Last Thursday lunch time I attended a Women in Mining (WIM) networking event at the St Michaels Hotel in Falmouth - venue also to our Falmouth conferences. The event attracted 19 women, mainly from the Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, but also from as far afield as Imperial College London.
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| Attendees of the first Women in Mining (Cornwall) event |
We began the event with a brief introduction from Denise Pascoe of the Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, who explained the motivations behind starting up what is hoped to be an ongoing series of networking events. Following this, Frances Wall, the first female president of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, gave an introduction to the Women in Mining UK group, which was formed in April 2006 by Barbara Dischinger and now has over 1000 members.
Next came the potentially embarrassing "speed networking", whereby we each spent approximately 2 minutes talking to another attendee about what we do and why. This actually turned out to be a fun and easy way of getting to know people, although due to the high turnout I didn't get a chance to meet everyone unfortunately.
We then split into 3 groups, and over lunch we discussed the main issues affecting women in mining from our point of view and also planned the next meeting. Issues ranged from how to maintain a career and a family, to how to tailor your cv so that it is gender neutral, to the lack of female facilities onsite on occasion.
I somehow found myself volunteering to organise the next event, so look out for details on here or email me and I will add you to the mailing list. If you are interested in joining a WIM group then the details are here: http://womeninmining.net/community/wim-groups-around-the-world/ and their LinkedIn page is here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Women-in-Mining-86320/about.
Thank you to Denise Pascoe for organising this event and thanks to the St Michaels Hotel for generously allowing us use of their Locker Room.
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Great initiative Amanda. Hope it goes well. Hard to believe that it was not until 1984 that CSM had its first female graduate. And no one then would have envisaged there ever being a woman Director!
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