Energy sector continues to languish on gender diversity

The number of women working in the energy sector continues to lag behind both the wider utilities sector overall and the UK average.

According to the latest figures from Energy and Utility Skills’ 2023 Inclusion Measurement Framework, women make up only 27.5% of the participating organisations’ workforces.

This compares to 30% female representation across industry as a whole, and 35% in the water sector.

These figures are far behind the overall UK workforce, of which women make up 48%.

Energy UK’s chief executive, Emma Pinchbeck, said there are a number of reasons why energy is lagging behind other areas of the sector and revealed to Utility Week she initially turned down her current role due to concerns over working flexibly.

She said: “When I was hired, it was pre-pandemic and there was a long conversation about whether or not I could do the job flexibly. I had a six-week-old baby when I was hired and it took me saying no to the job for them to say, ‘OK, work flexibly, work from home’.

“They’d never had a chief executive do it and they’d never seen that it was possible to do the kind of responsive, political, present in the media job that I do and do it around a child in the way that I wanted.”

She added that the arrival of the pandemic meant more people were working more flexible hours, making it easier to ask for.

She continued: “But had that not happened, I would have had to probably prove that you could do it.

“But the risk there was mine. Even though they’d specifically gone after a woman with a young child, with all of the things that I could represent for them, when it came to the working practices, it was a harder conversation.”

While the Inclusion Measurement Framework results for the wider utilities sector were published in April, the energy-sector specific figures were unveiled at the EDI in Energy Conference, hosted by Energy UK, Energy Institute and Energy Networks Association on Tuesday (11 June).

Although the stats reveal that the utilities sector is way behind the UK average, the figures for female representation were actually better than the 26% reported last year.

Pinchbeck said one of the main issues regarding the number of women in the sector was around retention, particularly through middle management and into senior leadership. This she explained, was often due to responsibilities such as childcare.

As such, she said there needs to be a cultural shift.

She said: “If you don’t have women in middle management staying the course, you don’t have women in senior leadership positions and you can’t be what you can’t see. We don’t enable women to do the job differently, we just expect them to do it like a man did it before.

“So we don’t emphasise qualities like empathy in leadership, we don’t emphasise broader qualities other than STEM functions, which I think is particularly a problem for the energy sector.

“You don’t have to have an engineering background to be a CEO, nor do you have to have an arts background to be a good communicator. We can be quite limited in how we expect people to then do the jobs and the kind of behaviours, expectations, backgrounds, experiences we expect of people.”

Meanwhile results have also been published from the first Health Index created by the Tackling Inclusion and Diversity in Energy (TIDE) Taskforce.

The index is a new initiative to allow organisations to anonymously benchmark their EDI maturity against others, as well as provide TIDE with an indication of where further support might be needed, and a baseline from which to measure progress.

A total of 37 organisations within the energy sector participated in the scheme’s first year.

Findings reveal that the sector has strong performance when it comes to encouraging employees to be involved in EDI, embracing opportunities flexibly and ensuring there is a nominated person and strategy for EDI.

However, the results also show that one in three respondents were only considering taking action on training hiring teams and managers in inclusive hiring practices, meaning they have a “compliance only mindset”.

Further work, the report added, is needed in engaging the supply chain.

Energy Networks Association (ENA) chief executive, Lawrence Slade, said: “As the UK accelerates towards a decarbonised energy system, to get there we need to embrace the power and opportunity of diversity. Today’s research shows the progress we still need to make in order to help build a workforce that challenges group think, brings diversity of thought, ideas and experience, and provides new equitable solutions for a clean, fair and affordable energy system.

“Working with our partners, ENA is committed to using the insights generated by the Health Index and Inclusion Measurement Framework to help drive diversity, equity and inclusion sector-wide, supporting the creation of the energy workforce of tomorrow.”