Scottish Energy News is attending the reception in the House of Lords next month to mark the first anniversary of the POWERful Women organisation.
Julia Clarke is attending this event on 2 June, which is being hosted by Baroness Verma, a member of the Ministerial Energy team in the House of Lords in the previous UK government.
Julia has joined Scottish Energy News as Energy Policy Consultant after a 15 year career representing Which? in Scotland.
Not every one can attend, so if you have any issues or topics which you’d like Julia to air at the POWERful Women event, please contact her directly – and in total confidence – at:
Julia@ScottishEnergyNews.com OR JuliaClarkeScotland@gmail.com
Julia said: “I spent 15 years working to improve and enhance consumers’ interests in a range of markets in Scotland – including energy. And one fact that I consistently observed was that – no matter which sector of the economy, whether it is finance, health, legal services, manufacturing, etc – the top tier of management is often male-dominated.
“That’s why I entirely support POWERful Women’s call for 40% of energy company middle-management and 30% of executive boards to be female by 2030.”
‘There is still a lot of work for the energy companies to do to deliver fairness for consumers in the energy market in general, and personally speaking, I see this is an important way forward.
“Of course there are other big issues – such as transparency in the energy market – which also require a lot of focus and improvement.’
At its launch last year, Baroness Sandy Verma, then Minister for Energy and Climate Change in the House of Lords, published an independent report which shows that only 5% of executive boards seats in top 100 UK-headquartered energy firms are held by women, while 61% of those surveyed believe the most compelling commercial reason for increased gender diversity is better decision-making.
And Vince Cable, then the UK Government Business Minister, recently commented: “The evidence is irrefutable – boards with a health female representation out-perform their male-dominated rivals”.
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