Today on International Women’s Day, the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and the Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition (GWNET) have announced this year’s participants for their jointly organised Women in Wind Global Leadership Program. After receiving over 110 highly competitive applications for this year’s program, GWEC and GWNET have chosen 15 participants from 13 countries in emerging markets across the world. The selected applicants will take part in this important initiative to accelerate their careers in the wind sector and join a growing global network of mentorship, knowledge-sharing and empowerment.
Today, the Women in Wind Global Leadership Program has also launched the Global Ambassadors initiative, which initially includes eight representatives of mature and emerging wind markets from Brazil to the UK to Japan. The Global Ambassadors are champions of diversity and sustainability in the wind energy sector. They will also act as contact points on this agenda for the public sector, private sector and media, in order to better address gender diversity within each market’s unique context.
In its second edition, the Women in Wind Global Leadership Program is partnering with industry leaders who recognise the urgent needs to address gender inequality in the sector and scale up skilled workforces around the world. This year’s partners include MHI Vestas, GE Renewable Energy, Mainstream Renewable Power, Vestas and Shizen Energy.
Joyce Lee, Policy & Operations Director at GWEC said: “International Women’s Day is a yearly reminder of the work ahead when it comes to gender equality. The wind sector is not exempt from this. With women making up only 21 per cent of the global wind industry workforce and only 8 per cent of senior-level positions, we must take action as an industry to make gender diversity a priority, or we risk losing out on the talent needed to drive innovation and growth in our sector. With 16 new participants and 8 Global Ambassadors, we are looking forward to taking Women in Wind even further this year to promote greater diversity at the individual, corporate, national and global levels”.
Christine Lins, Executive Director at GWNET added: “Programs like Women in Wind and are not only important to bring visibility to the challenge of gender equality in the industry, but also to invest human resources and knowledge in the wind energy leaders of tomorrow. This is essential in order to drive the global energy transition and reach our climate goals. We are thrilled with the level of talent we have selected to participate in this year’s program, and are looking forward to working with all the mentees and mentors throughout their journey this year”.
Participants of the Women in Wind Global Leadership Program 2020 are nationals or residents of Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela, and Vietnam. The full list of participants in the 2020 edition of the Women in Wind Global Leadership Program can be found here.
Global Ambassadors include representatives from Brazil, Denmark, Japan, Mongolia, Norway, South Africa, Turkey and the UK, with more to be nominated in the coming months. For more information on our Global Ambassadors and to find your country representative, click here.
GWEC is a member-based organization that represents the entire wind energy sector. The members of GWEC represent over 1,500 companies, organizations and institutions in more than 80 countries, including manufacturers, developers, component suppliers, research institutes, national wind and renewables associations, electricity providers, finance and insurance companies.
GWNET empowers women in energy through interdisciplinary networking, advocacy, training, as well as coaching and mentoring. GWNET seeks to address the current gender imbalances in the energy sector and to promote gender-sensitive action around the energy transition in all parts of the world.
