Monica Quinteiro. Photo: Marie Eriksson.

Mine manager Monica - a pioneer among the men

Publicerat 7 Jul, 2006

Monica Quinteiro is the first woman to become a mine manager in Sweden. She works for the mining company LKAB, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB, in Kiruna:”When jokes about women and sex are coming so thick and fast that you can’t work, then things have gone too far,“ she says.

While most managers strut around in imposing and expensive business suits, a cardigan and jeans will do for Monica Quinteiro. She is open and accessible - a manager that you can share a coffee break with and maybe talk to about how things really are at home? It happens quite often that employees want to do this, and this is something she appreciates. But, if anyone should get the idea that she can't put her foot down then they are barking up the wrong tree.

At the first meeting following her appointment as mine manager two years ago, the laddish sex jokes took over - for a while. Then Monica Quinteiro made it clear that enough was enough.
"When jokes about women and sex are coming so thick and fast that you can't work, then things have gone too far," she says.

Things have also gone too far if people feel insulted or humiliated. "But, you have to learn to set limits yourself," she says. "Not just smile and play along. You have to dare to react and put your foot down." She likes to joke around herself, but there is a time and a place for everything. Today, at her urging, her line managers read books about gender roles and discuss them a lot, and at meetings the focus is on work and nothing else. But the laddish language continues to flourish, both above and below ground.

"This is of course a problem that doesn't just exist at LKAB, it is rife throughout society," she says. "It would be very difficult to ban it, in fact impossible. But we are working to change people's attitudes."

We will come back to how this work is conducted concretely at LKAB below, but first we ask Monica Quinteiro to tell us a little more about herself:
"I have discovered how laddish I am, I am much more so than my husband."
He is from Brazil. She is from Malmberget, a mining region. She grew up with a lot of men and boys around her and learned to give and take with the best of them. She studied electrical engineering at upper-secondary school and followed this up with studies in another traditionally male sphere, mining and construction engineering, first at Luleå University and Institute of Technology and then in the USA at the School of Mines in Colorado, where she took a Master's degree and found a husband.
Monica Hieta married Carlos Quinteiro and the two new graduates first found work in Sydney in Australia. After a few years, in 1995, they accepted jobs at LKAB in Kiruna. "If Carlos had not got a job here straight away and had become an unemployed immigrant instead, then he would probably have experienced prejudice. But he gained an identity for the people up here, where you are "someone" if you have a job."

When she was in Australia, there were people who wondered when she was going to bring over her entire family. People were very poor up there in the north weren't they? Wasn't that why she had emigrated?

Monica Quinteiro is rather tired of being stared at just because she is a woman who manages a mine, and she is sure that she got the job on merit, not because of her gender. Monica's view is that after nine years with the firm the management knew what she could do, it is as simple as that.
"Of course there were one or two people who reacted negatively to the fact that I got the job, but you have to turn a deaf ear to that kind of thing," she says in her straightforward, northern way.
Several times a week, she puts on her helmet and checks the situation underground.

One comment that she sometimes hears, from both women and men, is: "It's great that you got a job like this, but are your priorities right?"
"This is a question that only women are asked. And I have asked myself the same question, are my priorities right? But if I had another job in, for example, a low-paid occupation, would I really work any less? I don't think so. It's a question of commitment. My mother also always worked a lot, she was an office manager."

She can use her mother as a sounding board and hear from her how she coped with various situations as a manager. There are not exactly countless women at LKAB. Monica Quinteiro manages around 900 employees. Approximately 130 of these are women and she would like to see more, for several reasons - partly to curb the sometimes coarse, laddish language at the mine but also to increase profitability.

"I wish that there were a few women in each team," she says. "This would change the atmosphere and introduce new ways of looking at things. I believe that this would lead to even better production and increase profitability."
But, it does not look as though it will be easy to bring in more women. There is a long waiting list for reemployment at LKAB and this consists mostly of men. On the hand, unemployment may encourage more women to train as miners. "They will be needed," says Monica Quinteiro. "The mining industry and LKAB are doing well, and a miner earns much more, for example, than people working in the care and healthcare sectors. Starting pay is about SEK 21 000 per month, but this doesn't include payments for unsocial working hours which usually amount to around SEK 4 000 a month."

Let's get back to the concrete measures taken to tackle the laddish atmosphere with coarse, and sometimes directly insulting, jokes and language.
"We have team training and development activities. This includes giving and getting feedback on behaviour and on the rules that apply within the group. The bigger the group, the more laddish the language usually is."

"Joining a group as a young woman and being surrounded by extremely laddish language and behaviour can be tough," says Monica Quinteiro. "It is therefore important to get the men to understand what kind of atmosphere they are creating and to empathise with the situation of the women. They don't mean any harm, often it's just a question of habit. Not all of the men like to behave like this either, but they feel a certain amount of peer pressure."

Monica says that she herself has not been particularly exposed to such behaviour. When she began working at LKAB eleven years ago she was pregnant and around 30 years old.
"It is mainly when a younger woman joins a team that things can get out of hand. All the men compete to be the cock of the roost and there can be a lot of joking around and mischief."

Has laddish language and behaviour been curbed since Monica Quinteiro became the manager of the mine? "Yes, in some quarters," she says. "There are big differences between the teams. Perhaps the company will take a more comprehensive approach to the problem by arranging training in gender equality for the employees, the question is under discussion."

Does she have any tips for other women who work in a largely male environment? "Yes, concentrate on the job. Dare to stand up for who you are and set limits."

 

Marie Eriksson marie@stockholmskulturbyra.se

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