
that focus on diversity and inclusion, and actively seek a
diverse workforce. This can be through traditional and social
media, partnerships, and company collateral. By simply
increasing the visibility of women in the sector, women’s
roles will become more the norm, and opportunities will become
more attractive to women who are interested in developing a
career path. These initiatives could be the catalyst for
helping grow the industry and move it forward. By devoting more
time and effort to expanding women’s roles, we can push
the industry forward, and help it reach its full potential.
* Ken Stapylton is vice
president of rotary drilling, Sandvik Mining
**To download the text visit
womeninmining.org.uk
Australia’s pledge to boost women in mining
A Women in Mining (WiM)
event held at the Australian High Commission in London in July
showcased why increasing the role of women in mining in
Australia is a key priority for the country.
“Currently, women
represent 16% of Australia’s resource industry,” said
Andrea Mitchell, member for Kingsley, WA, during a reception of
the UK WiM group, hosted by the governments of WA and
Queensland.
“Realising women are
an unmined resource, the AWRA, which is jointly funded by the
Australian Government and the AMMA, is working towards a target
of increasing the representation of women in the resource,
allied and construction sectors to 25% by 2020,” Mitchell
said.
“In particular, WA is committed to the
development of the African mining sector, where women have a
vital role (...) South Africa leads the world when it comes to
women on boards in the mining industry, followed by
Australia,” she concluded.
100 Global Inspiration Women in Mining
In November 2013 the UK arm of WiM produced a list of the most
inspirational women in mining, in a text sponsored by Standard
Bank.**
According to Amanda Van Dyke,
chairman of WiM, an earlier study which looked at trends within
corporations “sought to correlate the performance of
mining industry organisations with the level of gender
diversity within them - to demonstrate some of the benefits
that higher female representation on boards and in senior
executive positions can have on corporate
performance”.
One of the main challenges identified by the report was a
lack of female role models, which is why the text was
created.