Modern Mining August 2022

WOMEN IN MINING

Minerals Council unpacks industry progress Following the Mining Charter’s call for gender equity in the sector and the subsequent transitional targets set out in 2018, Modern Mining caught up with Nolitha Fakude, the Minerals Council South Africa’s first female president, to chat about the industry’s progress in meeting the outlined targets.

How is the mining industry progressing towards achieving the gender equity targets as set out by the Mining Charter? The Mining Charter 2018 set five-year transitional

targets (2019-2023) for Employment Equity (EE) and introduced targets specifically for women at each occu pational level. The targets for women range from 20% at board and execu tive management to 30% at junior management level. Providing a universal snapshot of the industry’s performance in meet ing the targets set out in the Mining Charter has proved impossible because there is no standardised reporting template provided by the regulator to measure compliance

The Minerals Council believes strongly that data collection and the tracking of trends is crucial to addressing the challenges faced by women and to further transformation in the industry.

Nolitha Fakude, the Minerals Council South Africa’s first female president. women out of a total workforce of nearly 460 000, which translates to just 14%. The global number is between 15% and 20%, indicating we have some way to go. The Minerals Council and its members have set targets to double, at least, the percentage of women in mining by 2025, reaching 30% to 40% women representation across the indus try. This is a stretch target set in 2020. In the next decade, we are targeting 50% women representation in management. For these targets to be met, we must make the industry attractive for women want ing to build thriving careers. Research has shown diverse companies perform better financially, have greater brand awareness and goodwill; it’s about improvements in tangible and intangible benefits. In 2021, Harvard Business School noted that, on average, companies that increased women representation by 10% boosted their rev enues by 10%. A high-level study on the EE progress for a portion of members of the Minerals Council as well as the results from the Commission of Employment Equity report launched in June 2022, shows that com panies have made little progress in the

with the Charter by the industry. Since 1996, when women were first legally allowed to work underground in mining operations in South Africa, the industry now employs 64 500

The targets for women range from 20% at board and executive management level to 30% at junior management level.

16  MODERN MINING  August 2022