“This result is all the more impressive as it is above the current female participation rate of 16.4 per cent across all engineering disciplines at UQ,” Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche said.

UQ’s BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance Chair of Mining Engineering Professor Peter Knights said the participation of women in mining engineering fluctuated from year to year, though he noted there was a definite upward trend over time.

“This year, mining engineering has outperformed most other engineering disciplines,” he said.

Roche said the record came in the same year UQ’s first-ever female mining engineering graduate Sandra Collins won the QRC Resources Award for Women.

“Ms Collins was the only female to have graduated from UQ with a Bachelor of Engineering (Mining) in 1979 and has paved the way for other women,” Roche said.

He added that all the graduates had been snapped up by the resources sector.

QRC has launched a number of campaigns to attract women into the resources industry, including a careers marketing campaign and QRC Scholarship Ambassador Program in 2005, and the Women in Resources Action Plan the following year which aims to increase the proportion of women in non-traditional roles in the resources sector to at least 12% by 2020.