By Adedoyin E. Oyewole
Woman in Energy Series (Parts 1 – 4)

Article One: The Room Before the Room

“Deals are closed in bars.”

I have always found this saying interesting, not because I believe every important transaction happens over drinks, but because the more professional rooms I have entered, the more I have realised that there is often another room before the formal one.

That “room” may be dinner after a conference. It may be a phone call on the way home, two people staying behind after a meeting, or simply a relationship that has been built long before anything appears on a calendar. By the time the presentation happens and the paperwork begins, trust may already have been built, questions may already have been asked, and opinions may already be forming.

The formal room matters. But sometimes, it is not where the conversation truly begins.

When Access Happens Before the Meeting

This becomes especially interesting when we consider who has access to those informal spaces. Nigeria’s energy sector has made progress on inclusion, but women are still underrepresented. In 2026, the Women in Energy Network reported that women accounted for 18.2% of Nigeria’s energy workforce and 25.6% of leadership roles. In some rooms, that imbalance is not something you need a report to notice; you can simply count.

And the issue is not only representation. It is also time. For many women, the end of the working day does not mean the end of responsibility. There may be children, family, caregiving, planning, and an entire second layer of work waiting at home. Nigeria’s Time Use Survey has shown that women spend significantly more time on unpaid domestic and care work than men.

That matters because if relationship-building, information-sharing, and trust often continue after formal working hours, then access to those spaces will not be equally easy for everyone. This does not mean every deal is made in a bar. It means some of the conversations that shape opportunity happen outside the official room, and some people have easier access to those spaces than others.

Value Can Enter a Room Before You Do

This is where my own experience complicated the story for me. I have not always been in the earlier conversations. I have not heard every discussion. I have not been present every time an idea first came up.

Yet I have experienced situations where my perspective was still sought before a decision moved forward. I have received information ahead of a meeting because someone wanted to know my view. I have seen people seek alignment with me before going into a conversation. I have also watched my position become part of a decision point even when I was not present for everything that came before it.

That taught me something I now believe very strongly: Value can enter a room before you do.

I do not say this to dismiss exclusion. Bias exists. Closed networks exist. Women should not have to become exceptional before they are given ordinary professional access. But I have also seen something else: people gravitate towards value. Not simply title. Not noise. Not presence for the sake of presence. Value.

The person who understands the work. The person who has done the thinking. The person who notices what others miss. The person who understands the process and can connect the technical, commercial, and human sides of a problem. The person whose judgment has become reliable enough that someone pauses and asks, “What does she think?”

That kind of credibility can travel. At first, you may be trying to enter rooms. Then people begin inviting you. Eventually, something more interesting can happen: your thinking is sought before the room is even formed. That, to me, is influence.

Presence is Not the Same as Influence

The conversation around women in energy often focuses, rightly, on representation: how many women are in technical roles, how many are in leadership, how many women-owned businesses are receiving opportunities, and how many women are moving through the professional pipeline.

But I think there is another question worth asking: what happens after we enter? What depth of knowledge are we building? What problems can we solve? What decisions can we shape? What happens to the quality of the conversation because we are there? Representation matters, but it should lead somewhere.

A person can sit through every meeting and still have little effect on the final outcome. Another person may not be physically present, yet their view is still sought because their contribution has become difficult to ignore. This is why I believe the goal cannot only be access. It has to be influence.

Women should absolutely have fairer access to the rooms where decisions are formed. But while that work continues, we should also be deliberate about building the kind of expertise, judgment, and credibility that gives our thinking weight. You may not control every room you are invited into. But you can control the quality of what you bring when you arrive. And over time, that value has a way of travelling. Sometimes, even before you do.

Article Two: When They Begin to Ask, “What Does She Think?”

There is a point in a career where being present stops being the most interesting thing. At the beginning, access can feel like everything. You want to be invited. You want to sit at the table. You want your name on the project. You want to be part of the conversation. And there is nothing wrong with that. Visibility matters.

But somewhere along the way, I started noticing a difference between being present and actually having influence. A person can attend every meeting and contribute very little to the decision. Another person may not even be in the room, yet somebody eventually asks, “Have we heard her view on this?”

That difference fascinates me.

From Presence to Credibility

I have experienced both sides. I have been in conversations where I knew I was simply one of the people around the table. I have also experienced situations where people wanted my position before a discussion progressed. Those moments changed the way I think about professional value.

