The en­er­gy in­dus­try has been his­tor­i­cal­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed, but that has been chang­ing over the years as many women are now in se­nior ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions.

The book called A Dif­fer­ent En­er­gy: Women in Caribbean Oil and Gas, which was au­thored by Trinida­di­an lawyer turned writer Ce­leste Mo­hammed, touch­es on how women dealt with chal­lenges with­in the in­dus­try.

Deb­o­rah Ben­jamin, the pub­lish­er who owns Words Mat­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has al­so been in the in­dus­try for the past 25 years and is fea­tured in the book, which was of­fi­cial­ly launched at the En­er­gy con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency in Jan­u­ary.

Asked by Sun­day Busi­ness how the idea of the book came about, the au­thor Mo­hammed said Ben­jamin reached out to her via Face­book and asked her for cof­fee.

“When we met, she float­ed the idea of a book about her ex­pe­ri­ences as a woman in the oil and gas in­dus­try. Ini­tial­ly, I won­dered why any­one would want to read about a de­sign­er-suits-and-heels woman rak­ing in wads of oil mon­ey and trav­el­ing all over the world.”

“You see, that was the view I had of women in oil and gas—it’s a com­mon­ly held per­cep­tion. I felt a sense of de­ja vu. As a fe­male lawyer, I have en­coun­tered sim­i­lar­ly un­com­fort­able mo­ments in my ca­reer. I im­me­di­ate­ly saw that such a book was nec­es­sary and had to be much wider in scope than Deb­o­rah or me. How­ev­er, it took 6 months for me to draft a clear pro­pos­al on the type of book I would be pre­pared to write.” Mo­hammed ex­plained.

The book, she said, at­tempts to high­light the great strides that have been made, while sound­ing a clar­i­on call for even more in­ten­tion­al ac­tion at the gov­ern­ment, in­dus­try, and com­pa­ny lev­el, to em­pow­er women so that they en­ter and en­dure with­in the oil and gas in­dus­try.

The Busi­ness Guardian spoke to some of the eight women who are fea­tured in the book to get an overview of how they sur­vived the chal­lenges they en­coun­tered, with­in the in­dus­try.

Ar­lene Chow, re­tired chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, said her method of over­com­ing the chal­lenges that she faced in a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try was to work ex­treme­ly hard 24/7 and al­ways be well pre­pared, some­times over-pre­pared.

“I en­sured I was very knowl­edge­able in my area. I nev­er took no for an an­swer. If there was a chal­lenge, I would find a way to de­liv­er the ob­jec­tive. I made my­self the ob­vi­ous choice for any job pro­mo­tion or op­por­tu­ni­ty by hav­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence and by my de­liv­ery. I al­so en­sured I ful­ly sup­port­ed my teams to de­liv­er their ob­jec­tives, be­cause you can­not be suc­cess­ful un­less you have made your teams suc­cess­ful,” Chow out­lined.

She stressed as a woman leader in a male in­dus­try, there was al­ways some wari­ness es­pe­cial­ly if you were the first woman in a role. Chow’s ad­vice to oth­er women who are as­pir­ing to be­come lead­ers with­in the sec­tor is to be hum­ble and com­pe­tent with one’s team, and that this is the best way to be­come a suc­cess­ful leader.

Al­so, she said, “In any role be­sides, the nor­mal busi­ness ob­jec­tives, I made sure I was men­tor­ing some­one to re­place me. As a leader that is one of the most im­por­tant and some­what over­looked goals. When I moved on from a job, if I men­tored a com­pe­tent re­place­ment this would be one of my best ac­com­plish­ments.”

Giv­ing her in­put about her ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­dus­try, Van­dana Gan­garam Pan­day, di­rec­tor of the Staat­solie Hy­dro­car­bon In­sti­tute, Suri­name, said she was grate­ful for a good gen­der bal­ance in cor­po­rate roles at the com­pa­ny and hasn’t been ex­posed much to chal­lenges.

Asked to de­scribe the ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing more male boss­es than fe­male, Pan­day said it’s the per­son that mat­ters, not the gen­der.

