In 2015, the state’s workforce comprised 51 percent men and 48.9 percent women, and women made 77 cents compared to every dollar earned by men, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In the energy industry, however, the disparity shifts drastically, and men totaled 83.6 percent of the workforce compared to 16.4 percent women in 2016, according to the R.I. Department of Labor and Training. Women in energy last year made 73 cents compared to every dollar earned by men.
Employment in the fast-growing renewable-energy sector appears to follow the energy industry at large, at least in terms of jobs, as salary data was not immediately available.
Carol Grant, Office of Energy Resources commissioner, says this is probably because of the type of businesses that support the renewable sector, largely comprising other male-dominated trades, including finance and construction.
“People are coming … from those pipelines, which have not had a broad representation of women, traditionally,” she said.
“When I joined the industry in 2008, it was noticeable when meeting with other companies that I was the only woman in the room,” said Grant.
Before joining the state last year, she worked in the private sector for both wind and solar companies.
“That [atmosphere] felt out of date for 2008,” she added.
There still appears to be a general lack of women-owned renewable-energy businesses, as the OER website features a list of 40 renewable-energy professionals licensed to operate in the Ocean State. All 40 licensees are men.
The overarching trend, however, doesn’t surprise Anthony Wheeler, College of Business associate dean at Bryant University, who specializes in workforce development and human resources.
“The renewable-energy industry is still like the traditional energy,” he explained. “It’s going to be engineer-heavy, it’s going to be science and technology-heavy, so to the extent to which our higher-education system has any kind of gender imbalance in those fields, you’re going to see the same thing in the industry.”
Deepwater Wind LLC, a renewable-energy company that launched
the nation’s first offshore wind farm in December, is slightly better than the industry at large. The company expects to add its 17th full-time employee this month, which would increase the number of women workers from five to six.
“We’re proud of our growing team,” said CEO Jeff Grybowski in a statement. “Six talented women currently hold positions at all levels in our organization.”
One of the company’s employees is Aileen Kenney, who has led Deepwater’s permitting and environmental affairs efforts since it started. Grybowski says Kenney is a national leader in the field, pointing to a recent report by A Word About Wind that named her a top 100, leading woman in the global wind industry.
Leaders such as Kenney encourage Grant to think more women will enter the renewable-energy field as it continues to grow, and she says there are plenty of examples of women in leadership roles throughout the country. In Rhode Island, she pointed to other state regulators, including R.I. Public Utilities Commission members Margaret E. Curran and Marion Gold.
Grant also believes the growing employment opportunity in the sector could benefit women.
OER last year released the “2016 Rhode Island Clean Energy Jobs Report,” which said so-called clean-energy employment increased by 40 percent and totaled nearly 14,000 jobs compared with a year earlier. The estimates include many nonenergy sector jobs that support the clean-energy economy, making it difficult to know exactly how many of those jobs are directly related.
But Grant says the momentum is nonetheless why more women should get involved.
“I talk to students, men and women, who are thinking about going into the industry, and for most people there’s a way to fit into this growth,” she said.
Wheeler agrees, pointing to the fact that more women are earning undergraduate degrees than men. And there’s a growing number of women entering various fields of science. This bodes well for the renewable-energy field, he said, because unlike traditional energy – which in many cases required a highly specialized, petrochemical engineering degree, mostly earned by men – renewable energy requires varying skills from different fields.
“At the end of the day, this might just be macroeconomics, because there’s going to be a huge demand for specialized knowledge and training, and women are going to fill those gaps and supply the demand,” he said. “What’s cool about renewable energy is there’s so much R&D activity going on all over the country … the scope of renewable energy now goes beyond engineering, which is a really neat thing.”