Mining Industry Is No Goldmine For Women

The Age

Saturday September 1, 2007

Josh Jennings

THERE's good news and bad news in the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy's latest Employment and Remuneration survey. The good news is that salaries in the minerals sector have climbed 18 per cent over the past two years; the bad news is that men, on average, are pocketing a substantially larger share of the loot than women.

At the senior management level, males' average annual pay is $201,992 and women's is $154,846. The only level, in fact, where females are earning more than males on average is at the graduate level, where the salaries are the lowest.

The AusIMM is addressing this issue by encouraging companies to undertake specialised internal remuneration checks, and by looking at a code for recruitment and promotions that explicitly rules out discrimination.

AusIMM senior policy and research co-ordinator Monika Sarder says these initiatives are starting to strike a chord with companies in the industry, but there are still less obvious obstacles to overcome to address the gender pay gap.

Women account for 18 per cent of the mining workforce, compared with 45 per cent of the total workforce, according to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Ms Sarder says the more active the industry is in tackling these issues, the better chance female employees have to be successful. And success, of course, is recognised with better salaries.

A recent study by the Minerals Council of Australia identified a number of issues hindering female participation in mining. The industry's culture of overwork and overtime, for example, has the potential to create problems in domestic life. Those employed in remote communities face possible isolation from families. Long commutes to work can also complicate family and domestic life. And scarcity of childcare access in remote communities is a problem.

Ms Sarder says the AusIMM's Women in Mining Network is helping to address these problems. "It helps women make contact in a more neutral and technical and professional arena."

She adds that more flexible employment arrangements are required to better capitalise on the female talent pool, and that businesses can benefit from being more savvy and vocal in communicating to women their options in the industry.

"It happens at some sites but you get other sites where it's quite a conservative culture and the manager might not have worked in a more flexible environment, so they're a bit resistant to it."

The gender imbalance also needs to be addressed by making the industry more attractive to women outside it.

"I recently went to a conference for promoting professional women, and there was a woman quite senior in engineering there who has given all these talks at high schools," Ms Sarder says. "She just felt like she was boring all the girls that she was talking to. She felt like, at that stage, it was too late if you hadn't engaged with children at a younger age and made girls feel that maths and science were as much their domain as it is the boys'."

Yet finding inspiration and motivation to begin a career in mining is easy once you know where to look, Ms Sarder says.

"The girls have said that they're drawn to the fact that they have the opportunity to travel to mine sites all over the world. The career opportunities are diverse. You can stick with the technical profession or you can use that as a basis to become a corporate fat cat." -- JOSH JENNINGS

© 2007 The Age

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