The gender challenge : narrowing the gap

Hibernia's success in recruiting women for various permanent technical work roles across the organization was discussed. Every effort has been made to recruit women wherever possible, but out of the 12,000 resumes sent to human resources at Hibernia, only a very small number were from women, and none were for the very traditional oil industry roles. Currently, women account for only 5 per cent of Hibernia's offshore workforce. Although the company is trying to improve this record, the prospects are not good because of a shortage of women graduates in science and technology. The challenge of increasing women's involvement in technical and engineering roles and what Hibernia as a corporation can do to encourage young women to explore career opportunities in science and technology are discussed. As an example of the Company's good faith, of the more than 200 scholarships awarded by Hibernia to date, more than half of them went to female students. Also of the 300 plus co-op students at Hibernia facilities 40 per cent have been female.1 tab