Petra’s Women in Mining Committee organises a number of events and initiatives throughout the year to share experiences, identify challenges in the workplace and community, to create awareness around national campaigns to support women, and to promote development opportunities for women in mining. In FY 2020, these events included a WIM Month event, as well as a campaign to support the national ’16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children’.
WIM Women’s Month Event

WIM Women’s Month Event 
In August 2019, alongside Petra’s WIM Forum, the Finsch mine hosted an event to celebrate and empower women working at the mine. The event was hosted in partnership with Careways, a leading provider of employee wellness campaigns, and focused on approaches and actions to achieve a successful balance between work, career progression, personal and family responsibilities. The event also included a demonstration of ‘office yoga’, a Zumba class and an empowering talk on balancing work and family life.

Donating sanitary products to local schools
A United Nations report highlighted that one in ten girls in Sub-Saharan Africa do not attend school during their menstrual cycle; that could be as much as 20% of a school’s students. Women from the Finsch mine undertook an initiative to donate sanitary towels to students in the local Kgatelopele Municipal district.

16 Day of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children
In November 2019, the Finsch mine supported the national “16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children”. The ten-day campaign was kicked off by a “Walk against Gender-Based Violence”, with almost 100 employees and members of the Lime Acres community taking part. Posters to raise awareness of the campaign were also put up in local parks and schools. The campaign was closed by renowned speaker and community worker Ellen Pakkies who gave a motivational speech to the WIM Forum.

Free State WIM Forum
Members from the Koffiefontein mine participated in the Free State’s WIM Forum, which aims to to promote co-operation and consultation on health and safety issues relating to WIM between the DMRE, mining companies, employees and the Mine Health and Safety Council (“MHSC”).

The objectives for the Forum were to recommend action plans focused on the improvement of health and safety of women in the region; monitor improvements with regards to health and safety in the region; share information from the MHSC; enable members to collectively advise the MHSC on any health and safety related matters and to advance and promote WIM issues.