Deshnee Naidoo has spent her career climbing the ladder in mining and feels the mindset change towards women has been “phenomenal”.

But lately, the former head of Vale Base Metals, a nickel and cobalt producer, has noticed a worrying backlash. When candidates from diverse backgrounds secure jobs, some men in the industry have started using the acronym DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — in a derogatory reframing: “Didn’t Earn It”.

“I am hearing more anti-wokeism voices. The jury is still out on this one, whether it’s going to grow,” says 48-year-old Naidoo. “We are always taken back to the way things were rather than where they need to go.”

Naidoo’s experience points to how a transatlantic backlash to diversity initiatives — in which high-profile conservatives have criticised schemes such as bias training, or targeting under-represented groups in recruitment — threatens efforts to narrow inequalities between men and women. In mining, one of the industries furthest behind on gender equality, the risk of reversing hard-won gains is especially stark.

“Globally we’re seeing this Andrew Tate effect, where men are taking back power,” says Stacy Hope, managing director of advocacy group Women in Mining UK, referring to the self-described “misogynist” social media influencer. “We need to bring men along on the journey to make sure they become allies.”

A belief that women are being promoted based on gender, rather than ability, has permeated to middle management and boardroom level, according to some female leaders. Naidoo says she has been accused of being “too aggressive and pushy”. “At the executive level, despite the champions we have . . . we just look so far from what we need to look like,” she adds. “The industry still looks like yesteryear at the top.”

Mining has made notable progress on gender equality over the past decade. The number of female directors at the 500 largest mining companies jumped from 4.9 per cent in 2012 to about 18 per cent in 2022, according to White & Case, a law firm.

One of the most high-profile female executives in mining is Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, the owner of an iron ore empire that has introduced pink mining trucks to raise awareness around breast cancer.

But the industry is far from parity. Of the top 100 mining groups, 16 still had no women on their boards and one in four of the largest 500 companies had none, the 2022 White & Case figures showed. Diversity at “junior” mining companies, which explore and develop mines and make up the majority of the industry, is still woeful.

The struggle to recruit women comes as the mining sector — crucial to producing the raw materials for the international shift to clean energy — is struggling to attract the most talented staff. Young people, say executives, are increasingly more interested in becoming data engineers than mining ones.

A survey of mining industry leaders by consulting firm McKinsey found that 71 per cent said talent shortages were holding them back from delivering on production targets and strategic objectives. Another survey by PwC found that two-thirds of leaders expected skills shortages to have a big impact on profitability within the next 10 years.

A particular challenge of the extractive industries is location: mines are often in remote spots around the world. At times, the rural communities they are in have different norms to western companies, putting female workers at risk of gender-based violence or local backlash.

To align with the interests of a new generation, the industry is hoping to position itself increasingly as a technology and data-driven business that does not necessarily involve getting mucky in pits or going deep underground.

“I hate when people talk about our industry as heavy industry,” says Hilde Merete Aasheim, who last month ended her five-year term as chief executive of Norsk Hydro, Europe’s largest aluminium producer. “That’s an old word, it’s not about raw muscles any more. It’s really high tech.”

Hope says a perception of mining as a “boys club” has not done it any favours in attracting women. The industry, she says, needs to become “visible” to young people, including as a sector essential to meeting green targets, such as restricting emissions to limit global warming to 1.5C.

“We need young people who are innovating with AI and digital toolsets,” she says. “We’re not doing a good job to make it the industry that needs young people and diverse talent to drive that change.”

Management scandals have not helped that reputation. A 2022 report into workplace culture at British-Australian mining group Rio Tinto discovered bullying and sexism were “systemic” across its worksites, a finding its chief executive Jakob Stausholm called “deeply disturbing”. Rio has now tied executive pay partly to performance on gender diversity and will release results of another review this year.

[Discriminatory incidents in mining are] not isolated workplace grievances. They are symptoms of a permissive culture

Elizabeth Broderick, the former Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner who led the Rio report, says discriminatory incidents in mining were “not isolated workplace grievances” but “symptoms of a permissive culture”.

