WOMEN BRING NEW ENERGY

Speaking from personal experience, wind energy has some pretty remarkable women at work.

Diversifying Energy’s Laborers
Kristyn Ecochard, July 2, 2007 (UPI)

WHO
American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), Trudy Forsyth, senior project engineer/leader of distributed wind programs, Department of Energy (DOE)/National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL); Karen Conover, president/ceo, Global Energy Concepts, Inc; Lisa Daniels, executive director, Windustry;
2007 Women of Wind Energy: Trudy Forsyth, National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Lisa Daniels, Windustry; Sarah Johnson, Windustry; Mia Devine, Alaska Energy Authority; Suzanne Tegen, National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Kathy Belyeu, American Wind Energy Association; not pictured: Karen Conover, Global Energy Concepts; Michelle Montague, Suzlon Wind Energy. Also not pictured: JAN HAMRIN, 2007 Wind's Woman of the Year

WHAT
Only 25 of 200 presenters at AWEA’s WindPower 2007 conference were women yet latest stats show women earned 50% of B.S. degrees, 44% of M.S. degrees & 37% of Ph.D.’s in science and engineering fields. Women in selected science/technology jobs: 46.8% of 137,736 employees but dropping. Support systems and networking groups to facilitate the careers of women in wind are growing.

WHEN
Some stats were through 2004, others through 2006. AWEA’s Windpower conference was in June.

WHERE
Stats published in Professional Women and Minorities, a Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST) and Bureau of Labor Statistics

WHY
- Women in the renewable energy field speculate it might be a more appealing direction for women in the sciences. Stats bear this out. 2006: 412,000 female engineers out of 2,830,000, 14.6%. But in environmental engineering, 10,000 women out of 41,000, 24.4%. Environmental sciences: 620,000 women out of 1,434,000, 43.2%.
Women’s proportion of those earning the B.S. in science/engineering fields doubled, 1980-2004.
- Gains by other minorities (African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans) are less.
White men have long dominated engineering but as the % in the work force changes, the domination must change.


QUOTES
- Forsyth: "It's important to have an equal number of women in math and science, especially on the technical side where there's been little to no growth…I've been working the whole of my life to get more women involved…Women think in a slightly different way and I think it helps in developing new technologies to have teams together with men…"
- Conover: "As the only woman on the American Wind Energy Association board of directors, I certainly would like to see more women…Part of the purpose of Women of Wind Energy is to provide women with a networking forum…In the fourth grade I attended an environmental fair with my father and saw an exhibit on solar energy and even though I didn't understand the economics, from then on out it was science projects and renewable energy and I choose engineering because I wanted to get into the renewable energy field…providing role models for women increases their sense of confidence…I don't feel like I've encountered any obstacles but there's a stigma …"
- Daniels: "For more than a decade I've been involved…Energy has been a topic dominantly worked on by men from policy makers to engineers to regulators to utilities, so it's not uncommon to walk into a room even in this day and age and as a woman, be a minority."
- Forsyth: "It's wonderful to work in wind; you're allowed to feel closer to an equal. Under such fast market growth we need a whole variety of people with a whole variety of skill sets. Everything's going so fast, there's not as much room for oppression where that was definitely the case in my experience in the aerospace world."