DOHA: 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 carried out by The Gulf Intelligence has found.
The survey, conducted among more than 120 female energy industry leaders attending the The Gulf Intelligence Women in Energy Summit held in association with the Qatar Businesswomen Association (QWBA), found that 43 percent of respondents thought gender diversity in Qatar’s energy sector had made limited progress over the past five years, while 37 percent expressed the view that it had improved significantly. Fifteen percent of those surveyed thought progress on gender diversity had been largely unchanged, while two percent each said it had been non-existent or digressed.
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.
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 percent of those surveyed expressing the view that this would be the greatest challenge facing the industry in the long term. Only 14 percent 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 programs 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 considering to leave the industry during the next two to five years.
The Peninsula