The situation across the industry is improving in some ways, however. The new amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act in Australia is a “game-changer” in making employers responsible for not just responding to grievances but taking preventive action to create inclusive workplaces, says Broderick.

Aasheim of Norsk Hydro is one woman to have benefited from supportive male leaders throughout her career, which began in a bakery as a teenager. “I have never applied for a job,” she says. “But I have gotten lots of opportunities because I’ve had key leaders that have seen my potential and challenged me on what I could do . . . As leaders, we have to be active.”

But in the face of a backlash against DEI, some say executives need to take a more proactive approach to embed support for women’s advancement across the workforce.

“We need to listen to men’s concerns about the changing workforce demographics and ensure that their fears are heard and addressed,” says Broderick. “Organisations that are increasing the representation of women are working [not only] to change mindsets and behaviours but also to embed everyday respect into their systems and structures.”

Additional reporting by Nic Fildes

A Florida family is suing NASA after a piece of metallic space debris belonging to the agency fell to Earth and tore through their Naples home earlier this year, leaving a hole in the roof.

The March incident was a startling rare instance of man-made material from orbit making its way back to our planet’s surface intact and landing in a populated area, and it raised questions about who is responsible when space debris causes damage on Earth.

“Space debris is a real and serious issue because of the increase in space traffic in recent years,” the family’s attorney, Mica Nguyen Worthy, said in a statement. “My clients are seeking adequate compensation to account for the stress and impact that this event had on their lives.”

Worthy noted that the 19-year-old son of homeowner Alejandro Otero was in the house at the time of the incident but was a few rooms away from the impact and was unharmed. “They are grateful that no one sustained physical injuries from this incident, but a ‘near miss’ situation such as this could have been catastrophic.”

The claim against NASA, which was filed last month, seeks damages including non-insured property damage loss, emotional and mental anguish and other damages.

NASA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The agency said in a blog post in April that a “space object” recovered from the Oteros’ home was involved in a March 2021 operation aboard the International Space Station.

At that time, NASA released a 5,800-pound cargo pallet of old nickel hydride batteries that it expected to orbit Earth for two to four years before burning up in the atmosphere.

But the agency said it believes the material that landed in Florida was a 1.6-pound metal alloy stanchion from “NASA flight support equipment.”

“NASA remains committed to responsibly operating in low Earth orbit, and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be released,” the agency said in April.

Worthy said NASA would be held responsible for damage caused by its space debris in any other country under the international agreement known as the Space Liability Convention.

But space law expert Mark Sundahl told NPR in April that the law is less clear when material belonging to NASA lands on U.S. soil, making it a domestic legal issue.

For more than a decade, Viktor Orbán’s “illiberal” rule in Hungary has seemed ironclad. But recent European elections have shown that the Hungarian prime minister and his right-hand man are struggling to contain an unlikely challenger from within.

Antal Rogán, who has been by the premier’s side for three decades and is dubbed his “Cardinal Richelieu” by opponents, is currently in charge of the government’s media strategy. His wide-ranging ministerial portfolio includes secret services and checks on foreign funding received by opposition politicians, independent outlets and rights groups.

In his first interview with international media, Rogán sought to downplay his party’s setback in the European parliament vote, in which the ruling Fidesz party received 45 per cent, its lowest vote share since Hungary joined the EU in 2004.

“You can’t always be in a winning position in government,” Rogán told the Financial Times. “Very often someone else communicates more powerfully.”

Rogán was referring to a former Fidesz member-turned-rival, Péter Magyar, who joined a small party called Tisza this year and propelled it to 30 per cent at the ballot boxes, a first indication that the Orbán base is fracturing.

Magyar was never a prominent member of Fidesz, but his former wife Judit Varga was Orbán’s justice minister. They divorced in 2023. Magyar quit Fidesz this year on the day Varga was forced to resign as the party’s lead candidate for the European parliament amidst a child abuse scandal.

