Mining for Women
Annette Williams, director of the UK Resource Centre, sees mining companies starting to try to attract women through structural and cultural change.
Women, historically under represented in the mining industry, used to be largely consigned to the cafeteria or the back office. Now, with the prices of commodities on the rise and the availability of male workers declining, things are changing as companies realise that combating the skills shortage means increasing female participation in the industry.
Many mining companies are taking measures to attract and retain skilled female workers. Others are still unsure about how to effectively tap into this group. How far has the industry come in redefining itself as woman friendly and what sets the companies who successfully attract and retain women apart from those that have struggled to do so?
The under-utilised half
Statistics on women’s participation in the mining industry are hard to come by, with mining often being clumped together with other sectors, or figures released according to women’s skill set rather than industry. The numbers we do have, however, are low.
In Australia, female workers make up 18% of the mining workforce according to the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA); compared with a national participation rate of 45% over all industries. Adding to this, women in mining in Australia make up just 3% of workers at mine sites. In Canada, the Mining Industry Human Resources Council says women comprise only 12.5% of the sector’s employees; and in a Europe-wide study, the European Commission found that just 11% of workers in the mining industry were female.
Grim as these figures are, they fail to show the distribution of job roles; the majority of which fall into sales, administration, catering, and service positions. So when the industry cries poor for skills, the answer lies largely in attracting women into mining. The MCA for instance has announced they will need a further 70,000 workers by 2015, and that one of the key labour pools they will be targeting to provide these numbers is women.
Annette Williams, director of the UK Resource Centre, an organisation dedicated to assisting women in the science, engineering and technology (SET) sectors, says that targeting women to fill these roles is a matter of not only urgent importance, but common sense.
“The pool of young men who would usually be filling these positions is diminishing,” she says. “Meanwhile, in the UK, women are outperforming men in SET subjects at virtually every level. So why ignore the talent of half the population?”
What’s holding them back?
The reasons for women’s low participation in the mining sector are multi-faceted, stemming from the industry’s history as a male-dominated workforce, its image as providing very physical, often remotely located, masculine-oriented roles, and its ingrained corporate culture that makes men feel more comfortable and prepared to succeed than women.
This perception sees that women are sifted out at various points of the education timeline - beginning with school as they choose their subjects, through to choosing their university degree.
“We lose women at each different stage, but what’s really worrying is that even when women study these disciplines, only a small proportion actually follow a career in those fields,” says Williams, adding that of those women with qualifications in SET, only 25% go into working in these fields.
Motherhood and mining
One of the primary discouraging factors for women looking for a career in mining is the lack of effective work and family balance policies available. As men have traditionally dominated the industry, many workplace policies are based on the assumption that the employee will always be present, highly mobile, available for shift work, without the need for career breaks or time off to fulfil domestic care duties.
Inadequate return-to-work policies are also seeing high employment attrition rates among women over the age of 35 who, if they decide to return, are often forced to downgrade their job role or take on a part time position, usually with lower pay.
Career advancement in the mining sector is also largely dependent on the employee being able to travel, work on field sites and work remotely for long periods – all of which conflict with the caring responsibilities of most women.
Issues of isolation, the potential for harassment, and decreased networking opportunities in male-dominated environments also dissuade women from entering the industry.
Solutions
For a long time, says Williams, the mentality towards women has been - what can they do to fit into the industry? But that’s beginning to change.
Andrew Woodley, general manager at Rio Tinto's Hail Creek mine, says that employing more women has not only made the workplace more balanced and socially responsible, but also greatly countered the growing skills shortage in the region.
“I think that companies are starting to see that if they want to attract women then there are changes they have to make structurally and culturally to the way in which they do business so they make women feel like they could have a successful career, and like this is a company they could actually fit into and progress in,” she says.
Fair diversity policies are crucial to attracting and retaining women, with the most effective policies addressing issues such as childcare and summer care options, harassment prevention, gender awareness and diversity sensitive recruitment.
A more balanced workplace
Rio Tinto Coal Australia’s mine at Hail Creek in Queensland, Australia, has received numerous awards for its efforts to boost female participation at the site, which has gone from 2% in 2002 to 15% today. A combination of rigorous diversity management, expanded work-life balance options and targeted recruitment methods - whereby the mine aligned with local engineering firms and the education system to attract and train women for trade and professional positions - has all contributed to the increase.
General manager for operations at the mine, Andrew Woodley, says that employing more women has not only made the workplace more balanced and socially responsible, but also greatly countered the growing skills shortage in the region.
“All of this has enabled a comfortable and inclusive environment to flourish,” he says.
As a whole, Rio Tinto is trialling retention strategies for mothers returning to work, such as flexible working options and “crib shift” rosters.
“I think that’s where a lot of employers are losing out,” says Williams. “If they looked a lot more creatively and positively at part time working options and job shares they would find they’ve got very good women who would give it their all.”
“Not employing someone full time could mean there’s a bit of surplus cash to employ someone in a lower grade in a support role to help that woman,” she adds.
Creative and thoughtful recruitment techniques tailored for women will also help with attraction. Setting targets, tapping into women’s networks, avoiding gender stereotyping in marketing material and using positive role models to give speeches at schools and universities are some of Williams’ suggestions.
“Like any marketing, you have to speak to women, and you have to understand the needs of women,” she says. “The offer has to be attractive to what women perceive as important. It’s thinking through what are the perceptions of women towards those industries and how they can break those down.”
By Jodie McLeod
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