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Women in Mining

The Lady Muckers take on the 41st Annual International Collegiate Mining Competition – by Jennifer Sande (Nevada Today – March 27, 2019)

https://www.unr.edu/

The Mackay Muckers had enough female recruits for both men’s and a women’s teams for the first time in five years.

When asked if she could think of a more proper term to describe her female team members other than “badass”, Claire Roberts, Captain of the Lady Muckers – the Mackay Muckers women’s team, thought for a minute before answering. “Kickass? That’s not much better, is it?” Roberts asked.

The “kickass” Lady Muckers competed on Friday, March 22nd in the 41st Annual International Collegiate Mining Competition in Virginia City alongside teams from all over the country and the world.

The teams compete in old-school mining techniques such as single jack hand steel (hammering a steel chisel into concrete by hand), jackleg drilling, hand mucking (shoveling “muck” or dirt into a mine cart and running it down and back a length of track), gold panning, track stand (quickly assembling an un-assembling a rail-cart track), and swede saw (sawing through a 4×4″ block of wood).

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Commodity Traders Say More Needs to Be Done to Promote Women – by Andy Hoffman and Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – March 27, 2019)

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

(Bloomberg) — More needs to be done to make the commodities industry welcoming to young women, who are less willing to put up with the sexist culture their older peers endured, female executives from trading houses, banks and mining companies said.

“It isn’t the Wolf of Wall Street, but it is a tough environment,” Wendy Moss, a veteran trader at Trafigura Group, said at the FT Global Commodities Summit in Lausanne. “If you are prepared for that, it can be a very rewarding career.”
Women account for less than 5 percent of senior management at top trading houses, Bloomberg reported last year, and companies are under pressure to improve gender parity.

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More women in mining ‘matters,’ Sudbury engineer says – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star – March 9, 2019)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Samantha Espley will never forget her first day when she joined Falconbridge Limited not long after obtaining an engineering degree from the University of Toronto in 1988. “It was a sea of men,” she recalled, during her breakfast address Friday at the Steelworkers Hall on Brady Street to celebrate International Women’s Day. “I was so shocked. Over the years, I felt self-righteous. ‘How come there’s not enough women?’

“But over my 30 years, I realized there’s no women in the pipeline. There’s no females to draw from. There’s no women for the big companies to hire coming out of the schools and trade schools.”

Espley is the current director of Mining Technology & Innovation for Vale Base Metals, leading a team of highly specialized engineers and scientists providing technical support to Vale’s operating mines and projects in Canada, Brazil, New Caledonia and Indonesia.

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Celebrating a century of mining at Yukon – by Anne Turner (nee Lewis) and Lindsay Wilson (Northern Miner – January 8, 2019)

Northern Miner

http://www.yukonminingalliance.ca/

http://www.yukonwim.ca/index.html

Anne Turner (nee Lewis) is the executive director of the Yukon Mining Alliance (YMA). Lindsay Wilson is communications manager at YMA.

It was finding gold at Rabbit Creek and along the riverbeds of the Klondike that forever changed one of the world’s final frontiers — the Yukon Territory — and cemented the region’s roots as an inspiring Canadian mining district.

Yukon’s rich mining history continues to provide exciting discoveries, varied commodities and significant opportunities for northerners and investors alike. As we kick off 2019, we reflect on our history and the last year that has proved — through achievements, advancements and accolades — that Yukon is a mining district to follow and to celebrate.

In 1896, a hundred-thousand stampeders journeyed north, following the news of “Gold, gold, gold!” and “The Klondike gold rush begins” in papers from Seattle to San Francisco. Kate and George Carmack, Skookum Jim Mason, Dawson Charlie and Robert Henderson discovered placer gold at Rabbit Creek (later renamed Bonanza Creek) on Aug. 26.

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The story of Klondike Kate Carmack and the (modern day) sisters who moil for gold – by Joe O’Connor (Financial Post – January 4, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Five sisters are modern pioneers linked to a colourful prospecting past that includes Carmack, whose lying husband took credit for the Klondike strike and cheated her out of her fortune

During the summer, when by fate of their unpredictable schedules the five Bjorkman sisters actually find themselves together at their parents’ log home on Whiskyjack Lake, Ont., the conversation inevitably turns to rocks.

Jessica Bjorkman, the eldest sister at 38, might, for example, start talking about what she found or didn’t find, or the bear she had to run off, or the view from a B.C. mountain ridge that was so perfect she couldn’t quite believe it was real.

