On Wednesday, August 26th, marked an important day in history. It was National Women’s Equality Day! The reason for this proclaimed holiday was due the fight of all the women suffragists fought for the right for women to vote. In 1878, was the proposal of the 19th amendment which granted women the right to vote. When the supreme court denied the amendment in 1890, the women suffrage community decided to take on a more aggressive approach. More than 200 women were arrested when picketing the White House and while in prison, they had to be force fed due to the women going on hunger strikes. In 1920, the 19th amendment was finally passed and in 1971, this day was recognized as National Women’s Equality Day!
Women have come a long way over the years. Even in the workforce, women were often thought to not be able to handle the stressors of a business job. Those jobs were meant for the men while women worked as either a housewife, nurse, or teacher. Women have fought tooth and nail to get to where they are today and have worked hard to have the same equality as men. In honor of National Women’s Equality Day, I would like to focus on the strong and influential women in the oil and gas industry. Because let’s face it…if it weren’t for the strong women who fought for equal rights, these women may not be who they are today.
I would say that the oil & gas industry is among the toughest industry to crack the glass ceiling as it has been dominated by men. Check out 5 of the many women below that have worked so hard to break the barriers of the glass ceiling:
- In 2016 when the current CEO of Occidental, Stephen Chazen, steps down, Vicki Hollub will assume the position making her the first female CEO of a major U.S. oil company. Occidental said they selected 55 year old Hollub “based on her strong track record of successfully growing our domestic oil and gas business profitably and efficiently.”
- Mariana Gheorghe is the CEO of Petrom, a Romanian oil and gas group, and is considered to be one of the most influential women in all of Eastern Europe. She was number 19 in Fortune’s 2014 most powerful women in Europe, Africa, and the middle East.
- Within 10 years of joining SoCalGas, Debra Reed became the company’s first female officer. Not only is she the CEO and board chairman of Sempra Energy, she also serves on Halliburton and Caterpillar’s boards. I bet you’re wondering how much she makes…well I am! According to Salary.com, she made a base pay of $1.12 million along with pulling in a total of $8.85 million in 2014.
- Brittania-U Limited is the largest oil producer in Africa and is being run by a growing number of female executives. Diezani Alison-Madueke is the head of this company and Catherine Uju Ifejika is the Chairman and CEO. Uju Ifejika is the richest women in Africa and works to be fearless which is how she has been able to climb the ladder.
- For the last woman that made a major impact on the oil industry, I would like to go back a few years. Ida Minerva Tarbell grew up watching her father struggle as a small oil producer because of the price fixing scheme in 1872 that was created by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. Her father was just one of the many producers that were affected by this and struggled to continue to make a living. The oil industry was different than it is now in the fact that the Standard Oil Company was a giant monopoly that had gained control of almost all of the U.S. oil refineries. Tarbell proved to be a strong woman not letting obstacles stand in her way even starting with not only being the only female in her graduating class in high school, but graduating with honors. She quickly pursued her dream of being a journalist. Tarbell dove into the research of questionable practices of the Standard Oil Company and exposed the long history of Standards practices that negatively impacted so many oil producers. This led to the Supreme Court breaking the Standard Oil Company’s monopoly. Her investigative journalism forever changed the oil & gas industry.
In 2014, only 1% of oil and gas companies were led by women and 13% of engineers were female. More and more women are becoming executives in the oil industry. As more women are expected to study engineering, the more women that will rise to executive positions. I think it is incredible to see the history of women’s suffrage to where we are today. If it weren’t for history, it would surely be a different present!
