WOMEN OF LAKAKA - A BRIEF CASE STUDY

ABSTRACT

This case study presentation centers around initiatives taken by an indigenous

landowner company for the training of women as Operators of heavy earth-moving
equipment. These initiatives occurred at a world standard multi-national mining
development in the Lihir Island Group located in the far north-east corner of Papua
New Guinea. The Landowner company, Lakaka Limited, employs over 1000
Lihirians in providing mining and mine support services to the multi-national owned
Lihir Gold Project. Before mine construction commenced in 1995 the Lihir Island
Group was a largely undisturbed traditional subsistence culture with mission and
minor government influence.

Women of Lakaka is a vehicle to discuss facilitation strategies that can be used to deal
with a variety of them & us perceptions that develop in both organizational and cross-
cultural settings. The session may be useful for delegates in any work context trying
to reconcile differing perceptions and conflicts between groups and individuals
undergoing organization and cultural change.

The presentation will examine at least one specific process for the safe and structured
sharing of mutual perceptions between protagonist groups, not simply as a means to
define problems, but as a means to explore solutions through authentic
communication and agenda setting. Other themes that can be explored during the
presentation include the social impact of large scale development projects on an
indigenous culture, the opportunities that arise for social change, and gender issues
that emerge in a male-dominated traditional subsistence culture coping with the
capital logic demands of a huge multi-national mining project.

Phil Robson was a consultant to the Board of Lakaka Limited during the period 1994-
1998 and currently works as an Adviser on an AusAID-funded project in the Health
Sector in Papua New Guinea. The project is managed by IDP Education Australia.
 WOMEN OF LAKAKA - A BRIEF CASE STUDY

Introduction

My favourite landscape painter is Ray Crooke an Australian artist renowned for his
depiction of aboriginals and pacific islanders going about their daily business in what
a Westerner might see as very idyllic environments people fishing, women sitting
and talking, children playing, scenes that resonate with timelessness and languor in a
natural world that we in the West have lost, or at least feel we have lost .

Crookes brilliant natural colours and contrasting deep shadows come alive in simple
everyday scenes of island life. An explosion of red hibiscus, a white frangipanni
tucked behind the ear, or reflected sunlight glistening on a freshly caught fish, capture
the idyll.

Beyond the serenity of these idyllic scenes however Crookes play of light and
shadow also gives us a glimpse of the grim realities and hardships of life in a pre-
modern traditional culture; realities and hardships that are borne in very large part by
the women. Maternal and infant mortality rates in these communities are among the
highest in the world. A lifetime of hard physical work on a poor diet eeked out of a
subsistence agriculture does little for ones life expectancy.

External influence is sometimes apparent in Crookes work a religious crucifix on

a wall, or a cross on a distant church mission building. Even these suggest the
presence of pain and suffering and perhaps a belief that the daily regime of pain and
suffering may one day be compensated in another life.

Such is a thumb-nail sketch, drawn from life, of the women of the Lihir Island Group
located in the far north-east of New Ireland Province in Papua New Guinea, before
the arrival of a multi-national gold project. The discovery of gold deposits in the
1980s by Kennecott Exploration and subsequent mine construction and development
in the mid 1990s by the multi-national joint venture Lihir Gold Limited (LGL)
signalled a new kind of hope for the traditional landowners. There was hope for

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improved education and health services, and basic overall material improvement to
counter the hardships of village life. After lengthy negotiations an Integrated Benefits
Package (IBF) was signed between the traditional landowners and LGL, the multi-
national joint venture developer.

The first gold was poured in 1997. The amount of gold produced annually increased
from 519,823 ounces in 1998 to 606,310 ounces in 2000. The planned final dimension
of the pit is 2 kilometres by 4.4 kilometres to a depth of 185 metres below sea level.
Mining will be completed in 2014. Beyond that there will be productive operations in
assessing low-grade stockpiles for succeeding years.

Women of Lakaka is a small but significant story in the context of cultural and
occupational change in the midst of this massive mining venture.

