The Hindu Business Line : Storming another male bastion

It’s been a long journey for women engineers in the country. Three decades ago when Ms Sudha Murthy was rejected for a shop-floor job at Tata Motors (formerly Telco) she shot off a letter to the then chairman J. R. D. Tata protesting against the company’s gender bias. Thirty-five years hence, corporate India has recognised that women are a valuable talent resource and are competent to handle frontline engineering jobs.

Cairn India, one of the country’s largest oil and gas exploration and production companies (E&P), recently recruited four women engineers in frontline jobs but has had several women technocrats for a few years now.

The grease and grime of the industry did not deter Jayjayanti Basu Mallik, a geologist who has worked with Cairn’s reservoir development team since 2006. Since she had heard her seniors describe Cairn as “one of the pioneers in the Indian E&P scenario,” it was a natural choice to accept the offer when it came. “For not even a single moment have I felt a misfit in this so-called male dominated field,” says Mallik. In fact, she says, things have been as good or as bad for her as they have been for her male colleagues.

As a frontliner in a tough, male-dominated work environment, Mallik says that it has been a gratifying experience from the beginning. Though she was the only woman in a group of seven graduate trainees, she never faced a gender bias since all that counted was the efficiency and diligence of the employee. Namita Godara, who joined as a Graduate Engineer Trainee (GET), says that there is a general perception that women cannot handle core jobs and even if some companies recruit women, they are not given the chance to work in the field. “When I chose electrical engineering as my major during BE, I was interested in handling a core job rather than a software job. I chose to join Cairn India because they had shown an interest in involving women in frontline engineering, providing both the men and the women equal field exposure.”

Sugandha Agrawal, a chemical engineer who is also a graduate engineering trainee, said she initially joined the company because it allowed her to do work related to her core subject.

The desire to pursue a career in her core field of study also prompted Monika Rajpurohit, another GET, to accept the offer from Cairn. “So far, women have not had the opportunity to work in frontline operations in the oil and gas industry in India.” As a mechanical engineer, she knew the job would help keep her interest in core engineering subjects alive.

Mentoring

Having traditionally had no history of senior women in the field, who do these women look up to for mentoring and career progression advice? Mallik, the senior-most among them, says that currently there are five female colleagues in the technical team who are senior to her and are held in high esteem as efficient employees; obviously she looks up to them as role models.

Seema Rayal, another GET, says that she looks up to all her seniors in the technical team, both male and female, who are highly respected in the company as competent professionals. For Agrawal, unfortunately, there are no senior women chemical engineers here, but there are seniors from other disciplines who are her role models.

Adherence to safety measures

Mallik says Cairn India ensures that all safety measures are taken into account in advance. “Even if a female employee is working in the remotest of fields, she’ll feel safe. Health, safety and environment have always been a top priority for Cairn India, so no matter how rigorous it seems, all the employees, both women and men, are well taken care of.”

Though considered a ‘risky business’ for women, generally all E&P companies have adopted effective safety measures and the latest technologies to make the job easier and safer.

P. Senthil Kumar, Director, HR and Administration, Cairn India remarks, “At Cairn, we believe in equal opportunity. We focus on the talent of an individual and not on gender. Even in an industry which is conventionally dominated by men, we have been recruiting talented women.” Currently, the company is also recruiting women engineers for front-end operations in India’s biggest onshore oil find at Rajasthan.

The experiences of these girls have dispelled the myth that an E&P job is a man’s domain. “I keep getting queries from juniors for opportunities in Cairn India,” says Godara. Constraints such as safety concerns, tough terrain and their parents’ permission to take up field jobs are other myths, she says. During the last one year in her job, she says she has never had any problem in working in the field.

Agrawal has, in fact, been able to influence a friend in joining the industry. “Yes, it is still difficult to convince most women, but trends are changing,” she agrees.

For career advancement in the petroleum industry, women engineers should necessarily have field experience and a full understanding of the technical components of up and downstream oil and gas processes, says Rajpurohit. “We are working with great enthusiasm and I feel that the E&P sector is not as rigorous as it is made out to be. Rather, I feel that there should be no such perceived gender based demarcation in our minds about this sector.”

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Storming another male bastion