A female geologist in Canada explains why she left the mining industry.
Diversity is a hot topic these days in the mineral exploration and mining industry. It seems that no matter what conference you attend, someone will comment on the number of older Caucasian men that are in the room vs. people that are younger, female, indigenous or ethnically diverse. The discussion always leads to a consensus that the industry needs more diversity. While this true, I often find that the discussion fails to address the factors that may be inhibiting these groups from entering, and/or staying, in the industry.
One summer, I was working in a camp of 20 people total, and the gender balance was evenly split among the team. I was washing dishes with a male co-worker on the third day of camp, so I had only met this man 3 days prior. Within 10 minutes of talking, he told me that he would probably cheat on his girlfriend this summer while in the field, and hook up with someone (no one in particular) while at camp. This mostly confused me; aside from the adult workers, there were 10 geologists total and 5 were female, and I think I was the only single female at the time. Did he automatically assume that the females in camp would want to sleep with him and he had his picking of us in the camp? Was he planning on making this happen at any cost even if we weren’t interested? Was he telling me he wanted to sleep with me?
Read Anne’s full article HERE.