60% of Women in Mining don’t Report Discrimination

Published: 24/04/2014

Queensland Mining & Energy Bulletin, 23 April 2014

“60 per cent of women in mining don’t report discrimination for fear their claims will not be taken seriously by their male superior, according to new research just released.

The report, by Beyond Recruitment Group, also found that 70% of the blue-collar female workers surveyed had routinely experienced discrimination while working on a mine site. A very different result was seen among the women employed in white-collar positions. 30% of the women surveyed were white-collar workers who said they had never experienced gender based discrimination and that reports of discrimination would be taken very seriously.

One participant of the anonymous survey described the discrimination as part of a mining culture. “Based on my experiences working on remote mining sites there is little respect for women in blue-collar positions by their male counterparts, mining has its own culture and when you are on site there are unspoken differentials in performance standards,” she said.

Beyond Recruitment Group CEO, Mike Postle, said while the results were shocking they only depicted a very small minority of mining operations. “We have recruited many women for both blue-collar and white-collar positions in the mining industry and have received strong positive feedback both from those women and their employers.

Beyond Recruitment Manager for Mining and Energy, Liam O’Toole, said there has been a strong increase in the recruitment of women in the mining industry. “Whilst there are continued challenges facing women within the mining and resources sector, we have experienced an increased interest by the organisations we work with to focus particular attention on the recruitment of women across their operations,” said Mr O’Toole. “Having placed many females in both blue and white collar positions, a positive turnaround is evident, in that our clients are continuously exploring more effective ways in which to improve diversity through both their recruitment and employment conditions,” he said.”

Link to story online

It would have been nice to be able to read the report. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find a link anywhere to it. I wonder why. I would have liked to know how many women were sampled in this research. 60% of how many? What methodology was used? I am not saying women don’t get discriminated. I believe they do – would just like to know more about how
Beyond Recruitment reached this conclusion.

Does it apply as highly elsewhere? Are there other reports on this topic? Other statistics? I have never come across any.

Can others comment or share their discrimination stories and experiences?

The Blue Collared Women founder, Teagan Dowler wrote 2 blog posts that are quite topical to the discussion. Here are the links: blog post 1 and blog post 2. Her organisation is about supporting & empowering women to be confident & influential contributors in the blue collared industries of Australia through education, training and coaching.