Last week over 25,000 people attended the 2018 Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada Convention (PDAC) – the world’s largest mining event that attracts investors, analysts, mining executives and government officials from 125 countries to Toronto each year. As in previous years, countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru showcased their respective endowments in hopes of capturing important global mining investments. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) attracts one-third of the world’s mining investment and possesses 2/3 of the world’s copper and lithium, among other minerals.
The importance of ensuring that mining investments translate into sustainable development and greater gender equality were the key themes in an affiliated event organized by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and co-hosted by the Canadian Council for the Americas and RAW Talks, which brought together PDAC attendees to discuss the mining sector’s role in fostering inclusive growth in LAC.
The discussion was prompted by short videos with excerpts from RAW Talks Interviews, such as one with Ramon Espinasa, General Coordinator of the IDB’s Extractive Sector Initiative (“What matters to investors today”); another with former World Bank Energy and Extractives Manager, Paulo de Sa (“Territorializing the mining industry”); and with the President of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, Daniel Kaufmann (“Resource Governance”). The event also showcased an IDB-produced video on “Gender inequality in mining”, which contains a series of interviews with men and women in the industry.
Perhaps the most impactful conversation of the event was related to gender inequality in mining. In LAC, the sector employs less than 15% of women, said President Moreno, and that we need to move beyond employment to establish inclusive policies around value chain integration. The IDB-produced video highlighted the cultural belief that “women bring bad luck in underground mines” which is still deeply embedded in many countries across the region. Just in 2015, Colombia eliminated the clause of the 1987 underground mining code that expressly prohibited women in underground mines.
Mr. Bergeron emphasized how the industry has yet to be more inclusive at the mine level since corporate offices do tend to have a higher female participation (12% vs. 36% in Goldcorp, respectively). He also described the outstanding performance of women truck drivers, when compared to their male counterparts: “Women tend to have better precision, fewer accidents and take better care of the equipment, resulting in a strong business case for employing more women in the industry”. Finally, MP Goldsmith-Jones said that “when women do better, the world does better” and explained Canada’s reasoning for developing a new Feminist International Assistance Policy and promoting gender equality across sectors to guarantee sustainable development.
The mining sector, as illustrated by its most important conventions around the world, is changing however slowly. From Mining Indaba in Cape Town to PDAC in Toronto to Expomin in Santiago de Chile, more women are attending and shining a light on the inequality of one of the world’s most male-dominated industries. Just a decade ago, when Women in Mining Canada started their networking events at PDAC, 30 women showed up, but on March 6, 2018, over 2,500 women and men attended Women in Mining Canada’s award to publicly celebrated women and diversity in the industry.
There is still a lot to be done around gender equality in the mining sector both within and around the industry. Building the business case, challenging gender stereotypes associated to cultural prejudices and understanding how mining benefits and risks are experienced differently by women and men, is just the beginning.
Over the course of this year and beyond, the Extractive Sector Initiative at the Inter-American Development Bank will continue to explore many of these key themes through our growing work on improving sector governance, promoting greater gender equality and inclusive growth through better social, environmental and economic policies in the mining, gas and hydrocarbon sectors in Latin America and the Caribbean.
María Dolores Vallenilla is a Consultant on Gender Equality and M&E for the Extractive Sector Initiative at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
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