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MINERALS INDUSTRY EDUCATION AND TRAINING II

regions in Figure 1 are represented (i.e. the 18% of mineral processing
graduates for which no data were available on the numbers of females
included no women).

In total, using the available data, the proportion of global mineral processing
graduates that are female is estimated as 17.2%. This is based on the above
assumption, however if we assume that the five countries/regions in Figure
2 are representative of the whole supply of mineral processing graduates,
then the proportion of women rises to 20.9%. This is broadly in line with
the proportion of female engineering undergraduates in the UK, at 16.1%
(Equality in Higher Education: Statistical Report, Part 2: Students, 2015). As
a point of comparison, in the same UK study, 39.6% of physical sciences
undergraduates were female.

Figure 2: Proportion of female graduates in mineral processing
(LHS) and contribution of female graduates to total supply of
mineral processing graduates (RHS) by country/region (adapted
from Cilliers, 2013).

60
50 8%
% Female 40 % Female of total graduates 10%
6%
30
4%
20
10 2%
0 0
Africa Australia China North America South & Central America Africa Australia China North America South & Central America

In the supply and demand study from the IMPC Commission on Human
Resource Development, the survey included a question on the number of
mineral processing graduates entering industry; these data are shown in
Figure 3 (on the left). Of note here is the low fraction of African mineral

Meeting the Challenges of a
158 Section 4
Changing World