AGGY MOILOA Women comprise just 13% of top management, 15.5% of senior management and 20.8% of mining professionals in the local mining and quarrying sector
Women are still “grossly underrepresented” at all levels of the local mining and quarrying sector, stated Department of Labour (DoL) inspec- tion and enforcement deputy director-general Aggy Moiloa.
Moiloa was speaking at training and con- ferencing company Intelligence Transfer Centre’s recent Women in Mining conference, which took place in Johannesburg.
She noted that women comprised just 13% of top management, 15.5% of senior management, 20.8% of mining professionals, 16.7% of skilled mineworkers, 9.51% of semiskilled mineworkers and 12.7% of the unskilled mine workforce.
Moiloa also pointed out that foreign national women in the local mining and quarrying sector made up 11.79% at all levels of the industry.
“Despite South Africa having very progressive legislation with regard to the empowerment of women in business, males make up 81.8% of top management positions in mining and quarrying operations, with whites hold- ing 62% of these positions and blacks only 15%,” she highlighted.
Of the 13% of women occupying top mana- gement positions, the DoL found that 5.3% of them were black and 7.5% were white.
Males comprised 80.4% of senior management positions of which 52% were white and 16.2% were black. Of the 15.5% of women in these senior management positions, 9.8% were white and 4.1% were black.
Moiloa pointed out that the DoL’s data showed that males comprised 76.2% of the industry’s mining professionals with whites making up 44.4% and blacks 26.7% of these positions.
She highlighted that, of the 20.8% of women that made up mine professionals, 10.1% were white and 8.6% were black.
With regard to skilled professionals in the sector, 78.1% are males, with whites mak- ing up 27% and blacks 46% of this category of mineworker. Women make up 16.7% of skilled mineworkers and 6.1% of these were white, while 9.2% were black.
The DoL’s research found that males represented 73.1% of semiskilled mineworkers, with whites making up 2% and blacks 69% of this category. Women accounted for 9.5% of this category, with whites comprising 1.2% and blacks 7.8%.
Males made up 71.7% of all unskilled workers, with 0.6% of them being white and 70.2% of them black. Of the 12.7% of women represented in this work segment, 0.1% were found to be white and 12.6% black.
“It is clear that males still overwhelmingly dominate the mining industry at all levels, with white males occupying the vast majority of management and professional positions in the sector, while black males made up the majority of skilled and unskilled worker positions.
“Therefore, it is obvious that transforma- tion of the industry with the empowerment of women, particularly black women, is the most pressing issue that needs to be addressed by companies,” Moiloa concluded.