Mining & women – not a natural symbiosis?

August 5, 2011

It is fair to say that women and mining don’t have a natural synergy. Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or soil from the earth and often takes place underground, in harsh and dirty conditions in some of the most inaccessible of places. Not an environment where you would naturally place a woman, however, recently the two have been charted together when Gina Rinehart was named Australia’s richest citizen.

Mrs Rinehart’s is the heiress of Hancock Prospecting and the daughter of mining magnate Lang Hancock her fortune is now estimated at Australian Dollars 9 billion and she is the first woman to hold the number one spot as Australia’s richest person at the same time as the country also has its first woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

Mrs Rinehart, 57, took over the business of her late father in 1992 and is credited with expanding and developing mines in Western Australia and Queensland. Since then the business has benefited from the Asia-driven mining boom as well as the general recovery of fortunes following the global financial crisis.

It’s fairly certain Mrs Rinehart has never done any mineral exploration but the geologists in her business will certainly have used Window Sampling equipment at some point in their mineral exploration activities.

For more information on our equipment, click here.