HOUSTON—BP P.L.C. and its contractors will pay up to $5.4 million to women who were rejected for jobs during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup under an agreement that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Thursday.

An EEOC investigation was launched following complaints by several women in Louisiana and Alabama that certain contractors did not consider them for cleanup jobs because of their gender, according to a joint announcement by the EEOC and BP Exploration & Production Inc., a unit of BP.

“There has not been a determination that BP violated anti-discrimination laws, and BP denies that it has engaged in any wrongdoing,” according to the statement. “This is a voluntary resolution, under which the EEOC and BP are partnering to ensure that contractors used during emergent situations in the future are committed to equal employment opportunities at BP.”

Applicants seeking compensation may be required to submit information to support their claims. Undistributed money from the settlement fund will be donated to a charity in the Gulf of Mexico area that benefits women in the workplace, according to the statement.

The agreement includes provisions for contractual safeguards that require contractors to abide by equal employment opportunity laws, training for BP administrators who engage contractors and a designated BP employee who will monitor the terms of the EEOC agreement.

“We applaud BP's willingness to aggressively combat sex discrimination in the workplace,” Keith T. Hill, the EEOC's New Orleans field office director, said in the statement.

“BP has been and continues to be committed to being an industry leader when it comes to (equal employment opportunity) issues,” Mike Utsler, president of the BP Gulf Cost Restoration Organization, said in the statement.

The April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11, injured numerous others and led to nearly 5 million barrels of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico before the well was capped almost three months later.