Is offshore still a male dominated business globally?

We could end this new blog post pretty quickly by just saying Yes. But it would be a bit pointless, wouldn’t it? 

Instead the answer to the title is more nuanced and varied than you may expect. This is not HSEQ-360 drawing on gut feeling, or experienced perceptions, but official data. So, here goes.

The global statistics for offshore gender balance is: 79% male and 21% female. One in five then are women, but … there are anomalies or differences in offshore workforce composition in different countries and across different roles.

Women have often cited a “glass ceiling syndrome” where they can see the higher levels of a company, an organisation, but can’t break the glass to get up there. 

Clearly there are exceptions in public life – Sharon White leads John Lewis PLC, Cressida Dick leads the Metropolitan Police and, yet, in politics, the UK has seen only two female Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, whilst the USA and many other nations have had no female leaders. 

What’s the gender mix like across offshore wind giants and their leadership?

Mads Nipper, a man, became CEO and Group President of Ørsted as of 1 January 2021. Ignacio Galán, another male, is CEO of Iberdrola. Uwe Tigges leads Innogy whilst another male Anders Opedal fronts Equinor. 

And yet. 

When you’re perhaps expecting a male clean sweep of the five biggest global offshore companies, there is Vattenfall and Anna Borg, an equation that neatly mirrors the 80-20 split across the offshore wind industry.

But.

There is one country that is bucking this industry trend and it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Taiwan, a country we’ve blogged about before. 

Perhaps this is because the offshore wind industry in Taiwan is fairly new – around 10 years old, in fact. The diversity and inclusion witnessed there is nonetheless remarkable. 

Marina Hsu, Chairperson of Taiwan Offshore Wind Industry Association said:

“A decade ago Taiwan’s offshore wind industry was just burgeoning and was widely dominated by men. Up until today, many still perceived it as an unsuitable sector for women. Today, many prominent leaders in the Taiwanese offshore wind industry are women. There has been a sea change in women’s representation in Taiwan, but we shall not be complacent, we shall know there is always work to be done to inspire, attract and retain more women in this sector.”

Beyond this quotation though lies more insights from statistics of female representation in the growing Taiwanese offshore wind industry.

  • More women are working in Offshore Wind in Taiwan (26%) compared with the global wind average (21%) and the Asia Pacific wind average (15%).
  • Leading the charge in renewable energy: 95% of Offshore Wind companies in Taiwan have female line managers and 60% have female directors.

Anna Borg of Vattenfall is prominent not just within Sweden and Vattenfall, but also made headlines for speaking at the White House in April 2021 on ‘The innovation agenda to build tomorrow’s clean industries’. She explained how Vattenfall, together with partners and customers across Europe, is working to phase out fossil fuels.

With Taiwan and Sweden showing the way for inclusion and diversity, HSEQ-360 are certain that the 80-20 balance will shift further in years to come, and we welcome that.