International Women's Day Breakfast

Yesterday I went to the annual QRC/WIMARQ International Women's Day Breakfast and presentation of the Resources Awards for Women. It was a great morning - Her Excellency the Governor of Queensland Ms Penelope Wensley AO gave an interesting speech about her experiences as a woman in a male dominated profession.

QRC is doing a great job of encouraging women to get involved in the resources industry. Their aim is to increase the percentage of women in non-traditional roles from 6% to 12% by 2020. Seeing as they've already reached 10%, I think they'll easily exceed that target. As part of QRC's Women in Resources Action Plan, member companies have been taking initiatives ranging from providing PPE specifically designed for women to career development programs, and from allowing flexible working arrangements to providing mentoring and networking programs. I've attended quite a few networking and workshop events for women in engineering and have found them very inspiring and encouraging.

At yesterday's breakfast the 2009 Resources Awards for Women was presented to Sandra Collins. She is a great role model, being the first woman in Queensland to study mining engineering and only the second in Australia, she had to fight legislation which banned women from working underground! Last year's winner, Melanie Gordon, is also a fantastic role model. At a workshop for female engineering students late last year, she gave a speech about her studies (being a poor uni student) and career (now being able to buy lots of Tiffany jewellery) which myself and other students found really entertaining but also eye-opening.

I'd better get back to this assignment...we've only been at uni for a week and I already have 3 assignments!