Empowering Gender Balance in India's Energy Sector

The energy sector remains one of the most gender imbalanced and gender equity 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.

Event Organizers