Cultural research consultancy Factive has warned that unless the concept of gender is revisited, mining companies are unlikely to achieve gender diversity.

“At the moment, the default position is men versus women, and we are in an industry that has 85% men and only 15% women. The mining companies want more women, so they target those women, advertise to them and recruit them, but this won’t solve the gender problem,” says Factive director Dean Laplonge.

Biological Bodies

In his work to educate the mining industry, Laplonge explains that the issue of gender diversity in the work- place is not related to biological bodies, but rather what it means to be of either gender.

“The way I look at gender is not about bodies, but about what it means to be a certain sex. Gender is the practice of performing that sex – the cultural expectations of a man or a woman,” Laplonge said.

He notes that, historically, the mining industry has predominantly attracted masculine workers, be they male or female.

“The women that have fit in most, particularly in operations, are women that can do masculinity. Anybody that wants to fit into that culture would act in a particularly masculine way,” Laplonge said.

However, he notes that, unless “conversations” about true gender diversity increase, mining companies will face the threat of cutting themselves off from valuable skills as well as a range of different thinking regarding design, finance, safety and production.

“You are removing all those options and saying that all those ways of doing things aren’t masculine enough. “The issue of gender diversity is not a human resources issue; it’s not a human issue – it is a cultural issue.”

Laplonge noted that once gender is recognised as a practice, it would become an important issue within the business industry that could have revolutionary effects on the business culture and production processes.

Slow to Adapt

Laplonge told Mining Weekly that while there have been more discussions recently around gender diversity in the workplace, the mining industry was slow to adapt to changes.

“The industry is very slow in terms of change, and even wanting to consider that change. I think, if the kind of stuff that I’m talking about was something that could be presented in a graph, and if there were numbers and statistics, if it was clear cut and could be measured, change would come a lot faster,” he said.