Only one in five leadership roles in the energy sector are held by women. The energy sector remains one of the most gender imbalanced sectors, and gender equity in this sector still poses a great challenge in India. The skewed gender dynamics coupled with inadequate representation of women in these sectors can partly be attributed to the social and perception barriers about the dominance of field-based activities, geographical mobility, and shift-based working, which have traditionally been considered as negative for women’s participation in these sectors. On September 5, 2019, during the 2nd International Conference on Large-Scale Renewable Energy in India’, South Asia Women in Energy (SAWIE) was launched as a joint initiative of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF). It aims to increase the representation of women at the leadership levels in the energy, industrial, and manufacturing sectors thereby enabling diversity in decision-making. As the name suggests SAWIE is focused on the South Asia region, with India at its fulcrum. SAWIE provides a platform for women to form a collaborative and strategic approach towards reaching gender equality goals and building strong pillars across the sectors. The platform brings together women leaders across sectors and follows a working-group-based model to realize its objectives.
