Employers can quickly reduce the number of unfilled positions by recruiting inexperienced women, a resources leader claimed.
Unqualified female jobseekers could help ease the sector’s chronic labour shortages. This is why the federal government wants mining companies to give more jobs to women.
“It is critical that governments and industry work together to ensure we have safe and inclusive workplaces that welcome and encourage women to have rewarding careers in the mining sector,” Federal Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King said in a public statement.
“With the mining workforce already around all-time highs, and projects worth tens of billions of dollars coming through the development pipeline, there will be a significant need for more workers – this challenge is already here. Industry must find a way to attract the next generation of mining workers.”
King suggested substandard work conditions might improve if resources companies increase their gender diversity. The industry employs more than 52,000 women, representing just 19.2 per cent of sector’s total workforce according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
“Serious and disturbing issues raised by the Enough is Enough [final] report cannot be confined to one state,” she said.
Western Australia’s inquiry into sexual harassment against women in the fly-in fly-out mining industry previously recommended a sector-wide blacklist and public register for offenders.
The committee proposed publicly shaming sexual predators, and giving recruiters an opportunity to check whether jobseekers were blacklisted. The final report also advised classifying sexual harassment as a workplace health and safety issue to force regulators to intervene.
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