Representing roughly a fifth of employees in the oil and gas industry, women account for a significantly smaller share of the workforce than they do in almost any other sector, says a report prepared by the World Petroleum Council and The Boston Consulting Group on “Untapped Reserves Promoting Gender Balance in Oil and Gas”.

These women also work disproportionately in office jobs; they have a very limited presence both in technical roles, which are often considered prerequisites for career advancement, and in upper management. The upshot: oil and gas companies are failing to fully leverage a potentially sizable and critical pool of talent, the report says.

It is against this backdrop that the third edition of The Leadership Excellence for Women (LEWAS) will be held in Bahrain from October 10 to 11 at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre.

From when it began in 2013 as an industry initiative of MEPEC, LEWAS has come a long way. For the first time LEWAS presents its Illuminating Your Path Workshop on October 10 and the Women Symposium on October 11 where women academics, engineers and technical experts will gather to share their challenges and engage in an open dialogue that addresses issues on Gender Gap, Corporate Excellence and Woman Empowerment.

The LEWAS Symposium was created when a group of women decided there needed to be a forum in the GCC that provided a place to: celebrate women’s achievements, learn from well-respected women, have an opportunity to network, and improve upon knowledge.

Three key topics – ‘Untapped Reserves: Promoting Gender Balance in Oil and Gas’, ‘Women of Empowerment - Past, Present & the Future’ and ‘Narrowing the Gender Gap and Strengthening the Female Pipeline in the Oil and Gas Industry’ – will be discussed at length at the symposium.

Key contributors to the agenda are women and diversity ambassadors from organisations such as Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), Saudi Aramco, Boston Consulting Group, World Petroleum Congress, Shell, Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations (Adco), Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), Sabic, Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (GPIC), The Petroleum Institute, part of Khalifa University of Science and Technology (PI), and Tata Consulting Services.

These topics are of great significance especially as the study found that the percentage of women in the industry’s workforce drops over time and falls particularly sharply. Overall, greater gender balance is a worthwhile and an attainable goal for the industry and one that has the means to achieve it, provided leadership commitment, especially from CEOs remains sufficiently strong.

To know more the report and findings, register for the LEWAS Women’s Symposium on www.lewa-symposium.org.