Women breach world of big oil
Ryu Bokyoung is confident she can do anything a man does in the sprawling Ulsan refinery in South Korea, be it scaling 100-meter steel towers or working through the night when repairing the plant. The challenges that come with being a woman in the traditionally male-dominated oil industry have never stopped her. But she worries a baby might. Newly wed, the 28-year-old engineer is now considering her options for when she has children. Taking a break would be inevitable given the safety concerns of an expectant mother climbing towers or the difficulty of staying away from her baby all night.
“If I were a man, these are things I wouldn’t have to worry about,” said Ryu, who joined SK Innovation Co., the nation’s top refiner, in 2012.
Women like Ryu are pioneers in a business where about 80 percent of the global workforce is male, women’s bathrooms at some refineries are a relatively new addition, and the term “oilman” has its own dictionary entry. But in the aftermath of the crash in crude prices that began three years ago, Big Oil is redefining its business model and realizing that hiring and retaining more women would boost profitability.
Asian firms, which lag behind other regions in gender diversity, are now catching up, with SK and Japan’s Showa Shell Sekiyu focusing more on female workers.
“Women are underrepresented in the oil and gas industry in general and Asia is no exception,” said Katharina Rick, a partner at Boston Consulting Group, who co-authored a report on promoting gender balance in oil and gas. “The industry has made several attempts since the late 1980s to become a more inclusive work environment but the numbers have not increased as fast as in other industries.”
Women accounted for only 22 percent of the workforce in oil and gas, one of the smallest ratios among major industries, according to the BCG report. Only construction ranked lower, with an 11 percent female representation. Finance had 39 percent, and health and social work 60 percent.
When refiners first started hiring more women, there was a scarcity of bathrooms for them at some plants as the facilities only employed men.
While women account for about 30 percent of the workforce at global oil majors such as Exxon Mobil in the U.S. and BP in the U.K., the proportion sinks to below 10 percent at many large Asian refiners like India’s Reliance Industries, South Korea’s S-Oil Corp. and Japan’s Idemitsu Kosan Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.