Parental Leave Policies in the Mining Sector

Maternity, paternity, and parental leave policies are essential to enabling women’s ongoing employment in the mining sector. These policies support the health and safety of pregnant individuals and their children while protecting their right to economic and employment security. They also ensure that workers do not face discrimination due to their reproductive role.

This paper takes an in-depth look at parental policies in the mining sector. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing international and national frameworks as well as the publicly available parental leave policies of the 12 countries that were examined as part of the IGF-led Women and the Mine of the Future project: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Mongolia, Peru, South Africa, Sweden, and Zambia.

The paper first details the international and national frameworks around parental policies for each country, followed by an analysis of mining company policies that operate in these countries. Finally, the paper analyzes interesting trends regarding parental policies in the mining sector and outlines some considerations for the mine of the future.