Women Offshore: Two Voices

Abstract

The UK North Sea oil and gas industry is usually seen with justice as a masculine industry, and the scholarly literature it has generated so far has, with a few interesting exceptions, focused on a discourse by, and about, men. Yet women have been present offshore since the early 1970s, and their experiences are an important part of the industry's story. Women's voices must be heard if the industry's history is to be fully understood. In the University of Aberdeen-British Library Lives in the Oil Industry oral history archive, there are interviews with some thirty women carried out by Hugo Manson. During the research for my doctoral thesis on 'Women and the British North Sea Oil Industry', I have interviewed many others. For this documentary report, I have selected excerpts from transcripts of two of my interviews with Alison North and Avril Taylor. They are, I think, significant and revealing examples of the stories women have to tell.