Speaking from experience
A Chevron executive tells why she urges women not to shy away from technical fields.
AHouston native, Janeen Judah was one of the few women to take up petroleum engineering in the 1970s. Fast-forward 40 years, and she’s retiring this month as an executive at Chevron Corp. and as the president of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. She’s leaving her position as the general manager of Chevron’s Southern Africa business. She’ll keep serving as a new board member for Houston drilling and fracking company Patterson-UTI Energy, but Judah also wants to encourage more girls and young women to enter the so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — that too often remain male-dominated.
Q: What made you interested in the energy sector, and petroleum engineering in particular?
A: My dad was in the midstream business. He was and is an engineer. I’ve found that a lot of women who went into engineering in that first wave in the ’70s — a lot of them are either daughters or younger sisters of engineers. It was not something you kind of picked out of the sky normally as a major. I was always a problem solver, and that was really what appealed to me about engineering — the analytical side of it. And I was fascinated by the oil business. You grow up in Houston back then, and it was very prevalent and a very fascinating wildcatter kind of business. There was no doubt I wanted to go work in the oil industry. Q: You earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University. What was the experience and culture like then? A: Back then, in the late ’70s, only about 10 percent of the engineering students were women. It was pretty thin as far as how many women were there. There are some who stuck with it for an entire career, but I’d say probably about half of them ended up laid off in the ’80s or made a choice to stay home. From about ’86 until almost the late ’90s, there were layoffs every year or two at most companies. A lot of them left the industry. Q: You worked with Arco before joining Texaco and then Chevron. How was it starting your career in Midland with small companies and then Arco? A: I used to always have to explain where the Permian Basin was to people, and nobody asks that question anymore. I lived out there during the ’80s. It was tough times for all of my early career. Q: Was it particularly tough as a woman? A: When I first went there, it was still the boom, and women were extremely unusual in the business. When you went out in the field, it was like an event. You were rare and unusual. When I had my first interview out there, it was at the old Midland Petroleum Club, and women were still not allowed to be members. They had to get special permission for me to eat. That’s the way it was in 1980. Now, it’s much more common to see women. But, back then, you were highly unusual. Almost every industry is male-dominated. Energy is maybe a little more macho industry, or maybe more aggressively
male than some other places. Q: Was harassment prevalent? A: It would generally open like, ‘What’s a woman doing here?’ kind of thing. But it wasn’t that common. They knew you were there to do a job, and they let you do it. I never experienced anything that was too egregious. It’s a good-paying job, and you work in the field, and you have to be a little tough. And, often as an engineer, you’re the one in charge, so you had to be authoritative. If you were a female rig supervisor, they’ll call you the company man. That’s just the job title.
Q: Is it frustrating to be singled out as a female leader, or do you welcome the role model position?
A: Generally, we all want to be treated equally and fairly in our workplace — to just be treated as most of the guys. But we realize — at least I realized —that after a certain point you are an example. You have a duty and an obligation to be visible and to step up and help coach, mentor and give advice to the women who are following you. I want to try to make the path easier for others, because mine was hard. Q: What’s your point of focus? A: I personally tend to target mentoring the midcareer technical women. There’s not many like me who are late career with technical backgrounds. I can help with those hard decisions that a lot of women generally make in their mid-30s. I always get asked about worklife balance. I tell them I don’t really believe in a work-life balance; it’s more work-life compromise. Social media doesn’t help, where people think everything can be perfect with Instagram and Pinterest. That’s just unrealistic. There are compromises and decisions. If you have a family and there’s another career involved, then there’s decisions you need to make as a family. I think a lot of women have an unrealistic expectation that there’s some kind of magical balance. Q: What do you tell them? A: I talk a lot about perseverance. A lot of women are socialized differently. Little boys, especially through sports, if they get knocked down, it’s OK. There’s no broken bones, dust them off, put them back in the game. They’re socialized to not quit and to persevere. I think a lot of girls — it’s, oh, you fell down, sit over here. We socialize that it’s OK to withdraw. I coach midcareer women when they’re facing setbacks or problems to stay in the game. Q: So it happens from an early age?
A: A lot of girls are discouraged, particularly in high school, from going into engineering by their parents or by school counselors. They tend to think the boys will be mean and you’ll have to go work out on a construction site or whatever. And you don’t. A lot of what we do is computer based and in an office. If someone’s majoring in environmental policy, I ask why did they pick that? If they want to save the planet, why didn’t they go into environmental engineering? They could actually do something to save the planet. A lot of the grand challenges of society are engineering problems — clean air, clean water, clean energy, pollution. I don’t want to scare them off. I want to encourage them to stick with STEM. It makes so many career options open up for girls.