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On the frontline of the push for gender equity in mining – by Kylie Williams (CIM Magazine – December 18, 2018)

http://magazine.cim.org/en/

As a young exploration geologist in 1970, Barbara Caelles walked out on her first job when her manager told her there were simply “no facilities” to send a woman out in the field, as she had been promised a year earlier.

“I stood up and said, ‘Well, thank you. I don’t want an office job,’ and walked out,” Caelles recalled. “It was a catch-22. We all felt that you couldn’t be a geologist unless you had field experience, but fieldwork for women was more difficult to find. [Men] had no problems finding it.”

She was able to find another job the same day with a company that sent her to California where she began to build her field experience. She returned to Vancouver and spent the next decade as one of only a handful of women field geologists. She worked on a number of large field programs, including Hackett River and the Back River area in Nunavut, and numerous projects throughout British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. She also wrote and co-authored several scientific papers.

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Gina Rinehart: “Don’t call me an heiress” – by Andrew Hornery (Sydney Morning Herald – December 8, 2018)

https://www.smh.com.au/

Gina Rinehart ranks as the richest Australian ever, owns vast swathes of the continent, directly and indirectly employs tens of thousands of her fellow countrymen, has homes around the globe, travels in an $80 million private jet, is instantly recognisable across the land, has been the subject of a television mini-series and several bestsellers as well as having the ear of the Prime Minister.

Just don’t ever call her an “heiress”. I innocently made this incursion recently, only to be swiftly dealt with by Rinehart’s team of “communications specialists”, one of whom wrote to inform me she was hardly of the ilk of Paris Hilton.

Rinehart was disputing the term “heiress”: “When Lang Hancock passed away his estate was bankrupt, which is publicly available information. “In addition, Hancock Prospecting which he’d largely sold out of was in an extremely bad financial situation at time of his death in March 1992 with the few remaining assets under threat of litigation or heavily mortgaged. Tenements to Roy Hill were not in the company when Lang was alive – these were acquired after his death.”

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Young women in Yellowknife encouraged to pursue science, tech careers – by Randi Beers (CBC News Canada North – November 20, 2018)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

De Beers Canada luncheon promotes careers in science, technology, engineering and math

Akruthi Balaji has dreams of becoming a surgeon someday. The Grade 12 student was one of about 50 young women learning about all the possibilities for women in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematical fields — Monday in Yellowknife.

De Beers Canada organized the luncheon just as the Yellowknife Geoscience Forum gets underway this week. It starts Tuesday and runs through Thursday. Balaji isn’t intimidated by the prospect of entering a field she knows will be dominated by men.

“I do know there’s probably going to be a lot more men in whatever I am doing, but hopefully that can change and I really don’t feel that scared to go into it,” she said. Women are underrepresented in STEM fields. According to Statistics Canada, 39 per cent of STEM graduates are women, while women make up 66 per cent of all university graduates.

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NEWS RELEASE: Eradicating A Centuries Old Gender Barrier/First-Ever All-Female Emerald Mining Team Launched by FURA Gems (October 29, 2018)

Women in Colombia Take a Big Leap Forward in Male Dominated Industry

At the second World Emerald Symposium in Bogota this month, Fura Gems launched its All-Female Wash Plant Project, the first of its kind not only in the gemstone industry, but also in the mining sector.

Traditionally, women in West Boyaca have contributed to emerald mining as barequeras, washing tailings to find rough emerald, but until now had only been employed for formal work in areas such as general services, (kitchen and cleaning) at the Coscuez Emerald Mine.

Women in West Boyaca led the charge by expressing the desire to take a more active role in emerald mining – seeking out employment from Fura Gems.

The women working in the wash plant completed a safety and mining competencies course in their initial months at Fura Gems. They have also been trained to wash, sort, and grade emeralds at a temporary facility, with a modernized installation being prepared for Q1 of 2019.

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[Canada Mining] Checking the pulse on gender equity – by Ashley Joseph (CIM Magazine – October 24, 2018)

http://magazine.cim.org/en/

At the University of Saskatchewan, Jocelyn Peltier-Huntley is researching the state of diversity and inclusion in today’s mining industry.

