The third session of the Women and Mining Roundtable of the O'Higgins region was held at the Codelco El Teniente Division Mining Management Training Center in Colón Alto. This is a public-private collaboration space that seeks to promote greater female participation and permanence in the mining industry and foster gender equality.

Led by the regional minister of Mining, Bárbara Gavia, and the regional minister of Labor, Jaime Chamorro, the meeting also brought together representatives of the National Service for Women and Gender Equality, higher education institutions that teach mining courses, such as AIEP, IPG and Inacap, and Codelco División El Teniente.

“In this third session we focused on working together with all the public and private entities that participated in this event. We all worked together to promote the inclusion of women in mining and contribute to greater equality of opportunity in the mining industry in the region,” explained Bárbara Gavia.

The regional minister for labour recalled that “the women and mining roundtable allows for the effective inclusion of women in a sector that is part of our identity as the O'Higgins region, thanks to the presence of El Teniente, one of the main mines not only at a national level, but also at a global level”.

Teniente's advances in female incorporation

During the activity, Carolina Marín, consultant for the Human Resources Management Department at El Teniente, detailed the initiatives that the Division has developed in terms of diversity and inclusion and how progress has been made in the incorporation of women into the mining industry.

“Incorporating more women into El Teniente is a real sign of our commitment to moving towards a different culture that promotes diversity and inclusion. In this way, we provide a real space for female integration into the mining industry,” said Marín.

In 2024 alone, programs such as the El Teniente Mentoring Program for Professional Women for students from technical high schools in the O'Higgins region, and the Aprendizas Program, in which more than 48 women were chosen to join the training program that prepares them to join the mining industry, were carried out.

Currently, El Teniente has its own staff of 551 women, in addition to 1,511 workers from collaborating companies. In total, more than 2,062 women are integrated performing various tasks in the Division, 331 more than in October 2023.