“Per­son­al­i­ty is a strong force that you can­not change in the core of who you are. You must take feed­back, but you should put more fo­cus on us­ing your strengths than on chang­ing your weak­ness­es. You work on those in the mar­gin. The en­er­gy comes from with­in,” she men­tioned.

Marny Daal, re­tired di­rec­tor of the Staat­solie Hy­dro­car­bon In­sti­tute, Suri­name, speak­ing about her ex­pe­ri­ence while in the in­dus­try, said she al­ways demon­strat­ed that she could do the work and en­joyed go­ing the ex­tra mile.

About her achieve­ments while in the in­dus­try, Daal said she brought in­vestors in the oil and gas in­dus­try to Suri­name. “Kept be­liev­ing and prov­ing with the team that the coun­try could have an off­shore oil and gas in­dus­try. We had proven it in­shore, so the next step was off­shore. Ex­plo­ration off­shore start­ed late 60s ear­ly 70s. Oth­er parts of the world were eas­i­er be­cause ge­ol­o­gy was eas­i­er,” she re­vealed.

Sati­ra Ma­haraj, en­gi­neer and gen­der re­la­tions schol­ar, who al­so worked at the de­funct Petrotrin oil re­fin­ery as an en­gi­neer, said she chose not to re­main silent on the chal­lenges she en­coun­tered with males in the sec­tor.

“I asked for ad­vice from trust­ed women who had more ex­pe­ri­ence. I de­cid­ed to call out dis­crim­i­na­tion. I faced con­se­quences – I was told I was too sen­si­tive, even dif­fi­cult to work with. Sad­ly, the sys­tem worked against me, as my boss sided with a man who bul­lied me. Pow­er op­er­ates in cu­ri­ous ways. I thought about the kids in my life and the kind of work en­vi­ron­ment I want­ed them to be a part of. Some­how, I man­aged to find strength (as op­posed to sen­si­tiv­i­ty!) to trans­form my si­lence in­to lan­guage and ac­tion, al­though the con­se­quences were, un­for­tu­nate­ly, sig­nif­i­cant,” Ma­haraj re­called.

Af­ter work­ing with the men for some time at the oil re­fin­ery, the en­gi­neer said there is no doubt that some men learned to guard their dis­crim­i­na­to­ry be­hav­iour around her.

“I think the men of my gen­er­a­tion re­spect­ed me for the de­ci­sions I made. I was able to have val­ued con­ver­sa­tions with many men of the old­er gen­er­a­tion about times gone by and times yet to come,” she dis­closed.

The pub­lish­er Deb­o­rah Ben­jamin, who is al­so man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of AS­CO, the glob­al in­te­grat­ed lo­gis­tics and ma­te­ri­als man­age­ment com­pa­ny, opened up to Busi­ness Guardian on how tough it is be­ing a sin­gle moth­er and bal­anc­ing the day-to-day work.

Ben­jamin said that work-life bal­ance is al­ways a chal­lenge, and her son has moved from coun­try to coun­try with her.

“Child­care has al­ways been dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly when you are in an­oth­er coun­try. How­ev­er, 17 years lat­er, I am proud that I have an in­de­pen­dent young man who is in­tel­li­gent, kind, con­nects with peo­ple un­be­liev­ably, and loves to trav­el,” she de­tailed.

Every woman has per­son­al lows but that is how you turn it in­to lessons and Ben­jamin said she used her ex­pe­ri­ences of re­silience and faith to let oth­ers know they are not alone, and that they can see a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion through.

“I par­tic­u­lar­ly en­joy coach­ing younger women in­clud­ing my sis­ters, who are will­ing to em­brace the wis­dom of ex­pe­ri­ence to nav­i­gate and avoid some of the same pit­falls,” she con­clud­ed.

The book is avail­able for in­ter­na­tion­al or­ders on­line via Ama­zon, Barnes & No­ble and in Trinidad, Pa­per-Based Book­shop on 14 Al­cazar Street, St Clair and from the pub­lish­er Words Mat­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.