Mining firm, Asante Gold Corporation, wants to be a “gender intentional” organisation which is committed to deliberately creating an enabling environment to address the perennial under-representation of women in the mining industry.
Executive Vice President and Country Director, Frederick Attakumah, says the quest to create a safe and secure space where women are empowered to thrive and realise their maximum potential is in line with the Sustainable Development Goal 5 on Gender Diversity.
The company is therefore working towards gender diversity targets in its recruitment efforts across operations.
“It is for this reason that the Management of Asante Gold Corporation has demonstrated its commitment to gender diversity by developing a Corporate Policy on Women in Mining.
“It is significant to note that we are one of very few mining companies in Ghana with an explicit policy on Women in Mining. The overarching objective of this policy is to build a female-friendly organisation by ensuring we deliberately, and actively, attract, retain and promote women within the organization,” Mr. Attakumah said.
He was speaking at the launch of Asante Women In Mining (WIM), which comes on the heels of the global celebration of International Women’s Day under the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality”.
“The said celebration highlighted the gender gaps in STEM education and careers and, I’m sure, you’ll agree with me that the mining industry sits right in the middle of this space – from earth sciences through to mainstream engineering,” he stated.
The Asante WIM platform offers an opportunity to bridge the gap.
“We’ll work with Asante WIM to understand how best to create safe avenues for reporting of all forms of harassment including micro-aggression and non-physical violence. The days when women found it impossible to report gender-based violence in the workplace must be in the past,” assured the Country Director of Asante Gold.
He prevailed on managements of Mensin and Chirano mining companies to make annual budgetary provisions that cover-planned activities of the Asante WIM chapters.
Mrs. Georgette Sakyi-Addo, President of the Association of Women in Mining Ghana and WIM Africa, says the group aspires to be a leading network that promotes the advancement of women in the natural resources sector for the transformation of local communities.
WIM Ghana seeks to eliminate cultural myths that a career in mining is not suitable for women by encouraging and empowering women to be leaders in the field.
