Beyond improving gender ratios, mines should focus on strategies to nurture women’s progress and leadership in skilled careers.
Bukiwe Pantshi's article on women in mining refers (“Low female representation blights mining despite progress in some sectors”, February 16). The mining sector needs to make itself more attractive to women as a way of securing the high-level technical and professional skills and leadership qualities it needs from the brightest minds.
Much has been made of mining’s slow pace in attracting more women into its ranks, but the diagnosis of what keeps numbers so low is less clear. Even with the best will in the world the mining sector still projects an image that discourages women. This severely undermines the industry’s urgent need to stay abreast of the latest technologies in a range of mining-related professions, not just mining engineering.
Appointing women as high-profile directors — or alternatively as manual labour to achieve numerical targets — does not address the critical need for expertise. The mining sector today demands a variety of disciplines outside mining engineering, most of which are now heavily driven by digital technology. From hydrogeology, geochemistry and environmental science to metallurgy, mineral economics, geophysics, and a variety of engineering disciplines, the world of mining is increasingly complex — and can be entered through many professions.
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