Diamond miner De Beers Group has extended its partnership with female-empowering social enterprise WomEng for a further three years, expanding the reach to cover all four of the countries – South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Canada – where De Beers mines diamonds.

The announcement was made on March 8 – International Women’s Day.

WomEng promotes science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) for girls and women from primary school through to industry.

De Beers Group sustainable impact senior VP Katie Fergusson says women remain significantly under-represented in the engineering and technology fields, globally. “WomEng has been an exceptional partner to work with as we seek to deliver our mutual goals.”

She adds that, by extending its partnership, De Beers will provide more talented women and girls access to opportunities, mentorship and the confidence to pursue rewarding careers.

De Beers’ partnership with the organisation plays into the miner’s endeavour to engage 10 000 girls and women in STEM by 2030, as part of De Beers’ wider Building Forever sustainability goals.

De Beers’ original three-year partnership with WomEng focused on developing leadership, innovation, wellbeing and employability skills for women and girls in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

Despite the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 2 200 students were reached by WomEng by the end of 2021 through a GirlEng programme for school girls and a fellowship programme for women studying engineering and technology degrees at university.

The three-year extension will result in programmes being expanded beyond Southern Africa to reach students in Canada and the UK, as well as beyond university courses to include vocational and skilled trades. There will also be a greater emphasis on future-focused sustainable development topics, such as renewable energies and climate solutions.

De Beers will also roll out WomEng’s Emerging Leader Programme within its own business to help support, retain and promote women in technical roles as it works towards achieving gender parity across its global workforce as part of its United Nations (UN) Women HeForShe Alliance commitment.

In addition, De Beers will work with WomEng to support women-founded engineering and technology businesses that are focused on addressing critical sustainability challenges in the company’s host countries.

Fergusson adds that De Beers has an ambitious commitment to achieve gender parity across its global workforce by 2030 and, key to achieving this, will be fostering greater diversity within the talent pipeline. “With the programmes offered being expanded to include an emphasis on sustainability-related fields, we’re working to build both a more equitable and sustainable future in alignment with our ambitious Building Forever goals.”

WomEng co-founder Naadiya Moosajee says building on the work the organisation has done through its partnership with De Beers takes an ecosystem approach to support diversity, equity and inclusion within the engineering industry. “It is incredible to work with a partner who understands this, and who supports us in developing women and girls for bright futures in the sector.”

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

In De Beers’ efforts to further gender equality as part of the company’s 12 Building Forever sustainability goals, its endeavour to support 10 000 women entrepreneurs by 2030 will be facilitated, in part, through the expansion and scaling of the Accelerating Women-Owned Micro-Enterprises programme.

This programme has been implemented in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa since 2018 in partnership with UN Women.

Despite the challenges of various lockdowns, the programme continued to support women to build their businesses throughout 2021, with more than 1 800 women-led micro-entrepreneurs having been reached to date.

The focus during 2021 was on the immediate need to support businesses impacted by the pandemic and help them gain the necessary support.

De Beers has also improved inclusion and diversity measures across the business through the launch of reciprocal mentoring, focussed on talent development and succession planning, conducted unconscious bias training, and introduced an inclusion and diversity steering group and an all-employee education campaign.

De Beers says these efforts resulted in considerable progress, with representation of women on De Beers Group’s executive committee increasing from 0% in 2017 to 31% this year. In addition, the appointment rate of women to leadership roles is 41%, up from 22% in 2017.

The representation of women overall within De Beers Group is 27%, with senior representation at 32% – up from 17% in 2017. Women in STEM-related roles is at 16%, with a target of 21% by 2025 and 30% by 2030.

Further, in 2021, De Beers announced a five-year extension to its global partnership with UN Women which also saw CEO Bruce Cleaver appointed a champion of the HeForShe Alliance.

In addition, De Beers launched its CountYourSelfIn initiative to help improve understanding of workforce demographics and support employees in their home and work lives. 

A Recognising and Responding to Domestic Violence policy was also introduced to support colleagues who are survivors of domestic violence.