By Mamiki Matlawa, Group Business Development Executive
While South Africa’s transition to a more reliable, inclusive and sustainable energy sector is too often viewed through the lens of infrastructure and technology, the critical role of women in this shift is often overlooked.
Women – long sidelined in the country’s energy institutions – are stepping into roles that are reshaping how the country thinks about power, access and resilience. Their influence is no longer a footnote in the energy debate; it is fast becoming one of its most decisive forces.
The energy sector is one of the country’s fastest‑growing, with the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2025 and the Transmission Development Plan signalling billions in new investment and years of sustained job creation. The IRP 2025 alone represents a R2.23 trillion investment that will define South Africa’s future energy mix.
At the same time, women remain disproportionately affected by unemployment – the official unemployment rate for women in South Africa is 36.6%, according to Stats SA. Expanding their role in the energy economy is therefore not only a matter of fairness but a practical lever for reducing inequality and ensuring that the benefits of this transition are more widely shared. If the sector is to meet its ambitions, women must be able to claim meaningful space within it.
Not an abstract ambition
Building that space is not an abstract ambition; it is already taking shape on the ground. Women are entering the sector in growing numbers, from engineering graduates stepping into Engineer-in-Training (EIT) programmes to apprentices and artisans being equipped with the technical skills the transition demands.
Women are moving into procurement, project management and reconstruction roles, and increasingly into leadership positions where strategic decisions about investment, innovation and grid reform are made. These shifts may still be emerging, but they signal a sector beginning to recognise that its future strength depends on drawing on the full breadth of South Africa’s talent and ensuring women are not just present but influential.
Yet despite this momentum, obstacles remain. Women still face assumptions about their capabilities, often before competence is even considered. However, some institutions, including Eskom, have elevated women into senior and technical roles, showing that transformation is both possible and beneficial.
But across much of the private sector, the pace lags, and women are still told, implicitly or explicitly, that the environment is “too tough”, “too technical” or “not for them”. These barriers may be subtle, but they remain powerful and dismantling them is essential if South Africa’s energy transition is to be genuinely inclusive and future‑fit.
Policies to drive transformation
Government, industry and educators will need to move in step if this shift is to accelerate. With major energy investment on the horizon, transformation policies must be enforced not as formalities but as conditions for participation, including the active inclusion of women in technical and leadership roles.
Companies cannot justify high female unemployment while benefiting from a booming energy economy, and universities must help bring more young women into engineering, artisanship and project management. When women have access to stable, skilled employment, the benefits extend beyond the individual to families, communities, and the broader economy. If South Africa is to grow and reduce unemployment, women must be part of the energy sector driving its next phase of development.
Another powerful lever is sponsorship. Mentorship can offer guidance, but it rarely shifts the structural barriers that keep women from real opportunity. Sponsorship puts someone with influence in a woman’s corner, advocating for her, naming her for roles, and opening doors she might never reach alone. Widening that practice could rapidly close gender gaps and pull more women into the spaces where South Africa’s energy future is being shaped.
Change must be intentional
Real change also requires intention. Companies need to set clear targets, diversify their workforces and build environments where women can thrive – from providing appropriate PPE to making practical accommodations on factory floors. Eskom’s early drive to recruit black female engineers worked because leadership made a conscious decision to open doors and then support those women once inside.
That is the formula. Sponsorship brings women into the room; mentoring helps them grow once they’re there. Without that intentional push, the sector will struggle to deliver the inclusive transition it promises.
Diversity is an economic imperative, and South Africa cannot grow while shutting women out of the very sectors capable of lifting households into stability and expanding the middle class.
When women access skilled, secure work, communities strengthen, demand rises, and the economy gains the broad base it needs to thrive. But this requires intention; leaders must set targets, open doors and actively sponsor women into real opportunity. A country that sidelines half its talent limits its own future.
Editorial Contacts
Mamiki MATLAWA
ACTOM (Pty) Ltd
Business Development Executive
