An analysis of 870,000 LinkedIn profiles reveals just how male-dominated the energy industry really is. Four experts told us how to make it more inclusive.

Benji Jones,Benji Jones

Feb 6, 2020, 22:09 IST

An analysis of 870,000 LinkedIn profiles reveals just how male-dominated the energy industry really is. Four experts told us how to make it more inclusive.

First Solar

The clean-energy sector hires more women than the oil and gas sector -but not by much.

New data from LinkedIn reveals that the energy industry has a major gender imbalance.
About a quarter of new hires in the oil and gas industry identified as women in 2019, which is similar to the previous five years.
Numbers from the clean-energy industry are slightly higher, at 33%, and unlike oil and gas the industry has been hiring more women over time.
A higher proportion of women in business is associated with better financial returns, more creativity, and a safer work environment, according to scores of research studies.
Four experts shared their tips for how to make energy companies more inclusive, including avoiding internal referral programs.
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The numbers aren't good. In the oil and gas industry, only about 26% of employees identify as women, according to a new analysis of professional profiles, conducted by LinkedIn for Business Insider.

The picture isn't much better if you look at new hires. In 2019, about 28% of the employees who listed a new role within the oil and gas industry identified as women, per LinkedIn's review of nearly 870,000 members in the US. That number hasn't changed much since 2014.

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The clean-energy industry has more women - they represent about 30% of the workforce. And the industry is hiring more women over time, with about a third of new hires in 2019 identifying as women, compared to 30% in 2014, according to LinkedIn.

proportion of new hires identify as women

Ruobing Su/Business Insider

Still, that's far short of the overall US workforce, where women make up 47% of all workers.

Energy jobs 'don't attract women'

There aren't positions in the energy industry that are explicitly male-only, but many of them "just don't attract women," said Cecilia Tam, a team leader with the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Tam, a former energy analyst at the International Energy Agency, where she worked to advance gender equality, used oil rig workers as an example - few of which are women. These positions are isolated and remote and, thus, less attractive.

Ruobing Su/Business Insider

"Many times oil and gas, especially exploration, are not in the safest of places," she said. "There will be very few women on most offshore oil rigs. You can imagine that you would not necessarily want to be in such a remote place all by yourself with, like, one other woman."

Stereotypes are also barriers to entry for women

Energy jobs are also stereotypically male, which makes them less appealing to women, said Katie Mehnert, the founder and CEO of Pink Petro, a group that advocates for diversity and inclusion in the energy industry.

In fact, in a 2019 report on gender, the International Renewable Energy Agency, said "perceptions of gender roles are seen as the most important barrier to entry into the sector" for women.

But that certainly doesn't mean women aren't suited to these roles, Mehnert said, or that they wouldn't want them.

"These are good-paying jobs, right?" said Mehnert, a former director at the oil giant BP. "The notion that women don't want to do that work, well, I just think that's a poor generalization. I am not the most mechanically inclined. I walked around on rigs unescorted all the time and I did just fine."

Why experts say the energy industry needs to change

There's no shortage of evidence that gender diversity benefits business. Companies with more women in senior management and on their boards yield higher returns, they're more likely to produce breakthrough ideas, and they're safer, according to a report by the International Finance Corporation.

Plus, Tams says women tend to be more environmentally conscious than men, which would be an asset for energy companies.

Oxford PV

Solar cell technology developed by the clean-energy startup Oxford PV

The industry needs to develop a clearer value proposition to attract more women

At the core of the energy industry's gender problem is a failure of communication, Mehnert says.

The industry, though responsible for a large portion of planet-warming carbon emissions, has a big role to play in fighting climate change, she said.

That's worth getting excited about, she said. If the story is told right - if there's a clear value proposition for employees like there is in the nonprofit sector, for example - the industry will draw in more women and minorities, she says.

"My belief is that we've got to take the climate change narrative, the energy transition narrative, and make that one of passion," she said. "I don't think the industry has done a great job at marketing itself."

There are also a handful of other tactics that energy employers can deploy to make their workplace more diverse and inclusive.

Stephane Mahe/Reuters

Less than 17% of engineers in the clean-energy industry identify as women, according to LinkedIn

Companies should avoid referral programs and make sure to send out a gender-balanced recruiting team

Hiring through referrals from existing employees is a bad idea if you're looking for diversity, said Kristen Graf, the executive director of the nonprofit Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy (WRISE).

"It generally perpetuates the same demographics as your existing workforce," she said by email.

Instead, Graf said companies should partner with organizations such as universities and nonprofits that can help get their job listings in front of a more diverse group. Both WRISE and Pink Petro have job boards.

The recruiters themselves should also represent the balance that companies seek, Tam said.

"Generally, if all your recruiters are male, then women applicants may not feel so attracted to apply for those roles," she said.

Make sure all the required skills in a job description need to be there

When glancing at a job description, women will often scrutinize the skill requirements, Graf said. If they don't meet one of them, they may not apply. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to apply for the role regardless of whether they satisfy all of the requirements, she said.

"As companies, it is worth spending time thinking long and hard about what is on the required list and whether or not it truly needs to be there," she said.

The language in the description itself is also important. She and Mehnert both suggested using an app like Textio Hire, which scans descriptions with software and flags biased language that might be off-putting to women.

Andrea Zancha, a senior recruiter at the renewable-energy recruiting firm EnergeiaWorks, said companies should also be open to candidates that come from other sectors but have "parallel experience."

"Maybe they don't have it specific solar or wind experience, but maybe they have a very strong mechanical engineering background or a strong field background," she said.

Rocky Kneten

Katie Mehnert is the founder and CEO of Pink Petro

Show women in leading energy roles

If the numbers for women in energy, as a whole, are bad, then those for women in top roles are awful. In 2018, for example, only 19 of 216 executives at the top 20 energy companies were women, according to a report by the gender consulting firm 20-first. Half of those companies had zero women in their top teams that year.

"Women could be turned off to applying to a sector if they feel that even if they can get an entry-level job their future progression could be limited because they don't see lots of other women at the top," Tam said.

Companies need to cultivate female role models, she said, both at the executive level and within male-dominant teams like engineering (which had the least proportion of women, according to the LinkedIn data.)

Including those female role models in external communications such as job descriptions and web pages is another way to attract more women, according to a 2019 USAID report on bringing gender equity to utility companies.

These approaches just scratch the surface

Making an energy company more inclusive isn't just about cleaning up job descriptions or lifting up female leaders, Graf says. It often requires honest self-reflection and an overhaul of the organization's culture.

"Don't look for a silver bullet," Graf said. "If you aren't doing the hard work of internal reflection and culture change - looking at the underlying roots of the lack of diversity in your workforce - you may be able to get some diversity in the door, but likely will still struggle for inclusion, equity, and in the long run, retention."

The good news is that the industry appears to be changing.

Last year, a third of all new-hires in the sector were women, according to data from LinkedIn, up three percentage points from 2014. And the representation of women on boards of power and utility companies has increased from 2% in 2014 to 17% last year.

More and more women are graduating from STEM programs, Zancha says, and in five or 10 years she thinks there will be "an influx of women" into the energy industry.

"The world is pivoting, right?" Mehnert said. "The industry has never been this open."

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