Influence is not always loud. Sometimes it is simply becoming dependable enough that your perspective becomes part of the process. You understand the problem. You have done the work. You know where the risks are. You can see how one decision may affect something three steps later. You know when an idea sounds impressive but will struggle in execution. You are able to connect people, process, and consequence.

That kind of value compounds. At first, people ask you to attend. Then they ask you to contribute. Then they ask you to lead. Eventually, they begin asking what you think before the room is even formed. That progression matters.

Representation Should Lead to Influence

Much of the conversation around women in male-dominated industries has focused, correctly, on representation. How many women are in leadership? How many women are in technical roles? How many women are building companies? How many have access to capital? Those are important questions.

But I think another question deserves equal attention: what happens after we enter? What depth of expertise are we building? What decisions can we influence? What problems are we becoming known for solving? What happens to the quality of a project because we are involved? If I am removed from the conversation, what exactly is lost?

That question can be uncomfortable, but it is useful. Because representation should not end at being counted. We should be shaping outcomes. This is one reason I find the direction of women-in-energy development programmes encouraging. The conversation is increasingly moving beyond motivation and visibility into commercial knowledge, technical capacity, leadership, governance, and strategic decision-making.

That shift matters because confidence without competence is fragile. Visibility without depth can disappear. Networking without value eventually becomes noise.

Build Substance, Not Performance

I also do not believe the answer is for women to copy the way men have historically navigated professional spaces. We do not all need to spend our nights in bars. We do not need to become the loudest voices in every room. And we do not need to lose ourselves trying to prove we can operate exactly like everyone else.

What we need is substance. A woman who understands the technical side of her work. A woman who understands the commercial implication. A woman who can communicate clearly. A woman who follows through. A woman whose work speaks consistently enough that people remember her contribution when another opportunity appears.

That is a different kind of positioning. People gravitate towards value, but value has to be deliberately built. It is the accumulation of knowledge, character, reliability, curiosity, preparation, and experience. It is how you respond when something goes wrong. It is whether people trust what you say. It is whether your presence actually moves the work forward.

Perhaps that is where influence truly begins. Not when everyone knows your name, but when your judgment starts carrying weight. For me, one of the strongest professional questions a woman can aspire to hear is not simply, “Is she coming?” It is: “What does she think?” Because somewhere between those two questions lies the difference between presence and influence.

Article Three: The Things We Carry Into Leadership

Women carry many things. Some are visible. Some are not. A professional title may be visible. The responsibilities that sit around it often are not. For many women, work does not exist independently of the rest of life. There may be children, family, community, caregiving, and the invisible coordination required to keep different parts of life moving.

I used to look at some of this and think women simply had a natural advantage when it came to multitasking, paying attention, and managing several things at once. I think about it differently today. Perhaps some of the strengths we see are not simply biological. Perhaps they are disciplines that life has required many women to practise repeatedly.

What Life Teaches Us to Notice

Paying attention. Anticipating. Remembering. Listening. Coordinating. Following through. Caring about what happens after the immediate task has been completed. These abilities are often described as “soft.” I am not sure I agree.

There is nothing particularly soft about noticing a risk before it becomes an expensive problem. There is nothing soft about coordinating multiple stakeholders with conflicting interests. There is nothing soft about understanding that a technically correct decision may still fail because nobody considered the people who have to implement it.

These things matter in energy. Energy is not only engineering, infrastructure, oil, gas, electricity, or renewables. It is also regulation, financing, communities, safety, policy, technology, environment, negotiation, and people. The professionals who can understand the connections between these different elements often become particularly valuable.

Turning Lived Experience into Leadership Capital

This is where I believe women have an opportunity to intentionally convert many of the disciplines we have developed through life into professional strength. Not because every woman is the same. We are not. And certainly not because women should continue carrying an unfair amount of responsibility just so we can later call it resilience. Unequal burdens should not be romanticised.

But there is also no reason to ignore the capabilities that experience may have developed in us. Attention to detail can become operational excellence. Empathy can become stakeholder intelligence. Listening can become stronger leadership. Coordination can become project management. The ability to see several moving parts can become strategic thinking.

The question is whether we recognise these things as professional assets and sharpen them intentionally. Knowledge matters. Technical skill matters. Commercial understanding matters. But so does judgment. So does communication. So does emotional intelligence. So does the ability to work with people.

Leadership Does Not Require Becoming Someone Else

One of the mistakes women can make is assuming we need to discard some of these qualities to succeed in industries historically shaped by men. We become afraid that empathy will look weak, that care will look emotional, that listening will look passive, or that collaboration will look less impressive than command.

