Undersecretary of Energy Kristina Johnson is emphasizing the importance of women in energy fields

On Tuesday, U.S. Department of Energy Under Secretary Kristina M. Johnson announced a new initiative at the Clean Energy Ministerial to promote the participation of women in clean energy science and engineering fields called the “Clean Energy Education and Empowerment (C3-E) Initiative.”  The C-3E Initiative will encourage young women to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields by supporting workshops and speeches from clean energy leaders to inspire students, and officials in participating countries will lead outreach events and make scholarship funds available for women pursuing advanced degrees in clean energy.

Today, women make up only 20 percent of the professional energy workforce. Many capable and talented women are not joining the effort to promote clean energy technologies due to a variety of factors.  As Under Secretary Johnson stated:

“The clean energy revolution will progress farther and faster if it draws on the brightest minds everywhere. Every young woman who is discouraged from studying science and engineering represents potential innovation lost. The world will be better off — men and women alike — if those who have succeeded in these fields share their own stories, and inspire young women to follow in their footsteps.”

As early as the undergraduate level, top engineering schools suffer from chronic gender imbalances while women form 57 percent of the total US university enrollment.  Cultural factors pressure women out of the science career pipeline at every stage from pre-school to graduate school. Even as children, gendered toys and marketing push more boys and fewer girls towards science.  Once in college, women tend to be in more liberal arts fields such as literature and psychology instead of the STEM fields, especially the physical science and engineering fields. As a result, women make up nearly 77 percent of psychology majors and only 12.9 percent of electrical engineering majors and 21 percent of physics majors.  Johnson’s C-3E Initiative is an important step toward addressing this problem in an area of critical need.