The work­force in the en­er­gy sec­tor re­mains male dom­i­nat­ed, es­pe­cial­ly in front­line po­si­tions in ac­tiv­i­ties like op­er­a­tions, main­te­nance, drilling and con­struc­tion.

The PLEA pass sys­tem means that the En­er­gy Cham­ber has good da­ta of the gen­der mix in the down­stream con­trac­tor and ser­vice sec­tor.

This is the sys­tem where every work­er en­ter­ing any of the down­stream fa­cil­i­ties in Point Lisas, as well as in La Brea and Point Fortin, has to un­der­go an as­sess­ment of their ba­sic HSE knowl­edge, once every two years.

Da­ta from the PLEA pass sys­tem shows that be­tween 10 and 14 per cent of the down­stream con­trac­tor work­force are women.

Dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic there was a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple en­ter­ing the down­stream fa­cil­i­ties and a com­men­su­rate de­crease in the num­bers do­ing the PLEA as­sess­ment, with a de­crease from 14,441in 2019 to 8,614 in 2020.

The num­ber of women un­der­tak­ing the PLEA as­sess­ment fell faster than the num­ber of men un­der­tak­ing the PLEA as­sess­ment, with a de­crease of 39 per cent for men and 52 per cent for women.

The rea­sons for this dif­fer­ence in the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic are not clear from the da­ta, though one pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion is that women still typ­i­cal­ly pro­vide most of child­care in T&T house­holds and with school clo­sures dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, they may have faced more pres­sure to stay at home.

Since the end of the pan­dem­ic the num­ber of women un­der­tak­ing the PLEA as­sess­ment has again in­creased to sim­i­lar lev­els as pri­or to the pan­dem­ic. It re­mains to be seen if there is a long-term trend to­wards in­creased fe­male par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­trac­tor labour force, as there has been in oth­er sub-sec­tors.