I wish this were just a joke; but it is a fact.  Whenever I post anything on this blog about women in mining, two things happen:

• I get many quiet comments about being sexist; and
• The number of page views increases dramatically. 

The number of page views also increases dramatically whenever I use keywords like “pretty lady.”  The reason for this sudden spike of interest is, I suspect, the rather sordid spectacle of men who have automatic alerts to anything new on pretty ladies, women mining, and you can imagine the rest. 

So with some trepidation, I bring your attention to the 2004 report on the III International Conference on “Women and Mining.”  For obvious reasons I do not comment, but leave you to read and decide yourself. 

At university we formed a trio: all bright, but otherwise different.  One lazy and impractical; one energetic and pragmatic; one imaginative and socially responsible.  We went our separate ways in the world: to Australia, Canada, the United States, and the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.  Occasionally we still interact.  Just as now when I review a paper by one of the trio; and rightly he deserves my review for being so bold as to write the truth that offends. 

Of course he will respond that I distort his pragmatic perspective and tell my own truth which is not his truth.  But that ever was the argument over beers, so why not continue now over old age? 

The background to this blog posting is a long review I have just posted on TechnoMine.  In that review I write about a number of the papers presented to eighty or so people in Tasmania last week.  At a conference on the hoary old topic of acid mine drainage and acid rock drainage.  I avoid the acronyms ARD and/or AMD.  They looks so innocuous and innocent, whereas the topic is anything but innocuous & innocent.

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