I think the opposite can be true. What matters is how these qualities are applied. Leadership is not about becoming harder. It is about becoming more effective. There will be moments for firmness and moments for empathy. Moments for technical depth and moments for commercial reasoning. Moments when you need to speak and moments when paying attention gives you more information than speaking ever could.

The goal is not to demonstrate that women can behave like men in energy. The goal is to demonstrate what excellent leadership looks like when more capable people are allowed to bring their full range of strengths into the industry. Women do not need to become smaller versions of an old leadership model. We can help expand the model itself.

And perhaps that is one of the most important possibilities of greater female participation in energy: not simply more women occupying existing positions, but more women helping redefine what strong leadership in the sector can look like.

Article Four: Pulling Out Another Chair

There is another question I have been thinking about: What happens after you finally gain access? You have worked. You have built credibility. You have entered some of the rooms you once hoped to enter. Your opinion is respected. People call you. People ask what you think. Perhaps your name now opens doors that once felt difficult to reach.

Then what? Because if access ends with us, we may have achieved something personally, but we have not changed very much.

Influence Has a Responsibility

I think one of the greatest responsibilities that comes with influence is deciding what to do with it. If someone mentions your name in a room you are not in, whose name are you mentioning? If somebody once forwarded an opportunity to you, who are you forwarding opportunities to? If someone gave you your first chance, who is getting a first chance because you are now in a position to give one?

If you know a brilliant younger woman whose work deserves to be seen, are you saying her name when an opportunity appears? Those questions matter. Because representation cannot only be about the woman who finally makes it. It also has to be about what becomes easier for the women behind her.

Changing the numbers of women in energy will require more than encouraging women to apply. It will require pathways: mentorship, sponsorship, exposure, networks, opportunities to lead, commercial knowledge, and access to capital. And sometimes, it simply requires someone willing to say: “I know someone who can do this.” That sentence has built many careers.

Networks Should Widen Access, Not Recreate Exclusion

For a long time, informal professional networks have influenced whose names come up when opportunities appear. This is why women’s professional networks matter. They create spaces where information can travel, where experiences can be shared, where younger women can learn what others had to discover slowly, and where somebody with twenty years of experience can shorten the learning curve of someone with two.

But I think this idea has to go further. The objective should not be to build a female version of the same closed networks we sometimes criticise. The objective should be to build better systems of access. Systems where competence is easier to discover. Systems where opportunities do not depend entirely on who stayed behind after dinner. Systems where talented women are not invisible because they are outside certain circles. Systems where sponsorship is intentional and where younger professionals understand how the industry works earlier.

And this cannot remain a conversation women hold only among ourselves. Men who already occupy positions of influence also have a role to play in creating more inclusive pathways.

The Next Energy Industry is Already Being Built

Nigeria’s energy sector itself is changing. The energy transition is opening conversations around renewables, clean cooking, distributed energy, gas, climate finance, technology, energy access, and new infrastructure. Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan projects significant job creation over the coming decades.

Those are not simply job numbers. They represent future engineers, entrepreneurs, commercial leaders, project developers, financiers, regulators, and executives. The people who prepare now will help shape that future. So this is not only a conversation about correcting yesterday’s inequality. It is also a conversation about who gets to build tomorrow.

Who will lead the companies? Who will design policy? Who will build the technology? Who will sit on the boards? Who will negotiate the transactions? Who will create the businesses? And when those opportunities arrive, will women still be standing outside another room asking to be included? Or will we already be part of building the room itself?

Pulling Out Another Chair

This is why personal success is not enough for me. There is joy in achievement. There is pride in becoming good at what you do. There is satisfaction in knowing that your work has earned trust. But perhaps the highest use of influence is to make somebody else’s journey slightly less difficult.

To share information. To recommend competence. To mentor. To sponsor. To speak up. To create opportunities. To make sure the next woman’s brilliance is discovered a little earlier than yours was.

I believe strongly that people gravitate towards value. But value does not always automatically find opportunity. Sometimes someone has to open the door. Sometimes someone has to make the introduction. Sometimes someone has to say the name. Sometimes someone simply needs to pull out another chair.

And perhaps that is where our real contribution becomes sustainable: when our success stops being only evidence of what one woman can achieve and starts becoming infrastructure for what many other women can achieve.

The goal is not merely to have another woman at the table. The goal is that because she was there, the table becomes easier for others to reach. Value creates influence. Influence creates access. And access becomes truly meaningful when it becomes a bridge for someone else.