By Mike Thornton, chief executive of Energy Saving Trust
We’re celebrating International Women’s Day 2022 by sharing the stories of inspirational women, including some of our Energy Saving Trust colleagues, who are breaking the bias.
At Energy Saving Trust, we’re committed to delivering an equitable response to addressing the climate emergency for everyone. This includes women and girls who we know are disproportionately affected by climate change.
For example, as part of our work on the Efficiency for Access Design Challenge, we aim to improve opportunities for women. Funded by UK aid and the IKEA Foundation, the Challenge invites teams of university students to create affordable, high-performing off-grid appliances and technologies. Competitions like this help provide young women with the skills and confidence to pursue careers in male-dominated sectors.
We also know that women are more vulnerable to fuel poverty and, as energy prices continue to rise, we’re working to address this. For example, we run the Home Energy Scotland advice service and through its partnerships and communities offering, we are providing support to women’s groups across Scotland.
This International Women’s Day marks one year since we formally started our journey towards becoming a more diverse, equitable and inclusive organisation, which has included welcoming a diversity and inclusion lead to our team.
We have now developed a comprehensive new diversity and inclusion strategy that will help us transform our culture internally and become a more inclusive employer. We have achieved a 50:50 gender split in our senior leadership team in the last 12 months and conducted our first ever inclusion survey to better understand and address specific barriers faced by women in our workplace.
I am pleased with the progress we have made so far but I know we still have far to go. We’re committed to a world that is equitable and inclusive for everyone and to breaking the gender bias. I hope you will join me today and make your commitment to #BreakTheBias too.
Read more about our International Women’s Day 2022 celebrations and our commitment to diversity and inclusion.