The oil and gas industry has the lowest share of female employees than any other major industry apart from construction, a study has found.
The new research found that fewer woman entered the industry due to a shortage of Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) education programmes which provide the them with the necessary qualifications for a technical career.
Oil and gas was also perceived as having “poor reputation” as a place for women, with “negative views” about the industry widespread.
This is a prevalent culture that exists globally, with the study showing no discrepancies based on where the respondent was based.
But North Sea industry body Oil and Gas UK says the North Sea bucks the trend, with women filling many positions of power.
Greta Lydecker was appointed head of Chevron Europe Upstream last year.
Colette Cohen was named as chief executive of the new Oil & Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) last year after leaving Centrica amid a management restructure.
Hedda Felin took over as Statoil’s managing director for the Norwegian operator’s UK operations in September last year.
Gretchen Watkins is chief executive at Maersk Oil and Elizabeth Proust holds the same potion with Total’s UK operations.
And Oil and Gas UK is also led by Deirdre Michie.
She said: “There are many excellent examples of how industry is working hand in hand with schools, governments and other bodies to proactively improve all aspects of diversity in the workforce.
“Whilst we recognise that too few women are taking up jobs in STEM areas, not just in oil and gas but across all sectors, we must be careful that we don’t create a self-fulfilling prophecy when we should be reinforcing positive models.
“Oil and Gas UK is proud to champion the many opportunities that exist for women and men looking to build a career in the sector.
“In the UKCS we have more female CEOs today and the Board of Oil & Gas UK is also more representative now than it has been before.
“Figures for the UK show that, though we still have a lot of work to do, the oil and gas sector is not behind other STEM sectors and indeed faces the same challenges that they do.”
According to the study’s responses, the percentage of women in the global industry could increase from the current 22% to 35% in 2022 if the right actions were taken.
This includes boosting women’s participation in STEM subjects, ensuring the women have the same career opportunities as their male colleagues and broadening the range of career paths from which senior leaders are picked from.
One unnamed male senior executive said: “The industry is still considered by many women to be male dominated, and there is a view that the industry has not yet made a conscious decision to increase gender diversity.”
Another anonymous female senior exec added: “If you Google the oil and gas industry, you will find images of men in dirty clothes and mud everywhere.”
The percentage of women in the oil and gas industry was only lower in the construction sector, where women only account for 11% of the workforce.
Females account for 60% of health and social care positions and 55% of education roles.
The study was carried out by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consultancy, and the World Petroleum Council.
BCG said the report’s findings are based on substantial proprietary research that included detailed personal interviews with more than 60 male and female senior industry executives worldwide, a survey of approximately 2,000 male and female industry professionals from a wide range of companies and countries, and primary quantitative data provided confidentially by all major international oil companies and several national oil companies.
A total of 38 companies with collective revenues of $1.9 trillion and employees representing between 25% and 30% of the industry’s global workforce took part in the survey.
The study’s executive summary states: “Representing roughly a fifth of employees in the oil and gas industry, women account for a significantly smaller share of the workforce than they do in almost any other sector.
“These women also work disproportionately in office jobs; they have a very limited presence both in technical roles, which are often considered prerequisites for career advancement, and in upper management.
“The upshot: oil and gas companies are failing to fully leverage a potentially sizable and critical pool of talent.
“The loss to the industry is threefold. First, oil and gas companies have a smaller number of highly qualified candidates to choose from when filling positions, especially in the middle and higher ranks, because many talented women either never join the industry or drop out prematurely.
“Second, these companies miss out on the higher quality of teamwork, diversity of perspectives, and creativity in the solving of technical and business problems that characterize those with larger percentages of female employees.
“Third, the industry’s relative lack of gender diversity, particularly in the senior ranks, hurts its reputation among women as a career choice. This can create a vicious circle, with the industry finding it progressively more difficult to recruit women across the board.”
Some of the other key findings included:
-The percentage of women in the industry’s workforce drops over time and falls particularly sharply—from 25% to 17%—between the middle-management and senior-leadership career stages.
-Although men and women start out on an equal footing, women rarely reach the top of the organization.
-There are wide gaps in perception between men and women regarding the gender-related challenges that women face.
-Unless companies develop a critical mass of women across all roles, meaningful progress toward gender balance in the industry will not occur.
-Greater gender balance is a worthwhile and attainable goal for the industry, and one that it has the means to achieve.