Company News
Not Enough Women In Oil and Gas Sector
Monday 23rd April 2018
Adrankone
It shouldn't matter whether you order your hy lok valves off a man or a woman, but there is still a significant lack of women in the oil and gas sector.
The reasons behind this are myriad, but they have been receiving a lot more attention in recent months.
Katie Williams, partner at Pinsent Masons in Aberdeen, says drives to increase the number of women in the industry are working.
She said: "In the last year in oil and gas I have noticed a massive shift in focus on this issue. I have been attending meetings by OGUK, particularly on gender pay gap reporting."
However, the fact remains that one of the biggest problems facing many companies looking to tackle gender gaps is that there weren't enough women to recruit from in the first place.
This is as women don't tend to choose the oil and gas sector as a first-choice career option as they aren't introduced to the sector when they are at school or even at university.
One way to tackle this would be for the sector to get more involved in schools at both primary and secondary level, as well as ramping up its graduate recruitment offering.
The pay gap for the Press and Journal showed an average pay gap of 12.6 per cent across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. This much higher than the average of businesses not in the oil and gas industry who have a gender pay gap of 7.17 per cent. The Scottish average gap as a whole is 9.46 per cent.
