Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

If noth­ing else, In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day high­lights the dif­fer­ent play­ing fields women are on across the world. For some women in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion re­mains out of reach and the fight for that hu­man right con­tin­ues. In the West­ern world, women have be­come pil­lars of so­ci­ety, and in some in­dus­tries, it would be hard to think about some jobs with­out them.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian WE mag­a­zine, Maria Daniel re­marked, “We’re fight­ing less of that ‘fe­male’ fight be­cause we have claimed our space (in many re­gards) … The strug­gle isn’t in in­clu­sive­ness or find­ing our space. The strug­gle is ac­tu­al­ly the broad­er pic­ture of equal op­por­tu­ni­ty for all and peo­ple tak­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty se­ri­ous­ly.” Daniel is EY’s Lead Part­ner for Strat­e­gy and Trans­ac­tions (Trinidad) and ESG (En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, and Gov­er­nance) & Sus­tain­abil­i­ty (Caribbean). It’s now time to move the con­ver­sa­tion for­ward, and three years ago, she be­gan build­ing a sus­tain­abil­i­ty team “and hired the best peo­ple for the job.” Three years on, the team–the first of its kind in the re­gion–com­pris­es six women.

While Daniel leads “as mum­my of the group,” Maria Boyd and Lau­ren Bain are the se­nior man­ag­er and as­sis­tant man­ag­er re­spec­tive­ly of the team which al­so in­cludes Sara Low, Ceri Caz­abon, and Ruqayyah Scott. To­geth­er, they have qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence in sus­tain­abil­i­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal eco­nom­ics, the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, cli­mate change, pol­i­cy­mak­ing and the re­new­able en­er­gy land­scape.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day 2024 cam­paign theme is ‘In­spire In­clu­sion’, how­ev­er, these women have ad­vanced the con­ver­sa­tion and are push­ing the en­ve­lope when it comes to in­clu­siv­i­ty. Daniel added, “When you think of in­clu­siv­i­ty, we tend to think of ‘gen­der’ as be­ing (the fo­cus lever). Yet, at EY we have been talk­ing and walk­ing in­clu­siv­i­ty in a lot wider am­bit. Our dis­cus­sion, for ex­am­ple, high­lights neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty and is look­ing at the oth­er parts of in­clu­sion that peo­ple don’t think about.” She said it was about let­ting peo­ple know we have to change our ed­u­ca­tion, and we have to change the way we hire. “Peo­ple who think dif­fer­ent­ly have a lot to add,” Daniel ex­plained.

Their work stretch­es from di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty, and in­clu­sion (DEI) strat­e­gy, to im­pact as­sess­ment and re­port­ing, to for­mu­lat­ing na­tion­al poli­cies and that is not lim­it­ed to T&T. Bain has worked on cli­mate change and car­bon cred­its for Suri­name. She said, “Be­ing able to see some­thing you draft­ed, some­thing you re­searched and some­thing you put all of your time and pas­sion in­to sud­den­ly come in­to a pol­i­cy doc­u­ment or be im­ple­ment­ed in some way at the gov­ern­ment lev­el is very re­ward­ing. See­ing that kind of change come about makes you feel like maybe we are not just the ‘young girls’ in the board­room, but we are able to get some­thing done.”

For Boyd, whose work has been with­in the en­er­gy sphere for over 20 years, she is less con­cerned about the sta­tis­tics of women in the en­er­gy work­force. She quotes sta­tis­tics that show women in tra­di­tion­al en­er­gy is at 22 per cent but in re­new­ables, that fig­ure jumps to 32 per cent. In­stead, her fo­cus is on women in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and coun­tries that bear the bur­den of ‘en­er­gy pover­ty’. Boyd ex­plained, “Those coun­tries de­pend on things like bio­mass for fu­el. They (women and girls) are the ones who have to walk the long hours to col­lect it and who work at home in­hal­ing the fumes.” Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, more than 3.2 mil­lion peo­ple die each year from in­hal­ing such tox­ic fumes, most of whom are women and chil­dren.

Here in the Caribbean, many com­pa­nies are catch­ing on to the En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) frame­work of the 21st cen­tu­ry, but Caz­abon fears some ap­proach it from a short-term per­spec­tive. How­ev­er, she de­bunked that think­ing, say­ing, “To re­al­ly get so­lu­tions, we can­not on­ly think about the sci­ence and not just think about the strat­e­gy, we need to start talk­ing about be­hav­iour change and cul­ture change be­cause we need to get peo­ple to un­der­stand and em­body the in­clu­sion and prac­tices. We need peo­ple to un­der­stand this isn’t just a one-off so­lu­tion where we come in, and it’s done, we need to work at it. It’s a process.”

