The challenge of attracting women to mining has been made harder by reports of sexual harassment and abuse in the fly-in, fly-out resources industry.

Rosters can also be a detriment to attracting women, particularly those with families, to the sector.

At the recent Future of Mining Sydney conference a panel made up of KPMG Banarra partner-in-charge Meg Brodie, BHP vice president of procurement, global functions and China Robyn Dittrich, Bloomfield Group chief corporate services officer Renata Roberts and Women in Mining New South Wales chair Lucy McLean said mining had to diversify or risk going bust.

Dittrich said the mining industry had a lot of room for improvement, especially since 62% of all female mine employees had stated in surveys that they had been harassed in the workplace.

She said BHP had conducted research on the shortfall of its labour requirements and not having greater diversity and eliminating workplace harassment would only make the situation worse.

"Unless we fix it now, we will be out of business in a few years," Dittrich said.

Looking at the major miners and they have all made some inroads into their gender equality targets.

In its half-year results, released on February 21, BHP said its strong focus on safety and health over the six months to December 31 included a commitment to eliminating sexual harassment, racism and bullying in its workplaces and accommodation villages.

"There is no place for these behaviours in society or at BHP," the miner said in its half-yearly report.

"We are continuing to build awareness, understanding and capability across our workforce, enhancing prevention controls globally, and strengthening how we respond and support impacted persons when these incidents occur.

"Over the past 12 months this focus has included holding global safety stops, with leaders directly engaging with all our teams in all locations about sexual harassment, racism and bullying as well as progressively deploying active bystander training, which seeks to empower everyone to speak up against disrespectful or harmful behaviours.

"In parallel, we are also taking further steps to encourage reporting of sexual harassment and ensure our workforce feels safe to do so.

"We continue to engage with external experts and our workforce to learn from best practice and enhance our approach."
BHP has set the aspirational goal of having gender balance by the end of the 2024-25 financial year. It defines gender balance as a minimum 40% women and 40% men.

In the first half of the 2022-23 financial year women made up 33.6% of its workforce, up 1.3% from the 32.3% in the six months prior and 3% from the 30.6% in the first half of FY22.

BHP reported the turnover gap between men and women was continuing to reduce with women leaving at a 0.6% higher rate than men.

It did not provide any breakdown of what percentage of women were in management or more senior roles.

In 2022 Rio Tinto increased the number of women in its workforce by 1.4% to 22.9%. That fell short of its 2% growth target.

The increases were spread across all parts of the organisation. The number of women in senior leadership roles increased from 27.4% to 28.3% year-on-year. In operations and general support the number of women grew 1.1% to 16.2%.

Rio Tinto also pointed to its implementation of the Everyday Respect report from the report it commissioned that was led by former Australian sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.

That report, which made "deeply disturbing" findings of bullying, sexual harassment, racism and other forms of discrimination through the company, made 26 recommendations. Rio Tinto vowed to implement all 26.

The most up-to-date figures Fortescue Metals Group provided to Australia's Mining Monthly came from its 2021-22 Sustainability Report, which was released in August.

It pointed to women holding 23% of all positions, 24% of leadership positions, which are categorised as manager roles and above, and 27% of general manager and above roles.

Some of the steps it took to increase inclusion and diversity included:

• Launching a two weeks on, two weeks off roster option;
• Continued operation of the Family Room at the Fortescue Centre in Perth;
• Mentoring opportunities through Mentor Walks and its internal Rookies and Coaches mentoring program;
• Development opportunities through National Association of Women in Operations membership;
• Speaking opportunities for women through FMG's partnership with the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy;
• 16 weeks paid parental leave for primary carers. That is available to men and women; and
• An ongoing commitment to gender pay equity.

The mean gender pay gap for FMG iron ore operations employees is 1.5% and for Fortescue Future Industries is 2.6%.

One company that is much further down the path to gender parity is copper hunter Chalice Mining.

It boasts an impressive 46% female workforce participation rate.

That broken down further has 29% of its board, 20% of its senior executive, 36% of its senior managers and 55% of its employees made up of women.

Some of that 55% employee rate could be related to the fact the company is going through an intensive permitting process at the moment.

While great steps have been taken to make women feel safer in the workplace, it is clear more needs to be done.

AusIMM conducts an annual survey to better understand key trends and issues.

This year's survey, of more than 500 people, reinforced some of the concerns raised about bullying and sexual harassment in the mining industry.

AusIMM chief executive officer Steve Durkin said 51% of respondents reported that in the past five years they had personally witnessed some form of bullying or harassment but only half reported it.

"And 25% of women have personally experienced sexual harassment," he said.

"These survey results are confronting. They should make us all feel uncomfortable. The blunt reality is that many people in our industry, men and women, often feel isolated at work and don't fell included.

"Many simply do not feel safe to go to work every day. And from our point of view that is beyond alarming. That is simply unacceptable.

"Clearly we need to speak candidly, honestly and openly about the need to continue to drive change.

"Change requires an industry-led approach."

The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia's latest Diversity and Inclusion Report shows a 1.3% increase in female participation in mining since the previous survey in 2019.

CME CEO Rebecca Tomkinson said the report was a valuable indicator of both the progress industry had made and the work still to be done.

"From a gender diversity perspective e the data in comparison to previous reports shows there is progress," Tomkinson said.

"Since 2013 the proportion of women in the mining and resources workforce has increased from 18.8% to 21.5%.

"Since our last survey in 2019 there has been an increase in female participation of 1.3% and from 2015 the increase is nearly 3%.

"These increases have occurred while the sector's overall workforce has continued to grow, including a 12.7% increase to more than 157,704 people since 2020.

"From 2013 to 2021 the percentage of women working as machinery operators and drivers rose from 11% to 17%, the percentage of women in technician and trade roles grew from 7.5% to 11.4% and the percentage of female managers increased from 15% to 20.7%.

"It's a similar story for women in board roles, which has increased from 11.1% in 2015 to 24.4%.

"But those numbers are still not high enough and the vast majority of the boards in the WA resources sector still comprises more than 90% men.

"Our ultimate aim is for our workplaces to reflect our community and that means gender parity. We need to keep working towards that and increase the speed at which we get there.

"We know that improving the diversity and inclusivity of our workplaces makes the safer for everyone and that's a challenge we are very actively working to meet."

Tomkinson pointed to ever-evolving flexible work policies and practices and childcare efforts that helped parents return to work after having children.

"The fact that 11.5% of all women are part-time employees indicate these efforts across the sector are having a positive impact," she said.