Chile's Mesa Mujer y Minería: Raising Women's Share of the Mining Workforce from 7.7% to 24%

Chile is the world's largest copper producer, with a large-scale mining industry that has historically been overwhelmingly male. In 2014, the Ministry of Mining, industry association Consejo Minero, mining companies and civil-society partners created 'Mesa Mujer y Minería' (Women and Mining Roundtable), a standing public-private forum to coordinate action on raising women's participation in the sector.

The roundtable coordinates monitoring and target-setting across the industry, tied to the government's National Mining Policy 2030 goal of 20% female workforce participation; 12 major mining companies tracked by the CCM-Eleva Alliance report workforce composition data.

Women's share of the tracked workforce rose from 7.7% in 2014 to 21.8% in 2024 and 24.0% in the second half of 2025, surpassing the 20%-by-2030 policy target five years early; women made up 39.7% of new hires in 2025, with notable regional variation (Coquimbo 29.0%, Antofagasta 25.8%, some individual sites over 40%). Despite these workforce gains, Chile's economy-wide gender pay gap widened to 26% in 2024 (from 23.3% in 2023), and within mining a larger share of women than men earn under CLP 1 million a month; a University of Chile study found about half of women reported gender-based discrimination during training or on the job.

Gains are concentrated in headcount representation among large formal employers and have not extended to pay equity or workplace safety, which helped prompt Chile's 2024 anti-harassment 'Ley Karin.'