Yassmin Abdel-Magied calls for greater diversity in oil and gas industry
Yassmin Abdel-Magied calls for greater diversity in oil and gas industry
Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied has suggested the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in 2010 could have been avoided if executives from the companies responsible had been drawn from more diverse backgrounds.
Addressing hundreds of delegates at a conference in Perth yesterday, the 26-year-old former mechanical engineer cited the Gulf of Mexico spill to urge more gender and cultural diversity among directors and senior management of male-dominated oil and gas companies.
She also confessed to “hating” feminism until two years ago when she came to recognise the barriers that made it difficult for people such as her — “a young, brown Muslim woman” — to succeed in the male-dominated industry
Yassmin Abdel-Magied calls for greater diversity in oil and gas industry
Her comments came after she attracted controversy in February by telling the ABC’s
Q&A program that she believed Islam was “the most feminist religion”.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied calls for greater diversity in oil and gas industry
The Sudan-born activist was speaking yesterday during a panel discussion at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association’s annual conference on the topic of “diversity and inclusion”.
She said behavioural scientists had attributed the explosion on the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig to groupthink and confirmation bias among key decision-makers in the lead up to the explosion that killed 11 people.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied calls for greater diversity in oil and gas industry
“Was there anyone else around the table who thought differently and who didn’t just think differently, but was included enough and was valued enough so their different perspective was valued, to actually challenge that bias?” she said.
“Everyone around the table came from a similar world and a similar perspective. They all thought the same. They all cared about the same things. And so we ended with one of the worst tragedies in our industry.
“And I often wonder, if there was someone around that table who was different, who thought differently but was valued as equally as everybody else, who could challenge that groupthink and challenge that confirmation bias, would things have ended differently?”
Yassmin Abdel-Magied calls for greater diversity in oil and gas industry
In 2014, the US District Court ruled that BP acted with “gross negligence” and made “profit-driven decisions” during the drilling that led to the blowout.
Swiss-based drilling rig owner Transocean and Houston-based contractor Halliburton Energy Services were also found partly responsible.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...y/news-story/d4ea11f631e60256ab465a0649b91597
