The Metal Paradox – Equality and Innovation in the Mining Industry

Since the start of the program, the Innovation Program Swedish Mining Innovation (SMI) has worked actively with gender equality, i.a. in the project GRÄV IN, to increase knowledge about gender equality and how to achieve a more inclusive industry. With those insights came the idea of a Designsprint, a way for SMI and RISE to build on experiences from other projects in industries with similar problems and designing a new event concept to attract other target groups (more women) towards Swedish Mining Innovations calls and activities and create a more equal and innovative industry.

There are several societal challenges for the industry to solve, including one that we choose to call the “Metal Paradox”. This lies in the divergence where civil society wants metal and batteries that lead to a green transition, but rejects mines and their effects on our way of life, nor want metals to be imported from low-wage countries. This is one of the mining industry's most important challenges and in order to find solutions to both this societal challenge and others, we must reach different competence profiles. This is vital both for the Swedish (and international) mining industry as well as for civil society.

Together with the industry via the program office, we will formulate a sustainability challenge that we need to solve, like the Metal Paradox, and develop a new event for the program, which attracts new target groups (mainly women) and work towards a more attractive and innovative mining industry.