University of Saskatchewan masters student Jocelyn Peltier-Huntley first started working in the mining industry in 2004, and eventually found herself in potash working on BHP’s Jansen Project. When she learned the company committed itself to a goal of gender parity by 2025, she was inspired to research the gender gap in mining.

“I thought, wow, that’s an impressive goal, but anywhere I’ve worked and travelled in mining I haven’t seen a lot of women, so how’s that going to happen?” With an undergrad degree in mechanical engineering, Peltier-Huntley began work on her masters exploring diversity and inclusion in the mining industry, with a focus on communication.

Peltier-Huntley spoke with CIM Magazine about where the mining industry currently stands on gender parity, and where it is headed.

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Leadership is really about recognizing talent, Lucara Diamond CEO says – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – October 15, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Eira Thomas is the chief executive officer of Vancouver-based Lucara Diamond Corp., which she co-founded in 2007. Ms. Thomas has more than 25 years of experience in the mining industry, including 14 years in various roles with Aber Diamond Corp. (now Dominion Diamond Mines) and as co-founder of Stornoway Diamond Corp., serving first as CEO and then as executive chairman.

Ms. Thomas was also CEO of Kaminak Gold Corp., which was acquired by Goldcorp in 2016 for $520-million. I was born in Calgary in 1968 the daughter of a mining engineer who then got the exploration bug and later started his own exploration company, Aber Diamond. I have three siblings, a brother and two sisters.

I’m the oldest. My brother is also in the mining business. One of my sisters is a winemaker in the Okanagan and the other is currently a stay-at-home mom. My mother was involved in banking and finance, but she left her job to become the primary caregiver of four children.

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The Bikinis Are Gone, But Change Is Slow for London’s Metal Boys – by Lynn Thomasson and Lucca de Paoli (Bloomberg News – October 12, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

(Bloomberg) — Strip clubs, lap dances in limousines, and waitresses in bikinis. For decades, there’s been a very seamy side to the nightlife at London’s annual get-together for the metal-trading world.

The sexist entertainment at LME Week parties has been chronicled by British tabloids for years, but it’s starting to change — slowly. At this year’s LME Week, some companies kept the risque corporate events. Others have given it up.

Gerald Metals, which bills itself as the oldest pure physical metals merchant, threw its party for clients and customers at the Playboy Club, as it has done for many years. The London casino is known for women wearing low-cut, black satin leotards and fluffy tails serving drinks and dancing with guests.

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Kate Carmack will be joining nation’s mining hall of fame (Whitehorse Star – October 11, 2018)

https://www.whitehorsestar.com/

The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame (CMHF) will welcome five individuals who have made lasting contributions to Canada’s mining industry – including a Yukon legend.

Kate Carmack is included in the inductees. She will be joining the Klondike Discoverers, who were originally inducted as a group in 1999. The group included George Carmack, Robert Henderson, Skookum Jim Mason and Dawson Charlie.

Each have traditionally been credited with the discovery that led to the Klondike Gold Rush, which would essentially establish the Yukon. New information has been uncovered that Kate Carmack also played an integral role in the discovery.

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Chamber of mines responds to allegations made at MMIWG hearings – by Alex Buchan (Nunatsiaq News – September 20, 2018)

http://nunatsiaq.com/

Alex Buchan is the V.P Chamber—Nunavut N.W.T. and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.

I wish to respond to the recent Nunatsiaq News story regarding violence against women in mining (“Sexual violence a spinoff of Nunavut’s mining industry: MMIWG hearings,” Sept. 13, 2018).

This article makes substantial reference to expert testimony from an Iqaluit resident—TJ Lightfoot—to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls held in Iqaluit last week.

With great respect to the actual professional credentials of this expert, Lightfoot is not an expert on mining in Nunavut. In fact, I understand Lightfoot is a youth services worker. As such, these views cannot be relied upon in considering the risk to women that may, or may not, be posed by resource development in our territory.

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Australian mining’s macho image worsens pain of labor shortage – by Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – September 21, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – When the song “Eagle Rock” played at a bar in an outback Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie late one night, a dozen young men scattered around a pool table dropped their trousers and heartily sang along in their underwear.

Later that night, they piled behind the counter of the bar attached to the Western Australian School of Mines (WASM), singing an anthem that began, “We are engineers,” and finished with an obscene description of how they treat women.

The scenes, in the background of an industry conference, cut against a hard reality the sector faces: a dearth of skilled applicants, and a workforce hurting for diversity and struggling to hire women.

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