Lynas Rare Earths celebrates women in mining at International Women’s Day event

Lynas Rare Earths had its International Women’s Day event on Friday at Kalgoorlie Town Hall to celebrate and recognise the women working for the mining company.

External relations manager WA Rowena Olsen told the Kalgoorlie Miner the company had brought women from across Lynas’ Australian operations to celebrate the diversity in the company and across the mining sector.

“We are so happy that everyone’s going to join us today here at the Kalgoorlie Town Hall as well ... a lot of the women today have not met each other because they’ve been at different sites. Obviously, our Mount Weld site is 400km away and our Kalgoorlie site is just brand new,” she said.

Ms Olsen said Perth women had also flown in to attend the event, and they would get the chance to meet colleagues who they had conversed with via email or phone.

“This will be a chance to see each other face-to-face and then celebrate coming together and inclusion and diversity and really challenging the status quo of what it means to be a woman in the mining industry,” she said.

“We’ve invited a number of women from across Kalgoorlie, Perth and Mount Weld that are our stakeholders as well because we want them to be included in everything that we do and we know that when we all interact together positive outcomes happen.”

The event’s special guest, Katherine Downey, is a two-time Paralympics gold medallist and architecture student.

“Kat also used to train with our very own Olympian who is Heidi Gan, our senior legal counsel and an assistant company secretary who represented Malaysia in the 10km open water swim at the 2012 London and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games,” Ms Olsen said.

“We’re also going to make a $5000 contribution to the Goldfields Women’s Health Care Centre and we’re going to make a $5000 contribution to the One Tree Crisis Intervention Service in Laverton.”

She said it was fantastic to be able to bring everyone together, but that Lynas knew they could not break the barrier and smash through the glass ceiling if men did not join and support them along the way.

“So we actually do have men from our operation joining us today to hear from Kat and to hear from our speakers and also to embrace the change that’s needed,” Ms Olsen said.

Lynas Rare Earths also announced a three-year partnership with the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Urban Landcare Group, with the mining company contributing $50,000 per year to receive KBULG’s “expert knowledge”.

“(They will) help us out at site to implement rehabilitation and revegetation initiatives above and beyond what we’re already doing,” Ms Olsen said.

Lynas Rare Earths chief executive Amanda Lacaze said the company was focused on improving conditions for women.

Ms Lacaze told the those in attendance the most important reason to observe and talk about the status of women was because of the disproportionate amount of abuse women continued to suffer at the hands of men.

“I was born to a caring and supportive family. I was born in a wealthy country and the result is I have had opportunities that many women did not and I asked myself, what can I do? Well, the number one thing that I can do is to make sure that we improve the outcomes for women in our organisation,” she said.

“When I first came to Lynas, I found women underemployed all over the organisation, doing administrative roles when they have a chemical engineering degree, for example, that was one of the most egregious. I wanted Lynas to become an employer of choice for women and I simply wanted more women in mining.”

Ms Lacaze noted that in 2016 Lynas had 58 women working in the company, mostly in administrative roles.

“That was the year that I promised absolutely that we would do better. Today I’m really proud to report that we had a total of 235 women, so that’s about 23 and a half per cent,” she said.

“There are 196 in Malaysia and 49 in Australia and finally, I’m a little bit pleased with our progress. I am particularly pleased that we have women in all parts of the business.”