The Holding Company - Lakaka Limited and its Strategic Directions

In 1995 the Board of Lakaka Limited, the largest landowner company on Lihir,
approached LotusHall Ltd (SEA) a consulting firm to assist them in the development
of Lakakas Holding company and its 16 subsidiary companies. Lakaka Limiteds
Board of directors expressed their frustration that many of the companies established
under LGLs business development initiatives were not sustainable. The Directors felt
that they were involved in fringe business activity picking up the crumbs from the
table rather than involved directly in the mining business itself, and specifically the
lucrative business of Contract Mining. All major contracts were awarded to expatriate
controlled or non-Lihirian controlled enterprises. In a major strategic review Lakaka
Limited set a number of ambitious 3-5 years goals to become a more sustainable
company. The direction expressed by the Board included the achievement of
outcomes that ensured:

! Lihirians (ie: Landowners) in control of their own business

! sustainable core business over the longer term & parallel human resource
development for Lihirian personnel

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 ! the development of positive social and community standards now, and for
generations of Lihirians to come

A subsidiary company Lakaka Civil and Construction (LCN) was tasked as the flag-
carrier to transform its operation from a daily plant-hire and earth-moving outfit on
the fringe of the mining business. The goal was for LCN, a wholly owned land-owner
company, to become a credible contender for long-term mining contracts awarded by
the multi-national joint venture LGL.

The Subsidiary Company Lakaka Civil and Construction

In 1997 a comprehensive plan and resource schedule was developed for LCN to
achieve this goal. One component of the plan was a training program designed to
ensure that LCN could supply from its own Lihirian workforce the best quality heavy
vehicle equipment operators comparable with expatriate or PNG mainland personnel.

LCNs expatriate heavy equipment operators already on-site were accredited as

trainers by the TAFE Open Learning Centre in Brisbane Queensland. The trainers
began in earnest to develop skilled equipment operators in the Certificate in Civil
Construction Supervision. This was an on-job competency based program with
supporting theory based classroom modules. Initially those selected were the most
experienced Lihirians from an all-male operator workforce. Parallel with this
initiative to develop Lihirian personnel as operational managers an intensive program
of Lihirian operator training was introduced. These too, in the beginning, were all
male recruits.

Over time it was observed that a very machismo sub-culture of boys-and-their-toys

had developed within the earth-moving company LCN. In the small-world
environment of Lihir the heavy equipment operators were regarded as hot-shots
holding glamorous positions to which every young village boy could aspire. In the
confined mining sub-culture of the Island local legends were created over-night as to
who could thrash their machine the hardest, take the most risks, move the most dirt,
and play hardest and longest during non-working hours a sort of pacific island
parody of Hollywoods Top Gun.

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Along with this new sub-culture symptoms of poor work performance began to
emerge. These included increasingly high vehicle maintenance costs, declining work
rates, rising number of incidents and accidents, declining driver productivity, and an
increasing number of disciplinary problems among the operators. At that time it was
considered normal to assign two or three operators per shift to one vehicle just to
ensure that it continued operating throughout the shift.

Pressing the Boundaries - Operator Training for Women

The suggestion to train a number of heavy equipment female operators gathered

momentum from a number of quarters. The negative sub-culture developing within
LCN was certainly a catalyst in keeping the issue alive. A number of educated young
Lihirian women had completed secondary schooling to Year 10 on the New Ireland
mainland. They returned home to Lihir to find only very limited opportunities for
employment, despite a world-class mining development in their own back-yard. Some
of the women were employed by various contractors on the Island in low-level semi-
skilled clerical, typing, retail, catering and house-keeping roles. Many remained
working in the villages where traditionally the women are much more active than the
men in the day-to-day running of the village. In the village the women tend to the
gardens, gather firewood, cook, raise the children, look after the pigs, and generally
put in a full and constant days work. Traditionally the men operate on a more
leisurely basis convening for discussion and decision-making as appropriate.