Rogán dismissed the idea that Magyar posed a serious challenge to Orbán. He expressed confidence that the prime minister, who is Europe’s longest-serving premier after taking office 14 years ago, would stay in power after the next general elections in 2026.

But Rogán himself, who is not as popular as the PM, could turn into a liability for Orbán. Magyar has accused the premier’s éminence grise of corruption and toxic disinformation campaigns, including about the west’s role in aiding Ukraine.

“This is Waterloo for Fidesz,” Magyar said after the EU election results came out on June 9. “All the billions wasted on propaganda, the war psychosis that the prime minister tried to build with Antal Rogán . . . this is the beginning of the end for Fidesz.”

Magyar, 43, told the FT that he would not pull any punches with Rogán, who “lost his appeal as a politician” and “is unaccountable . . . a Richelieu”, in reference to the 17th-century political mastermind who served as chief minister to Louis XIII, king of France.

Little known outside Hungary, Rogán has stayed out of the limelight, running what he calls the “government back office”. But he has gradually amassed power in the media and public administration, influencing sectors such as banking and information technology.

His National Information Centre, an umbrella organisation for intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies, was founded in 2022. Rogán’s secret services could also feed an investigation into foreign funding allegedly received by Magyar, which Rogán described as “a question that must be answered soon”. Magyar has called the probe a joke.

“Secret services are politicised and subjugated to propaganda,” said Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group, calling the practice “outrageous”.

An economist by training, the 52-year-old Rogán defended the National Information Centre’s work and said reorganisation of the Hungarian intelligence services had been prompted by the war in neighbouring Ukraine. “The prime minister wanted more direct control over them and reintegrated intelligence and counter-intelligence,” he said.

Rogán denied the corruption allegations Magyar and others had levelled against him, noting that no charges stuck in court. He also disputed being shielded of prosecution under Orbán. “Nobody is indispensable in this government,” he said, “not even me.”

Despite the bruising EU election result, Orbán has stood by his longtime ally. “Rogán has an uncanny ability to make others depend on him, and Orbán is no exception,” said a person familiar with the situation. “He is convinced replacing Rogán would be like shooting himself in . . . both feet.”

Another person who knows Rogán well said that the Richelieu parallel was “spot on” as the Hungarian minister had amassed power and wealth by making himself indispensable to Orbán.

Rogán rejected the Richelieu comparison because the French minister was a mentor to the king, whereas he is nine years younger than Orbán. “I saw a man who could renew conservative politics, and he did,” Rogán said of his first meeting with Orbán in the early 1990s.

Rogán grew up near Hungary’s western border with Slovenia in a Slovenian-speaking family. Described by peers as sharp, bookish and intensely political, he became chief domestic political adviser when Orbán first won the premiership in 1998.

After spending a few years as a Budapest district mayor, Rogán returned to parliament in 2010 to lead the Fidesz majority. Among the first bills he drew up was a media law as one of the initial steps towards Orbán’s illiberal state — and which set Budapest on a collision course with the EU.

The government was alleged to have allocated €3.5bn to public events and communications since Rogán became propaganda minister in 2015, according to local media outlet G7. “It is a money pump,” said Gábor Polyák, chair of media studies at Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University. “A completely opaque system of random sums spent with dubious efficiency.”

Rogán said the ministry had struck tenders worth only €1.8bn on communications and events, including major international sporting events— an amount that, over nine years, was “defensible when we compare it to our predecessors’ spending”.

Magyar’s success is in part due to the fallout from a child sex abuse scandal in a village next to Orbán’s hometown — and the failure of Rogán’s propaganda machine in attempting to sweep the affair under the carpet.

“This is the deepest crisis Fidesz has yet faced,” one person with knowledge of the events said. “And the same goes for Rogán.”

Magyar said Rogán would be one of his early targets if he won power in 2026 and, on the campaign trail, suggested that the Orbán aide “find a country with no extradition treaty with Hungary”.

Rogán declined to discuss the child sex abuse scandal but acknowledged that his political career was tied to Orbán’s tenure.

“I will be in the political field as long as Viktor Orbán is the prime minister,” he said.