Asante Gold Corporation, in the Bibiani Ahwiaso Bekwai Municipality of the Western North Region, has reaffirmed its commitment to gender diversity with the official launch of its latest initiative, Asante Gold Women in Mining (Asante WIM).
Asante WIM is intended to highlight the contribution of women in mining, address and close gender gaps in Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and careers.
According to the Executive Vice President and Country Director of Asante Gold Corporation, Frederick Attakumah: “The overarching objective is to build a female-friendly organisation by ensuring we deliberately and actively, attract, retain and promote women within the organisation”.
To this end, he said Asante Gold Corporation want to be a “gender intentional” organisation which is committed to deliberately creating an enabling environment that addresses the perennial under-representation of women in the mining industry.
“This is in line with the Sustainable Development Goal number 5 on Gender Diversity and further means that we must start working towards gender diversity targets in our recruitment efforts across our operations,” he added.
Mr. Attakumah, while acknowledging that Asante WIM presents an excellent platform to enhance solutions to gender gaps, said a corporate policy on women in mining has been developed.
He said: “It is significant to note that we are one of the very few mining companies in Ghana with an explicit policy on women in mining.”
The Executive Vice President and Country Director of Asante Gold Corporation who was speaking at the launch of Asante WIM assured of continuous efforts to ensure a safe and secure space where women are empowered to thrive and realise their maximum potential.
As a result, he stated that: “sexual harassment and gender-based violence will not be tolerated in our workplaces. We’ll work with Asante WIM to understand how best to create safe avenues for reporting all forms of harassment including micro-aggression and non-physical violence. The days when women found it impossible to report gender-based violence in the workplace must be in the past.”
In building a female-friendly organisation, Asante Gold Corporation said it is committed to adequately resourcing Asante WIM’s activities. Asante WIM programmes include outreaches to secondary schools, churches, and mosques, among others, for career counselling purposes, and women’s health awareness creation, among others.
Also speaking at the event, the President of Women in Mining (WIM), Georgette Barnes, reckoned that mining on a global stage is very male-orientated with some significant cultural myths about working in mines.
Given this, she said parents tend to advise their daughters not to choose a career in mining because it is perceived as an industry not suited for women.
Furthermore, she noted that unconscious bias seems to hold girls back from studying science and technology, and this also limits the number of women in the pipeline for careers in mining.
“We want to eliminate any cultural myths that a career in mining is not suitable for women. Women can be and indeed have been leaders, and we want to encourage and empower them to take their rightful place again,” she said.
