Women in mining say industry missing out on female leadership talent

Australia Broadcast Center

11 hours ago

At this year's Diggers and Dealers conference, about 2,500 mining delegates touched down in WA's gold city of Kalgoorlie to hear from the very top of the industry.
But of the more than 40 directors, chief executives, and chairs who took to the panel stage, only one was a woman.
Chief executive and managing director of Australian Strategic Materials (ASM) Rowena Smith said she was "very pleased" to have been invited to speak.
"I spent an enormous amount of time in the audience in the early years, and I didn't see any women on the stage," she said.
Ms Smith said the increase in women at the event was positive.
"Twenty years ago … there were [also] very few women in the audience," she said.
"As I stood there on the stage on Monday, I was looking out into so many women's faces."
The 2025 Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) shows the number of top-level management positions held by women in the oil, gas and mining industry is only around 16 per cent.
It is a fact author and gold expert Sandra Close knows all too well.
She was the first woman geologist in the field in Australia at a time when the industry looked very different.
"[When] I started, it was zero women with hands-on jobs in the mining industry," Dr Close said.
"It was quite a lot to break through."
She moved from geology to high-level resource financing, later becoming the senior executive at a multinational resources group.
But despite her accolades, including a nomination for Senior Australian of the Year, there is one part of the industry Dr Close never entered.
According the WEF, in 2024, only about 14 per cent of new hires to top leadership positions in the oil, gas and mining industry were women.
It is part of a steady global decline in women being hired to top-level management roles since the pandemic.
Journalist and equality advocate Catherine Fox said it was "just not good enough."
"The number of women at the decision-making table is … sadly either plateauing or going backwards," she said.
Ms Fox said she thought US President Donald Trump's dismantling of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) laws in the US was starting to spread to Australia.
She believes changes are already happening "under the surface".
"I think that backlash that women [have] already gone far enough, in fact we might have gone too far, is gathering pace," she said.
"We fought for years to get the word 'diversity' taken seriously, now people are changing it to things like 'productivity.'"
Ms Smith said it was important the industry encouraged more women into leadership roles.
"One of the things that will encourage that is men seeing women do the job … seeing is believing," Ms Smith said.
She also said the industry needed to stop holding women to a higher standard than men.
"We're perceived to be a higher risk candidate, and therefore the benchmark seems to go up," she said.
"I don't think men have the same need [as women] to be exceptional."
Dr Close said the mining industry could not afford to continue excluding women like herself from top roles.
"When you'd have the sort of experience that I've had … I think it would have been fascinating," Dr Close said.