There have long been stereotypes in the world of work, especially in the classification of a what is a man’s or a woman’s job.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says the current global labour force participation rate for women is under 47 per cent, while for men it is 72 per cent.
Trinidad and Tobago’s 2020 ILO statistics showed 41.5 per cent of the workforce was women and the remainder were men. The TT Energy Chamber said in March 2022 the downstream contractor labour force was predominantly male, with just 12 per cent being female in 2021.
Additionally, the covid19 pandemic, it said, was a greater shock to the female contractor workforce, which in 2020 accounted for 1,000 female workers, a drastic reduction – 50 per cent – from the pre-pandemic period of 2019, when the female workforce was 14 per cent or 2,000 female workers. The male figure for the same period decreased by 38 per cent.
[caption id="attachment_946340" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Steffi Hanuman has worked at two companies that allowed her to do deck management and rig management. - Marvin Hamilton[/caption]
The chamber defines a contractor employee as an employee of a contractor or service company entering any of the downstream gas industry facilities, including the LNG facility, petrochemical plants, other heavy industrial plants and power-generation facilities.
“This pattern of more females leaving the labour force during the pandemic than males have been a feature noted elsewhere, probably due to the fact that women have had to typically take on the brunt of additional childcare responsibilities while schools remained closed, given the prevalence of continued household division of labour in TT.
“Given that many of the jobs in the downstream gas sector are relatively well paid, this sharp gender imbalance in the labour force is something that should be noted by the industry and policymakers,” the chamber said.
The women lecturers at the National Energy Skills Centre (NESC) Drilling Academy in Ste Madeleine believe their presence in the local oil and gas sector was one small step in breaking the bias in this field.
As part of their International Women’s Day 2022 campaign, they highlighted the progress of women in the industry and in women technical vocational training at the NESC.
The academy was launched in 2013 and was the only one of its kind in the western hemisphere. Since then, the number of female students has grown slightly, but of its seven lecturers, four were women.
Now a lecturer, Steffi Hanuman, 33, is a product of the Drilling Academy, where she did the two-year rig-tech programme when it first opened. After qualifying as a roustabout, she worked at two companies that allowed her to do deck management and rig management.
[caption id="attachment_946342" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Steffi Hanuman says women must be mentally strong to achieve their goals in in what is still seen as a man's world.- Marvin Hamilton[/caption]
She was one of the four female students of the 100-student intake in
