POWERful Women's 2026 State of the Nation report shows gender balance in the UK energy sector has stalled, with women holding 31% of board seats and 34% of middle management roles. We break down the numbers, explain why the middle of the pipeline matters most, and share how a cultural roadmap helps energy and environmental organisations turn targets into lasting change.
Gender balance in the UK energy sector has stalled. POWERful Women's 2026 State of the Nation report, published in June, found that women hold 31% of board seats across the UK's top 100 energy companies, up just one percentage point in a year. Women's representation in middle management is stuck at 34% for the second year running.
The sector's target is 40% women in leadership and middle management by 2030. With four years to go, POWERful Women Chair Monica Collings OBE didn't soften the message: "Progress is reversing. This is a wake-up call."
At Includability we work with HR and People leaders across the energy and environmental sector, and this data matches what we hear from them. Targets get set at the top, but the culture underneath moves more slowly. Here's what the numbers say, where the real blockage sits, and what organisations can do about it.
The report analysed the UK's top 100 energy companies using data gathered directly and from public sources as of January 2026. The headline figures:
There is good news in here. Fourteen companies now meet the leadership target, compared with eight a year ago. But the rise in boards losing women, and the drop in female CFOs and COOs, shows how quickly gains can slip when they depend on a handful of individual appointments.
Middle management is where tomorrow's leaders come from. If women make up 34% of middle managers and that number isn't moving, leadership figures will level off within a few years, however much effort goes into senior hiring.
It's also the point where many people decide whether to stay. Middle management is where workload, flexible working, who gets the stretch projects, how promotion decisions are made and how returners are supported after parental leave all come together. In technical and engineering routes, promotion still often rewards visibility and long hours on site, which doesn't suit everyone's life and isn't a reliable measure of talent.
Wider workforce data shows how much is at stake. G-P's 2026 Global Workforce Trends report found that 53% of UK employees are looking for a new job or likely to start looking within six months, and 59% worry their skills won't keep up with an AI-powered workplace. The energy transition already depends on scarce technical skills. When women leave the middle of an energy business, the sector often loses them altogether.
One figure in the report stood out to us. Only 33 of the 100 companies provided data on women in middle management. Two thirds of the UK's largest energy companies either don't track this or don't share it.
Miya Paolucci, Chair of the POWERful Women Leaders' Coalition and CEO of ENGIE UK, put it plainly: "Diversity improves when companies track it."
We'd add one thing. Representation data tells you who is in the room. It doesn't tell you why people leave, whether they feel they belong, or what's stopping them putting themselves forward for promotion. To understand that, organisations need two kinds of evidence side by side:
When you put the two together, you stop guessing and start seeing the specific points where women drop out of your pipeline.
Twenty-two boards removed at least one woman in the last year, compared with five the year before. That's a reminder that representation built on individual appointments can disappear when those individuals move on.
Gains hold when they're built into how the organisation works. That means succession plans with diverse shortlists, sponsorship for women moving into senior roles, clear and fair promotion criteria, and leaders who are accountable for progress. Culture keeps change in place long after a single hire or a single campaign.
A cultural roadmap is a structured, evidence-based plan that shows how an organisation will build an inclusive culture over time. It connects what people experience day to day with clear, measurable goals, so leaders can see what's working and what isn't.
Most energy companies already have targets. What's often missing is the route between today's numbers and the 2030 goal. A cultural roadmap fills that gap in five stages:
It gives HR and People leaders something they can take to the board: a clear picture of where the organisation is, where it wants to be, and the evidence to show it's getting there.
We're proud to work alongside organisations across the energy and environmental sector, including Voltempo, CSA Environmental and B Corp Tyler Grange. Their work ranges from ultra-fast EV charging technology to ecology, landscape and environmental planning, and each of them is choosing to treat culture as part of how they grow.
Organisations like these have a real advantage. Growing and specialist businesses can build fair promotion routes, flexible working and good data habits while they scale, rather than trying to unpick old habits later. For many of the larger companies in POWERful Women's analysis, that unpicking is exactly the work they now face.
Women hold 31% of board seats across the UK's top 100 energy companies, according to POWERful Women's 2026 State of the Nation report. That's up from 30% the year before, and 13 boards are still all-male.
POWERful Women has set a target of 40% women in leadership and 40% in middle management roles across the UK energy sector by 2030. In 2026, 14 of the top 100 companies met the leadership target and 5 met the middle management target.
Women's representation in middle management has stayed at 34% for two years, which limits the number of women ready to step into leadership. At the same time, 22 boards removed at least one woman in 2025 to 2026, and only a third of companies shared middle management data, making it harder to spot and fix problems.
A cultural roadmap is a structured, evidence-based plan for building an inclusive workplace culture over time. It combines workforce data with employees' lived experience, sets clear priorities and milestones, and tracks progress so leaders can see what's changing and why.
Start by measuring representation at every level, including middle management, and pairing that data with what employees tell you. Then focus on the points where women leave or stall: promotion criteria, flexible working, line manager support, succession planning and return-to-work support. Track progress and report it openly.
Includability is a UK-wide B Corp that helps organisations build inclusive, evidenced workplace cultures. We work as a strategic partner to HR and People leaders, bringing together workforce data and lived experience to create a cultural roadmap that shows where you are, where you want to be and how you'll get there.
Targets matter, but they don't change culture on their own. A cultural roadmap gives you the evidence, the priorities and the plan to make progress that lasts, and the data to prove it to your board, your people and the people you want to hire.
If your gender data has stalled, or you're not sure what it's telling you, we'd love to talk. Get in touch with the Includability team to find out how a cultural roadmap could work for your organisation.
POWERful Women, "UK energy sector 'treading water' on gender balance as progress stalls at the top", 4 June 2026: Link Here
G-P, 2026 Global Workforce Trends report
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