Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps the Government is taking to encourage energy companies to promote women into engineering positions.

Her Majesty's Government (HMG) is a signatory to the “Equal by 30 Campaign”, a joint Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) and International Energy Agency (IEA) initiative, which works towards equal pay, equal leadership, and equal opportunities for women in the clean energy sector by 2030.

HMG has additionally set a target of having 40% women working in the nuclear sector by 2030 from a baseline of 22% in 2018 as part of the Nuclear Sector Deal. Since then the Nuclear Skills Strategy Group (NSSG), the leading forum for nuclear skills, of which HMG is a member, together with Women in Nuclear (WiN) has published a Gender Roadmap that sets out the actions needed for the industry to hit that target. Ministers and HMG officials have also signed the Nuclear Sector Gender Commitment, which supports companies in their efforts to reach 40%.

BEIS also continues to support POWERful Women, which was launched by HMG in 2014 and seeks to promote gender diversity in the energy sector, through membership of their Board and provision of grant funding to support their POWERful Connections mentoring programme.