Changing the face of mining

"Currently, women represent 16% of Australia's resource industry," said Andrea Mitchell, member for Kingsley, WA, during a reception of the UK [WiM] group, hosted by the governments of WA and Queensland. "In particular, WA is committed to the development of the African mining sector, where women have a vital role (...) South Africa leads the world when it comes to women on boards in the mining industry, followed by Australia," she concluded. According to Amanda Van Dyke, chairman of WiM, an earlier study which looked at trends within corporations "sought to correlate the performance of mining industry organisations with the level of gender diversity within them - to demonstrate some of the benefits that higher female representation on boards and in senior executive positions can have on corporate performance".