The industry needs to move at twice its current speed to reach a target of 40% of women on boards by 2030 set by campaigning organisation POWERful Women, part of the Energy Institute.

This means that on average each energy company needs to appoint five women to its leadership team over the next six years, and add one woman to its board by 2025.

So says the annual report of the Energy Leaders' Coalition (ELC), a gathering of 14 UK energy company leaders representing nearly two-thirds of the UK energy workforce, plus the CEOs of Ofgem and the North Sea Transition Authority, working together to drive better diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).  

Female representation has more than trebled in a decade. In 2024, women are in 34% of leadership and 32% of middle management roles in the sector. The share of women in all board seats is 29%, and those in executive director board seats sits at 16%.  

When it comes to the companies’ performance on female representation, the ELC is, on average, ahead of the UK energy sector as a whole. Seven out of 14 companies have met the 2025 FTSE 40% target for women on boards and several have reached gender balance and beyond at board level.  

When it comes to POWERful Women’s 40% by 2030 target, three companies have already met this for women in leadership but none have yet done so for women at middle management level.  

The annual report was published last week at the annual conference of POWERful Women, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2024.

At the event, Minister of State Sarah Jones MP (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and the Department for Business and Trade) offered a sobering reflection on where UK society is in terms of the general case around equality and diversity. She said: ‘I think sometimes we assume that we've won arguments and that they are a given and that people will accept the argument for things like groupthink and the risks that come without diversity in the workplace. But I don't think we can ever assume we have won those arguments… we need to keep making the same arguments, because otherwise we will lose them.’

In other news, a digital platform to support D&I in energy was launched at the October 2024 WPC Energy global council meeting in Washington, DC. The 'Lift' platform of Women10x is a private, social media-style forum aimed at accelerating gender equality across the sector through sharing information and insights and discussing issues and their solutions.  

The site offers a place to share case studies ('What works'), to post challenges – in the hope of crowdsourcing potential solutions – as well as the ability to canvas opinion by launching surveys.

The password-protected platform features familiar social media functionality, as it is provided by Unily, a corporate employee engagement software provider.

The launch follows a six-week pathfinder pilot in late summer. Subscriptions are sold at a corporate level, offering access from 5–30 DEI experts and HR/business leaders. As of early November, Japex and Bapco Energies had signed up as partners.

Women10X is a consortium of WPC Energy, the International Strategic Accelerator for Women (iSaw) and Middle-East based Leadership Excellence for Women Awards & Symposium (LEWAS).

In the annual report, ELC companies shared some areas of difficulty in increasing gender diversity. They include:  

• The slow speed of change appointing women into leadership roles, due to the contest for talent, slow turnover rates and unbalanced application pools.
• Addressing the ongoing gender gap at middle management, making the industry attractive and supporting women through inclusive policies and culture.  
• Filling, in particular, traditionally male-dominated and isolated field roles with talented women – and keeping them.  
• Engaging ‘the majority’ on the value of DEI, particularly in light of the growing anti-DEI sentiment, and bringing the disengaged into the conversation.

They also shared advice of activities that are having a positive impact on their own diversity, equity and inclusion. They include:

• Well thought-out recruitment practices, such as training for hiring managers, showcasing women in non-traditional roles, targeted development for women and removing bias from CV assessment.
• Effective and visible leadership, such as inclusive leadership training, allies programmes, executive level D&I strategies and gender-balanced succession plans.
• Capturing the right data, including through better voluntary disclosure and self-ID surveys, and the use of DEI dashboards.
• Creating nurturing and supportive networks, including through targeted networking events for women and spotlighting women in field roles.