Women in Mining Re-Establishes Local Chapter to Help Secure Arizona’s Future in the Industry
Rosa Maria Rojas, president of the organization and a University of Arizona mining and geological engineering professor of practice, says the payoff for diversity and inclusivity is great.
Attendees at the inaugural event for the new Arizona chapter of Women in Mining are all smiles.
Women are not new to mining in the Southwest, but they still face some of the same barriers that existed more than a century ago.
Though largely unacknowledged, women prospectors clad in khaki tunics, wide-brimmed hats and thick-soled boots traipsed across the Arizona desert as early as the late 1800s. They have been prospecting, investing, assaying, milling and engineering ever since. Yet mining -- an industry in which multimillion-dollar technology long ago replaced pickaxes and shovels and where engineers are in high demand -- remains one of the most male-dominated professions in the world.
The recently launched Arizona chapter of Women in Mining USA is looking to change that.
“Diverse teams make for better results in terms of ideas and profit,” said Rosa Maria Rojas, assistant professor of practice in the UA Department of Mining and Geological Engineering and president of WIM-Arizona. “As companies increase diversity and inclusion in our industry, everyone prospers.”
‘We Can Do Better’
Today women account for between 8% and 13% of workers in the U.S. mining industry, according to government reports.
“We can do better than that -- if we provide enough support and resources,” said Rojas, who earned an MS in mining engineering at the UA in 2013. Her own parents had office jobs with one of world’s largest gold mining companies in Peru and initially tried to talk her out of a career in mining engineering. They thought it was too dangerous.