Gender diversity in Qatar energy sector making progress

A panel discussion in progress during the summit on issues involving women in the energy industry.

Qatar’s energy sector has made some strides improving gender diversity over the past five years but will face a significant challenge ensuring that the rising numbers of females entering the domestic oil and gas industry will be retained in the long term, an industry survey by The Gulf Intelligence revealed.The survey, conducted yesterday among more than 120 female energy industry leaders attending “The Gulf Intelligence Women in Energy Summit 2015,” found that 43% of respondents agree that gender diversity in Qatar’s energy sector had made “limited progress” over the past five years.The other 37% believe that it had improved significantly while another 15% said that progress on gender diversity had been “largely unchanged.” The remaining 2% each said it had been “non-existent or digressed.”The Gulf Intelligence survey also noted that “Building a diverse workforce that includes more women is critical for the energy industry to meet future challenges such as closing an emerging talent gap, meeting rising global energy needs, and innovating new technologies aimed at accessing harder-to-access and more remote hydrocarbon resources.” “Currently, women represent a minority of the global oil and gas workforce, and even fewer hold engineering or technical roles, also in Qatar,” it added.However, despite encouraging developments on the diversity front, there are concerns over the industry’s ability to retain the rising numbers of women entering Qatar’s oil and gas sector, with 86% of those surveyed expressing the view that this would be the greatest challenge facing the industry in the long term. Only 14% of respondents thought this won’t be the main challenge for Qatar’s oil and gas industry.With more women entering the oil and gas sector, the industry will have to focus on retaining female employees in the long term to ensure sustainability through initiatives such as mentorship programmes and offering clear career perspectives, among others. According to a survey carried out by NES Global Talent among women engineers last year, nearly half of those in the oil and gas industry thought they don’t receive the same level of recognition as their male peers, resulting in nearly one in five to consider leaving the industry during the next two to five years.The summit was held in partnership with the Qatari Businesswomen Association (QWBA) to discuss the outlook for women in the energy industry and recommend changes to advance the role of females in the sector. The full list of the survey results is available at www.thegulfintelligence.com