Celebrating Women's Month | Sibanye-Stillwater

Sibanye-Stillwater – committed to gender equality, to empowering women and promoting gender diversity

At Sibanye-Stillwater, we are committed to advancing the development of women in the mining industry and gender equality. It is our belief that excellence does not distinguish between genders and our leaders are sensitized to create a balanced work environment that actively promotes gender equality.

M&G WEBINAR, 5 August 2020 @ 13:00pm

With Women’s Month in August 2020, Sibanye-Stillwater is running a Women in Mining programme, inviting different speakers from industry to cover various topics. In this first webinar, hosted by Mail&Guardian, Dr. Rica Viljoen, Sibanye-StillWater's SVP: Organisational Development and other guests spoke about empowering the voice of women in leadership to enable full participation in their roles in leadership and decision making.

Watch the replay

Women in management, senior management and in core and critical skills

21%
at our SA gold operations

14%
at our SA PGM operations

or 10 988 of our employees are women

of core and critical mining positions are held by women

0.05%
overall turnover rate of women in management at our SA operations

Sibanye-Stillwater was included in the Bloomberg 2020 Gender-Equality Index in recognition of our actions to improve gender equality and diversity.

What we have done and are doing

Following the release of the results of a gender baseline study conducted by the South African Commission on Gender Equality on the gender policies and practices of several mining companies, including Sibanye-Stillwater, we conducted our own such audit. Our audit’s recommendations on women in mining, pay and grade inequality, barriers to the advancement of women were implemented in 2019. All policies have been reviewed to eliminate bias and ensure that our human resources policies are gender neutral.
The women’s leadership programme was launched in July 2017, in partnership with Duke Corporate Education, to provide short leadership development sessions to empower women leaders within Sibanye-Stillwater at junior to middle management level. The first phase of the programme covered personal mastery, growth mind-set, community outreach, personal finance and women in mining.
The second phase of the programme launched in November 2019 with the first session focusing on feedback from the employment equity barriers audit: transformation. This first session also looked at developing an internal framework based on the UN HeforShe, a global solidarity movement for gender equality. Men were invited to the event as we see them as pivotal in building a cross-gender alliance for advancing women in mining within the company.
Our impact extends beyond women employees to women in our host communities. In 2019, in line with the Mining Charter 3, we provided 63 loans and spent R2.7 billion with historically disadvantaged female-owned suppliers.

Relevant board committee activities

Remuneration Committee addresses gender pay parity
Social, Ethics and Sustainability Committee focuses on gender equality and gender diversity, including women in mining and women in management
Nominating and Governance Committee is actively seeking female directors

Gender diversity

To accelerate gender diversity and equity, we aim to instil a culture that supports and proactively attracts women at all levels.

We actively promote awareness and understanding of gender diversity and equity by means of regular awareness campaigns and have removed gender-related barriers to advancement.

Every effort has been made to ensure that women working at Sibanye-Stillwater have the same opportunities as men, and that they are able to pursue these opportunities safely.

We have set up a gender working group at our SA operations to address gender equity. This working group is to develop strategies and policies to create an enabling environment and promote awareness of gender diversity. A focus of succession planning is to increase female representation in middle management and in senior/executive management.

Sexual harassment in the workplace

Allied to greater gender diversity is the risk of sexual harassment - this is not tolerated within Sibanye-Stillwater. It violates our values and code of ethics and is morally abhorrent. Sexual harassment is an especially significant concern in South Africa, where gender-based violence is a national shame. Regular communication campaigns are conducted to raise awareness and understanding of sexual harassment, as these are pivotal role in preventing sexual harassment in the workplace. The subject is also addressed in employee ‘return from leave’ refresher induction training.

Our sexual harassment policy governs procedures to be followed in dealing with sexual harassment. A dedicated sexual misconduct unit of Protection Services deals with all reported incidents of sexual harassment. An anonymous tip-off hotline is in operation and reports may also be made to HR managers. Counselling is provided to affected employees. In 2019, one case of sexual harassment was reported at our SA PGM operations and two at our SA gold operations. One case was reported at our US PGM operations.