Mining companies are introducing diverse measures to attract women to the industry
Ruza Zivkusic-Aftasi | June 28, 2012
Mining companies are introducing diverse measures to attract women to the industry, with school-hour shifts on offer.
Rio Tinto operations west general manager Cindy Dunham, who addressed the Transport Women Australia conference in Melbourne last week, says Rio Tinto has spent a lot of time trying to remove diversity barriers.
She says mining companies offer staff school-hour shifts so they can lead a balanced family lifestyle at the mines.
“Most mining companies now have diversity plans based on the introduction to women in the decision making roles,” Dunham says.
“Rio Tinto has spent a lot of time trying to understand and remove the barriers to diversity and we have targets that are set to encourage and promote positive decisions in those areas.
“Forty percent of our graduate intake is women and we promote 20 percent women in our executive leadership team, with 49 percent of my team being women at all levels,” she says.
Despite the new measures, most women still prefer to fly in and out for the nine-day long shifts, with five days of rest.
The industry is also struggling to overcome the perception that there is no room for women.
“There are some attitude problems in regards to women’s perception to what they’re capable of. We make a point of attending a lot of functions and mining forums and university and school graduate programs to encourage people to challenge the perception of what they’re capable of taking on,” Dunham says.
“Despite our best efforts to play a gender catch-up by supporting those programs, we still find it challenging to encourage people to put their hand up and come out and explore what the mining has to offer to women.”
PetroFrontier Operations Manager Richard Parkes says skill shortages are a constant challenge despite attractive pay being offered.
“I pay about 40 to 60 percent more than the average industry employer for those positions and even then I can’t fill them,” Parkes says.
“The problem is that there is no votes supporting us. There is no electorate that has a whole bunch of people in it and it’s hard to convince politicians to support us because all things will be pushed by the green element from all parts of the society.
“That’s something we have to overcome. We need to talk positively about all the things that nobody wants to know about.”
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