Several of Lakakas senior directors, themselves educated, lamented the lack of

opportunities for women (sometimes their daughters) and were alarmed at the
increasing negative social impact that development had brought to the Island. They
were anxious to introduce initiatives that might reverse the cultural slide they had
seen develop as a legacy of mining developments elsewhere in Papua New Guinea,
negative outcomes that they were anxious to avoid for themselves and their children.
Too much of the males income, in their view, was disappearing on alcohol and
gambling and too little provided for the material benefit of the village.

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At about this time the subsidiary company LCN was planning to place an order for six
new Moxy Articulated Dump Trucks to add to the heavy equipment fleet. On delivery
it was planned that the new vehicles would be allocated to each of the landowner
clans who were share-holders in Lakaka Limited, the holding company. Such
distribution of assets was a way of avoiding disagreements between shareholder clans
and ensuring equitable distribution of benefits. But who would drive the new trucks on
behalf of each clan? This issue provided a leverage point for those advocating a
greater role for women in the mine development. The cultural assumptions of the past
were beginning to be challenged from within: Why cant women be involved in the
producing income and benefits for their Clans? Why cant women drive heavy the
equipment? Why cant women be top guns?

Managing the Cultural and Organisational Barriers

From a cultural perspective the decision to allocate the new Moxy trucks to the Clans
made it easier to advance the argument for employing female operators. This was
because the profits generated by these machines would return indirectly to the Clan
thus legitimising the role of the women to advance their Clans wealth and material
progress in a developing cash economy.

After consultation between Lakakas Directors, the management of LCN, and the
respective Clan groups, six female operators were selected to undertake operator
training on heavy earth-moving equipment. The women had no prior experience in
operating a vehicle of any description. They were to be trained in time for delivery of
the new vehilcles. Their selection was not undertaken lightly: What about the culture?
What will the guys think? What about the laughter and ridicule from the rival
commercial companies on the island already disdainful of a landowner company
trying to assert itself as a significant player in the commercial stakes on the island. A
chorus of ridicule greeted the announcement of the decision to train female operators.

To their credit the directors took the lead on cultural issues and declared that Lakaka
should set an example in how a landowner company should conduct itself in labour
relations with its own people. Specifically they wanted to lead by example on the
issue of women in development. Lakaka, they claimed, would provide a Papua New

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Guinea first in the training of female heavy equipment operators and in the training
of females in other company management roles, previously the domain of men. Some
directors, it must be said, were also hoping to shame some of the young men who
thought that women could not possibly perform such roles effectively. It was a bold
break with tradition, not only within their own culture but within the mining industry
generally.

Through their consultants the Directors also supported a range of other initiatives for
a number of women to receive training and education in managerial roles both
overseas and on-site. The sole criterion measures for selection were education and
motivation, not gender. At the community level the Board supported the development
of a number of village based workshops in womens health. The mine had brought
with it a new hospital on the Island but the hospital provided little or nothing for
outreach activities in the village by way of health promotion and womens
understanding of their own health and lifestyle issues. These health and education
activities were all funded from Lakaka funds without contribution from the multi-
national joint venture. Lakakas support of womens issues generally at that time
provided other favourable initiatives in which to support the more audacious
initiative of female heavy equipment operators.

The results of an internal company survey also provided data to support the push to
train female operators. The survey revealed that on average only 10% of male income,
compared to 90% of female income, made its way back in direct support of the
village. This information was useful in rallying support from some of the more
conservative opinions at village level.

An expatriate female heavy equipment operator trainer, Janine Dunstan, was recruited
from Australia to train both male and female operators. Janine was an experienced
trainer and very soon both male and female trainees were at ease under her guidance.
She proved to be an excellent role model for the women and very adept at dealing
with any them and us issues that arose.

In Lihirian custom for example, it is inappropriate for women to sit higher than a
man. This taboo was raised as an initial cultural barrier. What would happen then,

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asked the sceptics, when the heavy equipment maintenance mechanic, a male, was
called upon to do field maintenance on the vehicle? It was held that the woman would
be sitting high in the vehicle cab while the mechanic carried out maintenance and this
would break a strong cultural taboo. This problem was soon overcome by introducing
a standard safety procedure that any operator, male or female, must never remain in
the cab while maintenance is being carried out.

