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Mining ranks poorly in gender diversity report

THE AUSTRALIAN Government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency has today released its first Australian gender equality scorecard detailing the results of new reporting measures across all industries – and mining and construction are unsurprisingly among the worst performers.

The scorecard for the 2013-14 period publishes a range of reporting data derived from 11,000 employers covering 3.9 million employees. 162 mining employers took part in the scorecard, covering more than 190,000 employees. The construction sector contributed 192 organisations with 143,000 employees.

The results paint a dire picture for both sectors and underpin the challenge facing resource and related construction employers as they seek to attract and retain more women in their workforces.

With 15.7% of its workforce comprising females, mining is the least gender diverse industry covered in the government’s report. Construction, with 16.1% female employees, is a close second when it comes to the poorest performing sectors.

The more detailed results paint an even less flattering picture of the two sectors, with results including:

  • Construction has the least female managers at 10.8% of all managers, with mining not far in front (14%).
  • Only 2.2% of all mining sector CEOs are women, with construction at 3.6%.
  • Highlighting the lack of women employed in site-based roles, 75.8% of all administrative/clerical positions in the mining sector are filled by women, with construction at 73.6%.
  • Only 8% of mining employers are estimated to have a gender flexibility strategy in place in their workplaces; and only 8.6% are estimated to have a strategy for ‘family and caring responsibilities’.

“This gender scorecard shows exactly why Australia’s resource industry has begun to tackle the challenge of workforce diversity head-on in recent years,” says AREEA executive director Tara Diamond, who oversees the Australian Women in Resources Alliance (AWRA) initiative.

“Clearly, there are many areas in which we must make greater in-roads, but at least we now have a much more detailed understanding of where our greatest imbalances lie and what we need to do to begin to turn this around.

“With the assistance of the programs offered by AWRA and other gender diversity initiatives, we expect resource employers to rapidly help turn around the industry’s overall poor performance in gender diversity.”

The wider results show that the health care (80.5%) and education (62.5%) sectors have the greatest percentage of female employees; women comprise 17.3% of CEOs nationwide; and the gender pay gap was the greatest in the finance sector at 36.1%.

Click here to read the government’s Australian gender equality scorecard.

Register your interest in AWRA Recognised

Receiving high praise at the recent Australian Women in Resources Alliance Forum, the AWRA Recognised program is now accepting registrations of interest from resource employers looking to improve women’s participation in their workforce.

AWRA Recognised is an innovative program that provides the skills and knowledge organisations need to address gender diversity challenges and improve the diversity balance in their workplace.

Organisations participating in the AWRA Recognised program will have their gender diversity strategies comprehensively assessed to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement toward better women’s participation.

Additionally, participants will receive either the bronze, silver, gold or platinum ‘AWRA Recognised Stamp’ that recognises organisations as employers of choice for up-and-coming women miners.

The diversity experts at AWRA will also provide a strategic roadmap to help organisations improve their gender diversity initiatives and overcome the barriers to greater attraction, recruitment and retention of women employees.

Click here to read about how Caterpillar Australia earned their ‘gold’ AWRA Recognised stamp in the latest edition of Resource People magazine, and click here to learn about Farstad Shipping’s assessment with AWRA Recognised.

To express your interest in becoming a part of this important program, contact AWRA on 07 3210 0313.

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