Diversity Study Identifies Leadership Opportunities for Women In Oil & Gas Industry

The Petroleum Equipment & Services Association (PESA) has performed a diversity study across the oil and gas industry’s service, supply, and manufacturing organizations to analyze the current state, in-flow, and out-flow of female talent, and has identified actions organizations can take to advance women into greater leadership positions.

PESA notes that the oil and gas industry has historically struggled with attracting and retaining female talent. In the U.S., women comprise 47% of the work-force, and 15% within the oil and gas sector overall. Today, women represent 16% of the U.S. service, manufacturing, and supply sectors of the oil and gas industry workforce.

Only 8% of U.S.-based technical operational roles—manufacturing, field engineer—within the sector are filled by women, and more than 80% of study respondents have less than 8% of top leaders in technical operational roles as women. Alternatively, the percentage of women in U.S.-based business support roles—human resources, legal—is significantly higher at 31% and over 80% of respondents have less than 21% of women in top leadership positions in support functions.

When looking at 2017 in-flow of female talent into the sector, of total U.S. entry-level hires 15% are women as compared to 18% of experienced-women hires. This trend varies slightly when differentiating hires between companies with less than 1000 employees, where U.S. entry-level hires represented 15% and experienced hires represented 12% of 2017 in-flows of female talent.

PESA comments that increases in in-flow are an important step toward companies achieving equality, however, there has historically been a discrepancy between the numbers of women entering the energy industry versus their overall percentage in the workforce over time. While most respondents, 51%, do not actively track why women are voluntarily exiting, those that do cite the most common reasons as limited career opportunities, lack of flexible work programs, and lack of effective sponsorship and mentoring.

Several sector companies have implemented strategies designed with gender equality and advancement of women into leadership positions as the objective. However, there remains an opportunity to scale such programs across the sector, the association observes. Of the companies, 20% have gender diversity strategies; 34% offer six or more weeks of paid primary caregiver parental leave; and 31% offer learning and development initiatives targeted at inclusion and diversity. Further, 60% offer basic flexible work programs, such as telecommuting; and 15% offer mentorship programs and actively track female participation.

“Retention and advancement programming with C-suite endorsement and visibility have the potential to make substantial impacts to individual women’s experiences, as well as on overall gender diversity in the industry,” PESA concludes. “By working to further understand unmanaged attrition and implementing solutions in response, the service, supply, and manufacturing sectors of the oil and gas industry can reduce the out-flow of women and become an increasingly diverse place to work.”

(SOURCE: The

February 11, 2019)