Initial training was conducted at an old airstrip, using light vehicles at first. The
women then graduated to operate the heavy rollers that were used to compress the
foundations for the towns new business sites. From these vehicles they graduated to
heavy graders, dozers, and, on arrival of the new machines, were trained on the Moxy
Articulated Dump Trucks, and 160 tonne D400s that operated in the mine pit to haul
the over-burden to the barges for offshore dumping 5 miles out to sea over the
continental shelf.

Results of the Training

The training of the first group of six females, to full licensed certificate level at each
stage, was achieved in less than 4 months.

The results on the job were soon obvious to LCN Management, including the male
operators: the women performed with higher productivity, better safety, and with less
vehicle wear and tear than the men.

New operating standards were set for LCN and the men who wanted to retain their
positions fell in line with the new standards.

LCN called for applications for the next round of operator training and were
inundated with young women female applicants. A further 11 females were selected
and trained.

The Lihir Management Company (LMC), on behalf of the multi-national joint

venture, contracted LCN to conduct all Operator Training programs on the Island.

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Several of the LCN women were subsequently recruited (poached?) by LMC to
operate the huge 785 Mine Haulage Trucks in the pit of the mine.

In time, pride in and respect for the Women of Lakakas genuine achievements
replaced the catcalls and the wolf whistles and the jokes.

Capital Logic

It is useful to consider Lakakas initiative and the womens achievement in the wider
social and commercial context of a multi-national mine development involving
indigenous land-owners. In these situations power relations are unequal, with local
villages at the bottom off the influence ladder in the contest between the three main
beneficiary groups ie: the government, the developers and landowners. Landowners
are under relentless pressure from governments and companies whose timetable for a
mining project is based on very strict capital flows (Gerritsen and Macintyre, 1991).
These pressures create haste and financial imperatives that threatens the efficiency of
the impact assessment process and allows localised misunderstandings and
resentments to develop. Gerritsen and Macintyre provide an excellent model and
analysis of this process they call Capital Logic.

The capital logic model postulates three overlapping but distinct phases of capital
expenditure that drive financial decision making with inevitable social impact.
Decisions based on capital logic assumptions, by their nature, produce outcomes that
favour the developer and national government over the broader social, community,
business, and environmental interests of landowners.

The politics in the early Mine Proving and Establishment Phase (years 1-8) of the
capital logic process is about convincing landowners of the benefits they can expect to
realise from mining. Gerritsen and Macintyre state that this is when unrealistic local
expectations arise and realistic fears are allayed. In this period land is little disturbed,
compensation appears generous, and young male villagers obtain highly paid (to
them) jobs as labourers and semi-skilled workers.

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The second period of the Capital Logic model, the Mine Construction Phase (years 9-
10) involves heavy capital spending by the developer often using borrowed money.
Each day is an expense with no compensating return. The politics of this phase is
about national government and mining company cooperation for each others mutual
benefit. The landowners are marginal, an inconvenience at best, a major distraction at
worst. The scale of social, environmental and resource damage begins to be
understood by the local landowners.

Gerritsen and Macintyres third stage is the Operational Phase (years 11-25). During
this phase the company seeks early profits to repay its loan capital. Land-owners and
local villagers start to redefine the impacts and benefits for themselves. The politics of
this phase is characterised by expanding conflicts between local villages and the
company, between provincial and national government and within land-owner clans
over compensation payments and other benefits.

Agenda Setting

It was in the volatile Capital Logic climate of phase two and early phase three that
Lakakas initiative to train female heavy equipment operators occurred. In the myriad
of them and us polarities that were emerging on the Island gender differences were
suddenly an issue. Within the Lakaka group of companies various facilitated
interventions were undertaken to assist Lakaka personnel in dealing with protagonist
groups in ways that produced constructive negotiations and outcomes. In meetings
between protagonist groups, and in training workshops, simple intervention processes
were applied to shift the focus from problems to collaborative solutions. One such
process proved reliably helpful in dealing with simmering them and us differences
and conflicts. The process was simply called Agenda Setting.

