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UtILItY WeeK | 3rd - 9th OctOber 2014 | 9 Interview from half the potential talent pool has been recognised as "crazy" by many of the sector's leaders, yet it proves persistently hard to change. I t's my personal ambition that, by 2030, we see around 40 per cent of middle management posi- tions in the energy sector being filled by women and 30 per cent at board level," says peer Baroness Verma, Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for the Depart- ment of Energy and Climate Change. We're discussing the motivations and ambitions behind the recent launch of the Powerful Women cam- paign, an initiative that kicked off in June to try to attract, retain and promote women in the energy sector. Like many engineering-based sectors, energy has a pretty poor representation of women in its workforce, and the statistics get worse the higher you go in any organisation in the industry. According to research conducted by law firm Ever- sheds, just 12.8 per cent of UK board-level executives in the energy sector are women. Other sources reveal that under 9 per cent of the overall engineering workforce in the UK is female – the lowest proportion of all European Union countries. With engineering generally and utilities in particular facing well publicised skills gaps, this dearth of interest " Men and Powerful Women Launching a campaign which extols the virtues of women in the workplace and the positive impact that more women in senior roles would have on businesses is a political game. It's easy for such campaigns to get bogged down in language that makes sweeping generalisations about the attributes of men and women and which can put male colleagues on the defensive. Baroness Verma is confident, however, that the Powerful Women campaign will steer clear of such hazards. "Since launching Powerful Women there has been an overwhelming response which expresses an interest from men in wanting to better their organisations. There really hasn't been an 'us and them' scenario," she states. A large part of Powerful Women's ambition is to define a clear role for men in promoting gender balance and diversity, she explains. "So far we have received a strong message that men want to know more about how they can support what Powerful Women is doing," she says.