Empowering Gender Balance in India's Energy Sector
The energy sector remains one of the most gender imbalanced and gender equality holds a greater challenge in India’s energy sector. Women comprise less than 6 percent of technical staff and less than 1 percent of top managers. As per a study conducted by IEA – ‘Women working in the rooftop solar sector’ (2019), women account for an estimated 11% of the workforce in the rooftop solar sector in India, significantly less than the global average of women in the renewable sector, at 32%. In other energy sectors of India like coal, oil and gas companies, and electricity utilities, this figure further steeps low to 10%.
On May 11, SAWIE organized a roundtable of Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO) from leading energy and industrial companies to discuss gender challenges and share best practices to help create an enabling environment for a gender balanced workplace.
The panel discussed that skewed women participation can partly be attributed to the social and perception barriers about dominance of field-based activities, geographical mobility and shift-based working, which have been traditionally considered as negative for women participation.
As a direct outcome of this roundtable, SAWIE will work with its Knowledge Partner Spencer Stuart to prepare a Recommendation Paper listing Best Practices in gender mainstreaming to share with corporate and HR leadership to help companies in implementing the same to achieve the goal of greater gender balance.
