Surge in female board members in Canadian oil and gas

The number of women on the boards of top Canadian producers has more than doubled in the past five years.

At the end of 2023, 79 women and 212 men held director positions on 34 Canadian oil and gas companies producing over 10,000 boe/d, compared to 38 women and 232 men in 2018, according to new data from Evaluate Energy.

ESG analyst Ayesha Shingruf said there has been steady growth in gender representation in Canada’s oil and gas industry. Just five years ago, 16% of the board positions of these larger producers were held by women. In 2023, the number grew to 27%.

Shingruf said the upward trend suggests there is a commitment to greater diversity.

“We see an upward trend in the number of women on boards, which says a lot about how the industry is responding to diversity initiatives,” she said. “This data also helps identify the areas of improvement in the gender pay gap at board level as well. Although currently there is improvement in female representation at board level, there is still a great disparity in equal representation.”

Shingruf said stakeholders and the public are driving the demand for greater company transparency.

“Companies can be asked about their ESG performance, which includes diversity in their workforce and at board level,” she said. “The other trend is just corporate governance practices where investors are looking at corporate governance practices and want to know what diversity in a company looks like.”

Evaluate Energy’s ESG database contains detailed corporate governance metrics for Canadian exploration and production companies including Canadian executive compensation, board diversity and more. It is based on press releases, information circulars, sustainability reports and annual filings of more than 300 North American oil and gas publicly traded companies.

A diverse workforce

Lisa Stephenson, Director, Careers in Energy, said traditionally the oil and gas industry has been male dominated with women representing less than one quarter of the energy workforce. In 2021, there were approximately 35,000 women in the Canadian energy industry, representing 19.8% of the energy labour force, compared to 47.8% of the overall Canadian labour force.

“We know the future strength of Canada’s energy labour force will greatly depend on the participation of diverse groups such as women, racialized groups, Indigenous peoples, immigrants and youth,” said Stephenson, adding the skills and competencies in the traditional oil and gas sector will be needed for the future.

“We hope that we’ll see a trend of more women joining the energy workforce, and that will happen as more companies adopt diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) policies and processes for their company.”