And de­spite some com­pa­nies want­i­ng to ap­ply the ESG frame­work, Low said some peo­ple aren’t open to the con­cept, es­pe­cial­ly when they see young ladies pre­sent­ing to them. She said, “Be­ing an all-woman team, (and) we said the busi­ness world is male-dom­i­nat­ed, so when you go in­to a board­room full of men, and they see a bunch of young girls, they look at us like ‘what are these young girls go­ing to tell us that we don’t al­ready know about our own busi­ness?’ So that’s a chal­lenge some­times.”

Scott is the newest mem­ber of the team, and she has been learn­ing from her col­leagues how they get busi­ness lead­ers to buy in­to ESG “so sus­tain­abil­i­ty be­comes a reg­u­lar part of their busi­ness func­tion and not just some­thing to put a la­bel to tick off all box­es in the pub­lic eye.”

Daniel said the work this team has done has made more peo­ple aware, but there re­mains much to do. “Even when peo­ple talk about gen­der eq­ui­ty and when we go and do a talk and ask, ‘how many of you know what men and women are paid in the same ex­act job? Do you know what the dif­fer­ence is?’ They have no clue. No­body is think­ing about it from that per­spec­tive–and those of us with priv­i­leges must be cham­pi­ons for oth­ers to build their own …” Daniel said.

She said she would like to live in a world that does not have to be forced by stan­dards, tar­iffs, car­bon tax­es, hir­ing a cer­tain race or be­ing in­clu­sive to do what is right. Do­ing good is good busi­ness.

Maria Daniel

“Can we please stop try­ing to equalise to some­thing we can­not be equiv­a­lent to? Let us stop go­ing for equal­i­ty of out­come. Let us go for who we are, and let us go for the best ver­sion of our­selves. I don’t want to be a man, and I am not fo­cused on be­ing ‘equat­ed’ to a man. We are dif­fer­ent. Our thoughts are dif­fer­ent. Every­body doesn’t have to do the same thing. It’s about equal op­por­tu­ni­ty, not (clin­i­cal) equal­i­ty.”

Maria Boyd

“Even though na­tion­al en­er­gy pol­i­cy needs to be tied in­to the (UN) Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals around not just clean en­er­gy, but gen­der eq­ui­ty and cli­mate change, com­pa­nies should not sit and wait on the leg­is­la­tion to en­able to come from Gov­ern­ment. It’s about do­ing what’s right and good for the so­ci­ety and peo­ple and the plan­et.”

Lau­ren Bain

“When we are think­ing about in­clu­sion and when we are think­ing about equal op­por­tu­ni­ty, try and broad­en be­yond just pro­vid­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty, think about why peo­ple weren’t able to ac­cess that op­por­tu­ni­ty be­fore and tack­le those ob­sta­cles first. This means con­sid­er­ing all women, re­gard­less of age, eth­nic­i­ty, back­ground etc, and should ex­tend to any­body who doesn’t have ac­cess to the same op­por­tu­ni­ties as your­self.”

Ceri Caz­abon

“While hav­ing an In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day is im­por­tant, we need to ex­tend it be­yond the day. We need to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that the field we are in is very woman-dom­i­nat­ed and has al­ways been woman-dom­i­nat­ed. I know a lot of peo­ple when they think about en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivists, they do think of men, and we need to eval­u­ate why these men come to the fore­front of our minds when the sta­tis­tics show it is ac­tu­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by women, so we need to give the time and re­spect to the women do­ing it.”

Sara Low

“I would en­cour­age women to keep on grow­ing. What­ev­er op­por­tu­ni­ties you do have in front of you, keep on grab­bing them and lift­ing your­self while al­so bring­ing those be­low you along with you. Al­so use your plat­form to en­cour­age oth­ers, sup­port oth­ers and con­nect oth­ers with each oth­er so we can con­tin­ue grow­ing.”

Ruqayyah Scott

“Un­der­stand­ing the re­al­i­ty of our so­ci­ety in that not all women have ac­cess to the same re­sources and op­por­tu­ni­ties, we re­al­ly need to pay fo­cus to all those women who do need re­sources, help and men­tor­ship. I think it’s a per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty for us with cer­tain priv­i­leges to lend a help­ing hand to women in need.”