International Women’s Day address to the Women in Energy Symposium, 2023

The following is taken from a speech given by the Clean Energy Council's Dr. Anita Talberg, GM- Workforce Development, delivered at the Women in Energy Symposium on International Women's Day in 2023.

When I started my engineering degree 25 years ago there were 5 women in my cohort of 60 aspiring first year engineering students.

In the first year, we had a compulsory unit called Engineering and Society; and in week 1 of that unit, the lecturer said to look at the students on either side of you - by the end of first year, one of those two people will be gone. And by the end of second year, either you'll be gone or the other person next to you will be gone.

The lecturer was almost right - we started with around 60 and by the end of the degree I think we were just under 40.

Of the 5 women that started their degrees with me, all 5 were still there at the end. We all graduated.

We weren't friends - we didn't hang out on the weekends or seek each other out socially. But we supported each other and helped each other through those four years. If ever one of us missed a lecture or a tutorial there was always one of the other girls that had the notes. Late at night in the computer labs when we were trying to debug some code, there always one of the other girls that was willing to have a look. 

By silent agreement we all knew that if one of us didn't make it, then we'd all failed each other.

What’s astounding is that 25 years later, the percentage of women completing engineering degrees in Australia hasn't changed - it is still 16% according to Engineers Australia.

Which is still better than the less than 3% of women that make up the electrical trade. Another statistic that has not budged in 30 years.

So, what does this tell me? 

Three things. 

One, just because we’re women doesn’t make us all friends. We’re not one homogeneous entity, we are all different, come with different experiences and face different experiences. The intersection of our identities is important to recognize as just that.

Two, networks and support from other women is really important to the retention of women in male dominated industries such as ours. 

And three, if we rely only on networks and women supporting women, we’re not going to see change in those statistics. We need deliberate and calculated actions to drive change.

Which is why the CEC has since 2015 run its Women in Renewables program.

As part of that program, in 2021, in collaboration with the ETU and the Australian Power Institute. We surveyed our workforce to explore the social and professional identities of our workforce. 

So that told us where to focus our work. 

But the harder question is how to drive change.

Because there’s no silver bullet and it requires a lot pushing and pulling in small and big ways to change something like this. 

There’s no point rolling out targets for the percentage of women on site or on projects without supporting that with incentives for women to enter the sector, because you’re setting yourself up to fail. There aren’t enough women with the skills and experience to meet targets. 

And there’s no point providing financial or other support for women to join the sector if that isn’t accompanied by a communication campaign to tell women what jobs exist and how they can get them. 

And there’s no point running that sort of a comms campaigns if the culture in the workplace isn’t addressed. As you just heard from the electricians…we still hear stories of site offices plastered with photos of naked women, or board meetings when women do not feel comfortable to challenge the framing of the discussion.

We need a systemic shift. It needs to come from the top and the bottom at the same time. It needs to come from government, industry, unions, education and training systems and from every boss in every team, every director on every board and every worker in every project. It needs to be embedded in every decision we make and not relegated to the too hard basket when we already have a mammoth decarbonisation challenge in front of us. 

Because the energy transition really only makes sense if we’re all involved in the journey.