The future of mining shaped by women and technology

Posted: July 17, 2024

Mining has long been considered a hypermasculine industry, despite women working in mines side-by-side men throughout history.¹ Women have played critical roles in mining operations for hundreds of years, from prospecting to ore processing to managing.²

But Victorian-era morals considered mining an inappropriate field for women. British legislators clutched their pearls at the thought of women doing physically demanding work, especially in dark underground spaces with men. Laws were passed to prohibit women from working in mines – which spread throughout the British empire and became the standard worldwide.³

Even now, the legacy of these laws persists, with women critically underrepresented in the mining workforce – estimated at only about 16%.⁴ Some countries still ban them from sites entirely. A 2020 World Bank report found that 60 countries still prohibit women’s participation in mining in some form.⁵

Though the number of women working at mining sites has increased throughout the last century, they continue to face discrimination, still struggle to advance[6] and are often paid less for similar work. Retention continues to be low, as remote sites and long hours don’t work for the many women who require childcare and part-time opportunities.

For too long, women have been the true untapped resource of the mining industry. But the landscape is changing quickly. More and more women are graduating with engineering, geology and business degrees, and their participation in the workforce is ramping up.

Technology has been driving a trend toward increasing the number of women in the industry. Employment opportunities will shift from remote mine sites to cities, as operation roles will be managed by technical operates in offices.

We are seeing the early stages of this shift now. AVEVA recently completed a project with Rio Tinto on a SCADA upgrade where operators moved from a remote site to a metropolitan operating center. These technological trends will enable remote work to disperse across the globe and operators will be able to control processes beyond geographical boundaries. Will the tech-savvy female millennial be the new miner?

Tech megatrends are significantly reshaping the landscape of modern mining, including employment models.  Disruptive technologies such as AI, machine learning and robotics will produce major change in the mining labor force of the future.

The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2025, the mining industry will adopt technologies such as non-humanoid robotics, connected wearables, cloud computing, virtual reality and big data analytics. This will drive a future where there will be less need for a workforce in the field. Instead, the future of mining will be digital, mechanized and connected.

Still, even with more women trained in technological fields, structural barriers to women’s participation in mining persist. The technology sector has a significant gender gap, with women underrepresented in STEM-related jobs. Companies could consider clear recruiting targets to combat this trend. AVEVA also faces challenges in gender parity, and to drive change has committed to 50% of women for new hires, 40% women managers and 30% women in leadership by 2030.

As the mining industry transforms to the digital mine, the industry will need to continue to diversify to deliver an environment where women can thrive at both mine sites and at headquarters. Fostering greater flexibility with remote opportunities enabled by digitalization is a key step in the right direction.

¹https://resourcegovernance.org/articles/women-mining-history-legal-invisibility-and-exclusion ²https://blog.dol.gov/2022/03/22/a-brief-history-of-women-in-mining
³https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214790X18303058?fr=RR-2&ref=pdf_download&rr=89636a9b2effc072
⁴https://wimcanada.org/who-we-are/
⁵https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/32639/9781464815324.pdf
⁶https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/energy-environment-people-organization-untapped-reserves