The Agenda Setting process was effective in live conflict situations between actual
protagonists as well as in role-play situations to develop strategy in dealing with
protagonists. The Agenda Setting process is based on each group sharing perceptions
of the other (protagonist) group. Where there is either latent or overt conflict arising
out of a poor working relationship, perceptions emerge that confirm that protagonist
groups tend to see the best in themselves and the worst in the other.

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The exercise allows for these negative perceptions to be acknowledged and discussed
in a safe and constructive environment. What emerges in the process is that the
negative perceptions are generally very low on factual content and very high on gross
distortion. The data is gathered from each group (recorded on chart paper) and then
shared between groups based on three questions:

How do we see ourselves (ie us) ?

How do we see the other group (ie them) ?
How do we think they see us?

In low literacy groups the data can be easily, and profoundly, captured as drawings in
response to the three questions. Sharing the responses to these questions raises
accumulated and distorted perceptions that have simmered over time unresolved.
Each groups response to the third question ie: how we think the other group
perceives us, prove to be extremely accurate. The sharing of these perceptions provide
wonderful moments of truth as each side realises they are totally transparent to the
other and there is no longer any need for posturing and faade! Distortion and
embellishment fade away to humour and acceptance leaving the way clear to reinforce
any positive perceptions and proceed to focus the relationship on common goals,
priority tasks, and agenda. Agenda setting and action planning are the final steps in
the process.

Agenda setting and other similar facilitation processes assisted both the men and
women of Lakaka to adapt to new and challenging roles, to look for collaborative
win/win results, to value what was good in their traditional heritage, and to move
forward as occupational equals.

Success Factors

What can we learn from this brief case study?

The training of female heavy equipment operators on Lihir is but a minor training
intervention in the overall scheme of mining development on the Island. In a small but

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defining way however the Women of Lakaka were instrumental in breaking new
ground as role models for women in the tough macho environment of a male-
dominated mine site in the midst of a traditional indigenous culture. The women were
role models in breaking both occupational and cultural stereotypes. What then were
the success factors that allowed this to happen and can they be replicated elsewhere
on women in development issues? I believe so. The success criteria present in this
case and applicable elsewhere are as follows:

! Effective change requires one or two champions at the cultural and

organisational levels

! Cultures and traditions can respond quickly to change if people are given a
clearly demonstrated need and opportunity to change

! Implementation must be nursed and supported with effective role models

! Leaders need courage to confront sectional interests and to build a common

coalition of sometimes diverse interests

! Win/Win collaboration and consultation processes take time and effort but can
deliver successful outcomes.

! Committed action and successful performance outshine a culture of complaint

and wishful rhetoric every time.

Summary

In western culture it is now considered pass that women can choose to take on any
role to which they aspire given the necessary talent and motivation required to
perform that role. This is not so in many developing countries where womens roles
are still very much defined in the traditional and sometimes menial ways of the past.

The women of Lakaka broke the mould. They literally moved earth to make it
happen! It can be done again, whether on Lihir on elsewhere, on a range of

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development issues. The success criteria above may be helpful to others looking for
ways to break the mould, whatever the development issues.

Despite the enormous constraints forced by the capital logic impact of a multi-
national mining joint venture, the Directors of Lakaka Limited continue to work
towards achieving their long-term goals. Recently (August 2001) LCN was successful
in securing long-term sustainable mining contracts within the core business activities
of the mine. The female operators will be instrumental in delivering on these
contracts.

It is anticipated that mining will be completed in 2014. Beyond that there will be
productive operations in assessing low-grade stockpiles for succeeding years. In the
meantime the Women of Lakaka continue to literally move the earth. For the moment,
heaven can wait!

One day though the mining will end. Ray Crookes landscape has definitely changed.
Has it changed for the better?

The Women of Lakaka would say Yes.

References

Geritsen, R. and McIntyre, M. (1991), in Mining and Indigenous Peoples in

Australasia, edited by Connell, J. and Howitt, R. Sydney University Press.

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