Advancing Inclusion and Equality in the Energy Sector

The Wood House at COP26 held dozens of incredible panels featuring hundreds of inspiring speakers. As a long-time supporter of the Female Quotient, it was a personal highlight for me to host the Female Quotient’s Equality Lounge® at our venue.

We welcomed hundreds of women leaders from across industries to join a conversation about intersectional environmental, social, governance (ESG) work. Many industries including energy, transport, finance, and infrastructure are still heavily imbalanced in leadership demographics.

We need to make sure going forward that we are building inclusive solutions. There’s a real urgency about resiliency and net-zero now, but if we don't get diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) right, whatever we do now in building a new future, will need to be built back again and again. We must integrate DEI into every equation. I was personally moved by the open, honest and authentic conversations that took place at Wood House. We cannot overstate the value of uplifting female voices and creating safe spaces for collaboration.

Our eight panels ranged broadly in topic from climate economy to digitisation of the energy transition. In addition to the insightful panels, we hosted a breakfast with Indigenous Brazilian leaders, a roundtable lunch with female innovators sharing projects and a closing performance by the Oxford Belles.

One of the most crucial elements of the event involved a strategic focus on DEI performance data across energy, transportation and resilience sectors. This was provided by Denominator, a global data analytics company which recently partnered with the Female Quotient to launch the FQ Equity Index. As the UN Global Compact continues to remind us, the first step in reaching gender parity is accessing and implementing hard data.

To discover more insight into Denominator’s findings on data trends, click here. Get involved in working towards a more diverse and equitable economy by tuning in or joining in person at FQ’s Davos Equality Lounge in January 2022 where we will be continuing all eight panel discussions from the COP26 Equality Lounge®.