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This book brings together years of research and on-site work exploring gender in the mining industry. It offers a challenging and unique approach to help resource professionals understand contemporary research on gender and to start thinking about gender diversity in more complex ways.

Drawing on ideas from the fields of gender studies and cultural studies, the author creates a new vision for gender in mining. The change appears simple, as we move from being genders to doing genders. But application of this new approach to gender is proving difficult in the mining industry, not least because it demands we also think about gender in terms of men and masculinities.

This book includes workshop and training materials to help professionals explore the relationships between gender and safety, and gender and leadership on mine sites.

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Safety communications make an important contribution to workplace safety. In the oil and gas industry, however, safety communications have received very little dedicated attention. There is a gap between how safety communications are practised in this industry and research on the role of communications in contemporary human culture. This paper explores some of the barriers that exist in the oil and gas industry to prevent better use of safety communications to improve employee safety.

(International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology. Vol. 8, No. 3: 291-303)

Narratives of safety are important in the workplace. They help translate the strategic goal of zero injuries into everyday stories that produce meanings around safety. Popular narratives of safety used in the mining industry tell employees that safety can be systemized, that it is more important than production, and that it is related to an individual’s personal life. This articles explores these three safety narratives alongside gender, to show how masculinity as it is practised in the mining industry affects the way employees respond to the safety narratives on offer.

(The Journal of Health, Safety and Environment. Vol. 30, No. 3: 300-322)

In this article we outline a proposal for two new workplace programs which we have designed to address at-risk gendered behaviors on mine sites. Our aim is to encourage curriculum development of programs that will ensure mining companies and their employees pay closer attention to the impacts of gender on safety, and vice versa.

(m/c Journal. Vol. 16, No. 2)

This paper considers the extent to which gender training for United Nations peacekeepers encourages reflection on how understandings of gender affect behaviors. Through an analysis of the content of three training packages, we find that the UN appears to show a fear of tackling the subject of masculinity, even as practices of masculinity may be driving gender-based violence in peacekeeping operations.

(Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice. Vol. 27, No. 1: 91 - 99.)

For any organization interested in developing a resilient safety and health culture, management commitment is critical. It is also important that the organization has a clear picture of what sort of culture it wants to nurture. This workshop planner series is designed for use by senior managers, including the board of directors. It can be used to identify gender-related issues that may affect an organization’s health and safety performance. The series should be viewed as a management tool to raise awareness of issues relating to gender that affect safety on mine sites.

(Commissioned by and produced for Resources Safety, Department of Mines and Petroleum, Government of Western Australia.)

In 2013, The Australian Human Rights Commission released its publication Women in Male-Dominated Industries: A Toolkit of Strategies. This article explores the efficacy of this toolkit within the context of the debate about how to manage gender in resource industries; and with reference to the failure of this debate to pay attention to contemporary research which explores/exposes gender as something more complex than the man/masculine versus woman/feminine divide.

(Journal of Management Development. Vol. 35, No. 6: 802-813.)

This assessment is the first of its kind to be conducted in the south-eastern region of Myanmar. It is an important contribution to ensuring the full inclusion of women and children in Myanmar’s political, social, and cultural systems, with a specific focus on the issue of gender-based violence (GBV) and its impact on these groups in south-eastern Myanmar.

(Commissioned by and produced for UNFPA.)

While there is existing work on the relationship between gender and mining in strands of environmental studies and resource studies, this paper moves away from generic feminist analyses of the environment and gender. Turning to ecofeminism, I argue that most debates that borrow from ecofeminism do not go beyond the maternalistic perspective that mining is anti-woman and thus anti-ecofeminist. This paper speaks to the gap in the literature by examining a specific group of gendered actors under the lens of ecofeminism, that is, women involved in the Women in Mining (WIM) movement. WIM represents a liberal feminism demand for equal opportunities for women in the otherwise heavily male-dominated and highly masculinised mining industry. However, in its current iteration WIM has not located its work within the discourse of ecofeminism, nor have its predominantly white, middleclass key stakeholders identified themselves as ecofeminists. As such, the complex intersectionalities of race, poverty, gender, age, class, and ideo-geographies are often neglected. In response, this paper queries, can ecofeminism and WIM enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship, and what might the impacts be for both sides of such a relationship? This paper begins with a summary of how the epistemological lens of ecofeminism can offer new understandings of and activism in the mining industry more generally. The next two sections present conceptual dialogues regarding how ecofeminism can challenge and reshape hegemonic practices and perspectives of WIM in its current iteration; and vice versa, how WIM can inform and enrich our understandings and applications of ecofeminism. In closing, the paper reflects on the apparent populist rhetoric of the two schools as incompatible partners.

(The Extractive Industries and Society Journal. Vol. 3, No. 3: 843-849.)

We need a new vision of gender in the mining industry. Indeed, we need a new vision of gender in a whole range of resource industries including oil and gas, as well as in associated industries like construction. Rarely if ever do we hear any debate among mining professionals about the links between gender and safety, gender and the history of mining, or gender and the physical design of a mine site. Even rarer is a debate about men and gender. The problem of gender in mining has quickly become a problem of women and only for women.

(“Working with a new vision of gender in mining”. In M. Flood & R. Howson (eds.), Engaging Men in Building Gender Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 193-201.)

Women’s safety within the workplace has gone largely ignored, both globally and within Papua New Guinea (PNG) specifically. In this paper, I discuss the findings of a recent study into safety for women who work in remote locations in PNG. The study shows that workplace safety in PNG is viewed as gender neutral. Gender is therefore not considered an important part of worksite safety management and practices. The study also further suggests that a paternalistic approach to women’s safety is preventing the possibility of creating an empowered safety for PNG women. Overall, the current practice of de-gendering safety in PNG workplaces works to silence many issues that impact on women’s safety at work. This is a practice that needs to be challenged if improvements in women’s safety and equity are to be achieved. The creation and use of gender-smart safety tools will help businesses operating in PNG to guarantee their efforts to ensure safety for women working in remote areas are robust and aligned with best practice.

(Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies. Vol. 6, No. 2. Pending)

In this paper I explore whether the employment of more women in mining will result in improved environmental management and practices in that industry. The debate about gender in mining regularly includes claims that the employment of more women will help change the industry. These claims rely on essentialist ideas about how women behave, and fail to consider the production of masculinity as the preferred gender for all mining employees. Drawing on the results of a survey which explores the attitudes of women who work in mining towards the environment, I conclude that the sex of employees is not the best indicator of possible change in environmental management and practices in the industry. Women who work in mining do not display a particularly strong or unique connection to the environment which would encourage them to drive change in their workplaces. In conclusion, I suggest that ecofeminism might offer better hope of improved environmental practices in mining; and call for more work to be done to explore how this might work in mining operations.

(The Extractive Industries and Society Journal. Vol. 4, No. 2: 304-309.)

This report provides a response to 8 workshops conducted for the Resources Safety Division of The Department of Mines and Petroleum in Western Australia (“Resources Safety”) as part of the 2010 Roadshow which ran throughout October and December in Newman, Tom Price, Karratha, Bunbury, Kalgoorlie and Perth. The focus of the workshops was “toughness” in workplaces in the mining industry and the wider resources sector (“the industry”). The report includes an analysis of participants’ contributions in the workshops and the author’s recommendations for how Resources Safety can contribute to driving improvements in mines safety through a focus on gendered behaviours.

(Commissioned by and produced for Resources Safety, Department of Mines and Petroleum, Government of Western Australia.)