A senior mining manager has revealed the difficulties of being a woman in the industry and revealed that some think she is simply a “diversity hire”.
Sienna Mallon, 27, moved from Victoria to regional Queensland two years ago after transitioning from the agricultural resources sector.
His dedication to his mining role in Rockhampton culminated in a rapid promotion to his current position as Site Manager.
The average salary in mining is between $125,000 and $145,000 a year, according to job search platform Seek.
Ms Mallon said she is constantly plagued by doubts about her abilities and that her male colleagues claim she is only there because of her gender.
“Now that we have quotas to increase female representation, there is a perception that women are less competent,” Mallon said. Yahoo.
“The only explanation they offer is that I was hired to meet a diversity quota,” Mallon said.
Ms Mallon advocates for greater female participation in the industry but described experiencing “imposter syndrome” and frustration and says she is seen as a product of a diversity initiative rather than a merit.
Sienna Mallon switched to mining for a high salary, but revealed a key problem in the industry
She documents her work on TikTok and has amassed an audience of 176,000 followers.
Many of her videos show the struggles and benefits of working in the mines, some showing young women who can also earn high wages in a male-dominated field.
In a video she shared that young women understand that mining is hard work and just want equal treatment on site.
“Every day I hear men and women say that the reason they don’t want more women in the mining industry is because they want special treatment,” she said in the clip.
“But there’s one thing I’ve never heard any girl in this industry, or any industry like that, say: They want special treatment. I’ve never heard that.
She contrasted the perception of her female colleagues with that of men in mining.
‘Women come on site, it’s assumed they’re not competent and then we have to prove we are, whereas men come on site, it’s assumed they’re competent until they prove they’re not.
“We’re not afraid of hard things, we’re afraid of being treated differently,” she said.
She said women in mining felt unsafe in the work environment because of perceptions about their roles there.
‘We’re afraid of not feeling safe going to the bathroom on the night shift, we’re afraid of not feeling safe going to bed because we’re alone and we don’t have people around us that we feel safe with.
‘You’re in the middle of nowhere and you have no one, and you expect the people around you to do the right thing.
‘This is something I don’t know many men have considered when accepting a job in mining, but I know every woman I’ve met has considered this detail.
The 27-year-old said female workers are considered “diversity hires” rather than receiving credit.
“We’re not asking for anything easy, we’re asking for something even.”
The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicates that in 2022 there were 45,000 women in the industry, compared with 8,700 in 2002 – an increase of around 417 per cent over the two decades.
Women still lag behind men in participation, making up about 20 percent of the full-time workforce.
Some companies have introduced gender quotas to address low female participation, which Mallon says might help women enter the industry but cannot help them tackle stereotypes at work.
“They can get in because there are gender quotas, but the quota is there to give them the opportunity to be scrutinized, to force managers to put aside unconscious biases and force them to look at them,” she told Yahoo.
