Yet within a year she was gone as Shell Canada’s first female chief executive officer. The parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, wanted her as director of gas and power.

The good omen is that she’s considered a contender for the top international company job. The bad omen is that no woman has taken her place as a chief executive officer of a major oil and gas company in Canada.

The influential posts in oil and gas are a tough climb for females, despite some successes. After 15 years of male leaders, a woman took the chair on the board of directors of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. As one of the country’s most respected energy engineers, Kathy Sendall reached the top in March 2006. The post lasts just one year, but Petro-Canada’s senior vice-president for North American natural gas had gone where no woman had walked before. With her solid industry credentials, Sendall is also touted as a strong candidate for CEO status.

Arguably, an even more monumental event occurred in May 2007. Bonnie DuPont rose to lead the Calgary Petroleum Club. In 1984, the former all-male club banned the female federal energy minister at the time, Pat Carney, from walking through the front door. A generation later, DuPont, Enbridge Inc.’s group vice-president of corporate resources, proudly grasped the wheel and steered the club’s board of directors into the 21st century.

These were pivotal achievements. But the vehicle for broader breakthroughs seems to have stalled far short of gender parity.

Has the will to promote female leaders fizzled? Or, as their private and public lives compete and often collide, have women simply run out of gas?

The answer might lie in next-year country as women set sail for university engineering faculties, leaving in their wake the rickety old ship of shibboleths and stereotypes. More women than ever before are entering the science-based disciplines that open the door to petroleum careers.

The University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering has the highest proportion of female engineering students in Canada. “We’ve steadily increased to 24 per cent and we’re proud of that,” says Dean Elizabeth Cannon. “We nurture that in the school and in the community. One of my passions is to attract women to the profession. Within Calgary, at least 50 per cent of our graduates end up in the oil sector. We are heavy suppliers of that industry.”

Cannon points to the progress nationally from the 1990s, when less than 10 per cent of engineering students were women. By 2001, the figure doubled. Within the last few years, however, the trend has gone into reverse and there has been a gradual decline to the current 17.3 per cent.

“This national decline has lots of people worried because that is the base from which we draw these wonderful women like Kathy Sendall,” says Cannon. “Yet some of the sub-disciplines within the faculty have more, like chemical engineering with 40 per cent women.”

To attract interested young women, the Schulich School of Engineering recently launched a networking site, Cybermentor.ca. It gives prospective science and engineering students the chance to discuss the profession online with each other and with female scientists.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Related Posts

• Top Alberta energy executives thrive despite economic slump
• Crossing Borders