The male-dominated mining industry is slowly changing to create better working environments for women. Mining companies have started to understand why it’s crucial to have female representation at all levels of their operations – and that attracting, advancing and retaining women is likely to add value to the business. External pressure is accelerating this change, proving more powerful than the moral obligation of corporates to include women purely because it’s the right thing to do.
Much of the pressure has come from investors looking for gender diversity to achieve their own ESG goals, but recently it’s also coming from women themselves. At the end of 2024, hundreds of women from the mining sector went public in Australia to fight widespread systemic sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Their landmark class action against two global mining giants at the Federal Court of Australia has attracted worldwide media attention.
According to Reuters, the law firm that filed two separate class action cases on behalf of the women has documented distressing details of alleged sexual harassment and the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence the victims. The two mining companies are accused of knowingly exposing women to high-risk situations at their Australian mine sites and retaliating with demotions, dismissals or further discrimination when complaints were made.
‘These class actions will give a voice to these women, many of whom have been too afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs or workplace reprisals,’ according to the law firm.
In Africa’s mining sector, women are also finding their voices. ‘Our focus continues to be on breaking stereotypes, unmasking unconscious bias and support of broader interventions in the sector to fight gender-based violence,’ says Boitumelo Nkomo, Women in Mining project specialist at the Minerals Council South Africa (MCSA). Although women still earn a lower average salary than men across all occupational levels in mining, they have made significant progress since 1994, when the legal ban on women working in underground mines was lifted in South Africa.
‘Through concerted programmes to employ women, the industry now has an estimated 90 300 women working in the sector, representing 19% of the total full-time workforce compared to 30 000 in 2019,’ says Nkomo. The growing number of young women wanting to enter the industry is also encouraging – 32% of the students who graduated with mining-related qualifications in South Africa are female (2 991 of 9 438 graduates), according to the Department of Higher Education and Training in 2022. Recent MCSA research shows that roughly one out of every three mining learnerships goes to female candidates, and when it comes to finding employment through these programmes, women and men are being employed at similar rates. And while men received more bursaries overall, women obtain more bursaries when accounting for the size of their employee population (1 911 female vs 2 395 male bursary holders).
‘It’s an exciting time to be a woman in this industry because we’re starting to see things move; it’s just not moving at the pace we want it to,’ says Raksha Naidoo, chair of networking organisation Women in Mining SA (WiMSA). ‘We’ll therefore continue to ruffle feathers and speak the hard truths that people don’t want to hear.
‘Although the challenges and hurdles are still very real, I’m fuelled by hope and optimism for the future. Women are collaborating more; they’re being bold and brave and standing up against the wrongs of society and the industry. Women are using their voices – not just to challenge bias, but using their voices to support and encourage others.’
WiMSA provides networking opportunities, training and mentoring for women working in the industry and also promotes mining as a career field for girls and young women. ‘Our vision is creating a better world for women in mining and through mining’, says Naidoo, who is CEO of the Particle Group, a company that provides specialised analytical services to mining and other sectors. ‘All of us at WiMSA volunteer our time because we believe so passionately in bringing about the change that is needed,’ she says. ‘The goal is to create a professional network that is a safe space and a sisterhood where women can learn from their peers, share their experiences, and develop themselves further as they start climbing the career ladder.’
To inspire others and celebrate breakthroughs, Women in Mining (WIM) UK collates a bi-annual list of ‘100 global inspirational women in mining’ who are marking their mark at all industry levels, from mine sites to head offices. The latest WIM 100, published in November 2024, features four women from South Africa – Nkanyezi Luthuli (team lead for group procurement at Glencore Ferroalloys), Innocentia Mahlangu (project manager at Hatch), Robyn Mellett (CEO and founder at OMI Solutions, an environmental engineering consultancy), and Candice Naidoo (MD at Paramount Tracks, a professional mining engineering services firm). Other trailblazers from sub-Saharan Africa among the WIM 100 include one woman each from Burkina Faso, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia, as well as two from Rwanda and three from the DRC.
The 2024 finalists are from 41 jurisdictions, which shows how international the initiative has become since covering merely 15 countries when it was launched in 2013. By showcasing the breadth of female talent within the mining industry, and identifying role models for future generations, WIM 100 underlines the importance of gender diversity in mining. WIM UK’s own research shows that listed mining companies with one or more women on the board have consistently outperformed those with fewer or none.
Mining giant BHP also found that diversity (relating to gender, ethnicity, age and so on) is good for business, stating that ‘our most inclusive and diverse teams delivered 67% fewer recordable injuries, their sense of pride is 21% higher, they have 28% lower unplanned absence rates, and have up to 11% higher planned and scheduled work delivery’.
The MCSA has acknowledged the role of women in workplace safety and in 2023 launched its Safety Hero campaign – to honour 10 women every year who have made an important contribution to making mining safer in their organisations. After publishing its whitepaper on Women in Mining in 2020, the MCSA has come up with a roadmap to outline how member companies could go about driving the representation and development of women within their operations.
‘One of the seven foundational principles of creating a thriving women-in-mining culture is to increase training on unconscious bias,’ says Nolitha Fakude, chairperson at Anglo American SA, who recently stepped down from her three years as the first female president of the MCSA.
‘We are monitoring and urging our member organisations to run these programmes within their workplaces as well as beyond the mine gates,’ she says. In Fakunde’s own organisation, the ‘Including You’ approach aims at ensuring that ‘all colleagues – including future colleagues – have a fair chance to compete for roles, removing any barriers to equity’. In 2023, Anglo American reported 26% female employees across the organisation and 34% female representation at all management levels (slightly exceeding its goal of 33%).
Another notable gender-inclusion effort is Newmont’s introduction of lactation rooms where new mothers can express milk, making their return to work easier after maternity leave. The company has also revised gendered language at some sites, for example, eliminating ‘men at work’ signs and changing titles such as ‘foreman’ to ‘foreperson’, and terms such as ‘virgin carbon’ to ‘fresh carbon’.
Gold Fields and Rio Tinto conducted – and published – reviews of their workplace culture to uncover sexual discrimination, bullying and racism within their organisations. Gold Fields has used the findings to implement preventative measures and a more inclusive, respectful culture, while Rio Tinto published a follow-up report in 2024 to assess its progress in implementing the survey recommendations.
These are all important steps in creating safer and more inclusive work environments that are free of harassment and bias, says Naidoo. For women to thrive in the industry, mining companies need to allow female voices to be heard, invest in their technical and professional development, while ensuring their safety at all times.
