Doing Safer Masculinities: Addressing at-Risk Gendered Behaviours on Mine Sites

To date, there has been no significant attempt to address the impacts of gender on safety in the mining industry. The reluctance to address this issue is arguably the result of an embedded masculinity which benefits many of the industry’s employees (Abrahamsson & Somerville; Collinson & Hearn; Mayes & Pini). A link between gender and risk-taking behaviour has nevertheless been recognised in research into driving (Harré et al.), sport (Albury et al.), leisure (Harris et al.), everyday life activities (Pawlowski et al.) and the workplace (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work; Scotchmer). In this research, men are consistently seen to take more risks than women. This is therefore surely an important topic for the mining industry where, in countries like Australia and Canada, approximately 85% of the workforce is male. In this article we outline a proposal for two new workplace programs which we have designed to address at-risk gendered behaviours on mine sites. Our aim is to encourage curriculum development of programs that will ensure mining companies and their employees pay closer attention to the impacts of gender on safety, and vice versa. The development of the programs we describe in this article draws on existing notions of gender auditing and action research; and on information gathered during workshops facilitated with more than 400 employees of the mining industry as part of the 2010 mine safety roadshow which is run annually by the Resources Safety Division of the Department of Mines and Petroleum in Western Australia. In applying these concepts and this available information to the issue of gender and safety in the mining industry specifically, we hope to encourage mining companies to investigate seriously how gender impacts on the behaviours of people working in dangerous environments when contemporary cultural meanings of what it means to be a man often encourage—and sometimes dictate—risk-taking. Practices of Gender in Mining In 2008, Factive—a cultural research consultancy—launched the “Mining for a Safer Masculinity” research project. In undertaking his consultancy work for Factive, one of the authors of this article, Dean Laplonge, had recognised a total lack of attention to the link between gender and safety among personnel working in the mining industry, as well as a limited and limiting perception of the role of gender in the workplace in general. Through ongoing discussions with key personnel in the mining industry, including presentations at numerous national conferences and the publication of articles in national mining magazines in Australia and Canada, Laplonge sought to broaden understandings of gender in this industry beyond an existing focus on “women in mining”. (A range of articles and background information related to this work and research can be found on Factive’s Website.) This existing focus is very much contained within narratives of equity and affirmative action, often assuming “man” and “woman” to be stable subjects. The aims of the “Mining for a Safer Masculinity” project were to promote an awareness of gender as performative—as a “doing” rather than a “being”—and to encourage mining companies to ensure their safety personnel and operational crews were involved in work on gender. In 2011, Factive received funding through the Australian Federal Government’s Researchers in Business grant program to develop suggested responses to the issue of the impacts of gender on safety in mining—the results of which are outlined in this article. At this time, the second author of this article, Kath Albury, was employed by Factive to assist. In his work and research into the issue of gender in mining more broadly, Laplonge has identified a range of gendered behaviours which occur regularly on mine sites. These include the use of derogatory language aimed at indicating and/or correcting a perceived excess of femininity in men, with phrases “don’t be a wuss” and “toughen up princess” being common examples. They include additional verbal comments about and physical contact with the body parts of male co-workers, through a homosociality which seeks to erase or evade any hint of homosexuality within closely knit groups of men. They include stereotypical views about the low capabilities of women alongside stereotypical views about the high capabilities of men. They also include acts of aggression, sexual harassment, bullying and intimidation. These behaviours—in so much as they are aligned with what many working in the mining industry would consider displays of normative masculinity—fail to attract attention, scrutiny or criticism. These behaviours occur at all levels within mining organisations and have been identified to have negative effects on workplace safety (Laplonge, "Site"; Laplonge, Roadshow; Laplonge, "Vision"). Currently, no formalised system exists to capture information relating to the impact of gender on behaviours which may lead to a mine site fatality. Despite evidence of a link between gender and safety (Harré et al.; Harris & Glaser; Pawlowski et al.; Scotchmer), it is not considered an important part of the role of safety personnel who work in mining to contemplate the impacts of gender in any of the work they do. Gender tends to be deemed of concern only to personnel in human resources where it is linked to organisational values around “diversity” and to individual company goals in relation to the number of women in the workforce. Men engaged in operational work—those who work with large machinery and in the most dangerous environments on mine sites—are also not expected to have any understanding of how their behaviours are affected by gender. The safety of people working on mine sites is in actual fact rendered genderless in an industry which is nevertheless highly gendered and where practices of non-normative masculinity, namely non-toughness, are regularly monitored and corrected (Abrahamsson & Somerville; Laplonge, Roadshow; Somerville). There are a number of reasons why we see a failure to recognise a link between gender and safety in this industry. People studying occupational safety at tertiary level in general are not required to take courses that will help them understand the connection between risk and gender, let alone basic concepts of gender. Their ability to bring gender into their work on safety in mining is therefore undermined by the formal education process. Senior managers in the mining industry are not used to having to address issues relating to gender. They therefore do not have the experience to understand how gender relates to men and have not been expected to reflect on their own gender practices. Gender is also wrongly viewed as something of a “soft” issue which does not relate in any way to the primary aims of this industry: production and profit. It is therefore not considered as part of the normal processes of business planning, budgeting, mine site design or the practice of mining as a business. Our general approach to gender builds on a range of ideas from within feminist theory, sociology, cultural studies and queer theory that have been introduced and explored to contest traditional understandings of gender. Our understanding of gender and its application to particular contexts such as the workplace have been heavily influenced by the likes of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault (History) and Rob Connell, to name but a few. In summary, we understand gender not as a stable state owned by men and women; but rather as a fluid, contextual and often contradictory method of seeking to attain, refute, practise and perfect given biological sex. Such an understanding of gender is not evident in the mining industry today, where emphasis is placed simply on seeking to bring more women into the industry with no attention to the gender practices of men (Laplonge, So You Think). By focusing on the performativity of—and therefore mutability of—gender in our programs, we seek to encourage changes in gendered behaviours where employees see the benefits of such change without the change impacting on (or negating) their existing sense of masculinity. To do so, we first look to previous studies of gender at work. Drawing on Joan Acker's work, Meyerson and Kolb identify five sets of gendering processes in organisations. These are seen not simply as “problems”, but as sites open to the possibility of “experimentation and change” (563). They include “formal practices and policies” (job descriptions, recruitment and sick leave procedures), “informal practices and policies” (group meeting timetables, rewards and recognition), “symbols and images, “everyday social interactions” and “internalisations and expressions of gender identities” (564-565). Following on from this and recognising the importance of the “doing” of gender in the workplace (Carlson & Crawford 360), we see existing practices of at-risk masculinities on mine sites not as problems to be solved but as opportunities that allow mining companies and their employees to explore a range of issues not simply related to the gender of men and women in this industry, but also their physical and mental safety. Gendered Behaviours Review Our first proposed program aims to ensure safety personnel on mine sites can integrate gender awareness into their work. We call this program a “Gendered Behaviours Review”. The focus on “gendered behaviours” highlights that we are not looking at issues of sex specifically; our focus is not on essentialist notions of “man” and “woman”. Rather, we are interested in considering how men and women engage in behaviours which might support, negotiate or reject their given sex, but which nonetheless put them at risk. To this extent, we draw on Judith Butler’s reading of the relationship between sex and gender in which she argues that it is the existence of a gendered culture which produces the need for a binary of sexes. We are intere

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