It’s Time To Give Women Equal Seats At The Table When Managing The World’s Most Precious Resource

Ahead of International Women’s Day, we caught up with Alicia Douglas, CEO and Founder of WaterRising Institute, to find out more about what the institute and its crucial partnership with British Water will do to improve gender equality in the water sector.

Mark Coates, senior international director of infrastructure policy advancement at Bentley Systems and immediate past chair of British Water’s U.K. Forum

In 1942, the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw gave an interview to Boston’s Christian Science Monitor where he said, “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”

When you listen to Alicia Douglas, founder of WaterRising Institute, a Michigan-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to women’s empowerment and the sustainable management of water, it is also apparent that Americans and the British are one people joined together by a similar set of global challenges.

The shared challenges facing the United Kingdom and the United States include an aging workforce, the need to re-invest in old infrastructure, dealing with the impacts of flooding from climate change, and the challenge of attracting and retaining women into the water sector.

When it comes to the statistics and trends of women working in the sector, both nations are strikingly similar. According to the Brookings Institution, although women make up 46.8% of workers across all occupations in the U.S., they account for only 14.9% of the water workforce.

Sector demographics published by Energy & Utility Skills highlight that, although women account for 47% of workers in all sectors in the U.K., they only make up 19% of today’s water sector workforce. Many other minorities are even less represented in the water sector. Globally, women occupy less than 5% of water workforce leadership.

Currently in both the U.K. and the U.S., there is a deficit in terms of finance for infrastructure repair and a pipeline of trained professionals. This situation is especially true for women.

To fill the gap, the public and private water sector needs systemic and transformational shifts to not only attract, but also retain women.

Douglas began working in the U.S. water sector after the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, when the city changed its domestic water supply source from Detroit-supplied Lake Huron water to the Flint River.

The switch caused water distribution pipes to corrode and leak lead and other contaminants into domestic drinking water.

All in all, nearly 100,000 city residents were exposed to lead through their drinking water—close to 9,000 of whom were children under the age six.

The Flint water crisis was noted for disproportionately affecting women, with fertility rates decreasing by 12% in the city and foetal death rates increased by more than half.

When working closely on the Flint water crisis, Douglas noticed that there were not many women working on managing the city’s water supply.

When she discovered this situation was a wider national problem and then a wider global phenomenon, Douglas launched the WaterWoman Project, a WaterRising program focused on increasing gender diversity in water management by engaging with the leaders of the global water industry.

It is a journey that has taken Douglas from Flint to Washington D.C. to New York, and across the world from France to Israel, and from Portugal to India.

Two weeks ago, Douglas landed in London on 19th February 2024, where, on behalf of the board of directors of the WaterRising Institute, she signed a memorandum of understanding with British Water CEO Lila Thompson to help improve the pipeline of female talent entering the water sector in the U.K. This momentous occasion also saw Dr. Mark Fletcher, British Water Chair, Dr. Anusha Shah, President, Institution of Civil Engineers, and several other key leaders from the U.K. water sector in attendance.

As part of the memorandum of understanding, British Water and the WaterRising Institute will work together to build awareness about the breadth of water jobs among women and girls and to highlight the demand for new workers.

Douglas was then joined by British Water’s Charles Shachinda and her team member from India, Neha Khandekar, as she went to 10 Downing Street to meet Myles Stacey OBE, special advisor to the Prime Minister on Education. WaterRising is working with British Water on bringing water and education leaders together in the U.K. to help get more women interested and excited about working in the sector.

As part of WaterWoman Project, Douglas and her team are also working tirelessly on a three-year timeline to build a movement and partnerships that increase awareness and collect data for research on gender gap analysis in policy and practice. The institute is seeking support from and building partnerships with key leading national public and private agencies in the U.K. and India to leverage existing policies and allocate a dedicated section for workforce development in the water sector.

“We have a water crisis, and we need all genders to be at the table to solve it,” Douglas said. “We can’t solve the water crisis without addressing gender.

“As women, we are used to nurturing the next generation in our families and communities, and we should have an equal role in managing and nurturing our water, as water is feminine and one of the most precious resources on Earth. Water needs her voice.

“We need data to identify the gaps for increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as barriers faced by women in the workplace in the water sector. Access to more robust data can enlighten us to better understand and support companies on workforce development. As women, we also believe that we need to know if there are gaps in retaining young men in the industry.

“I’m very excited about the progress we are making in the U.K. by working with British Water to make gender equality a priority in how we manage water in one of Europe’s largest economies.”

In the U.K., for much of 2022, all but one of the top jobs at the U.K.’s FTSE -listed water companies were held by women after the promotion of Louise Beardmore to chief executive at United Utilities.

However, this statistic masks the wider structural challenge the U.K. workforce faces on gender equality and the lack of a pipeline to create the next generation of female leaders in the water sector.

Women are still underrepresented in leadership, management, and entry-level roles across the U.K. water sector. To change this situation, we require not only training, but a larger gender
sensitisation program to break the apparent systemic barriers, which WaterRising’s data collection and analysis aim to confirm.

By working together as one people, British Water and WaterRising plan to solve their shared challenge of increasing female representation.