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A ROADMAP FOR MINERALS PROCESSING EDUCATION

Comparison between conferences
Flotation is a complex process, involving chemistry, surface science,
hydrodynamics and multiphase flow, to name just a few of the many fields
within the subject. It is helpful, when considering the numbers of women in
mineral processing, to include also other disciplines, namely comminution
and process mineralogy.

A comparison of the gender balance of the three most recent MEI
conferences held in Cape Town in these fields is given in Figure 6. Overall,
it has been shown that 18.9% of delegates at Flotation ’15 were female;
Process Mineralogy ’14 (total number of delegates: 74) had a total of 25.7%
female attendees. This originates in the significantly higher proportion
of female academics in this field, at 38.2%, as industry contributed 15%
female delegates. The industry value of 15% is strikingly similar to that for
the flotation conferences, showing good agreement with the lower value
for female mineral processing graduates. The field of comminution, on
the other hand, appears to attract a much lower proportion of women,
across both academia and industry. At Comminution ’14 (total number
of delegates: 229), just 6.6% of the delegates were female; in this case,
academic women accounted for a lower percentage (4.0%) than did
industry women.

While the possible reasons for this will not be speculated here, it can be
assumed that the three conferences give a reasonable cross section of
the general make-up of the mineral processing community. Weighting the
data by number of delegates attending the three conferences, therefore,
the total proportion of female attendees was 14.6%, with 18.8% from
academia and 11.5% from industry. This suggests the number of women in
mineral processing lies at approximately 1 in 7.
Other Studies and Future Prospects

A comprehensive study on attracting and retaining women in the Australian
minerals industry was published by the Minerals Council of Australia in
2007 (Unearthing New Resources, 2007), separated into three sections
focusing on young women and career expectations, the expectations

Where are the Women in 163
Mineral Processing?