BRIEF

Equal Aqua: Inclusive Water Institutions Platform

MULTIMEDIA

VIDEO

Getting to Equal in Water: How to Improve Gender Equality in Water Institutions

To meet the water and sanitation crisis head-on, water institutions need to modernize and attract a talented workforce with a diverse skill set. This means including women. Small investments to address gender barriers can help to improve inclusion in the sector.

The Equal Aqua (EA) is a collaborative platform that aims to deepen the dialogue on gender diversity and inclusion in water sector jobs by connecting utilities, associations, representatives from the private sector, academia and local and international organizations and benchmarking gender inclusion in water organizations.

Objectives of this platform include:

Provide to participating utilities/water organizations the framework, diagnostic tools and knowledge on step-by-step processes, Human Resource policies, and promising approaches to boost female recruitment, retention, and promotion in water sector jobs.

Ignite interest in gender diversity and inclusion among utility managers/water managing bodies and provide a learning space by sharing good practices and approaches tried by water and sanitation providers and water managing bodies across the world. Expand knowledge on gender diversity and inclusion in water and opportunities for peer-to-peer learning.

Expand the global database on gender diversity in water institutions, providing the first industry-wide comparative benchmarking and individual institutional scorecards on gender diversity to gauge progress.

Support women working in the water sector by providing a space where female engineers, managers, and other water workers can find information, training opportunities and tools to help them advance in their careers.

Equal Aqua was established by the World Bank’s Water Global Practice, with the support of Global Water Security & Sanitation Partnership (GWSP) and in collaboration with external partners listed below. Women are an untapped pool of talent for the water sector. As documented in the Women in Water Utilities: Breaking Barriers report, only 18 percent of water utility workers are female. Moreover, they face many barriers to starting and advancing their careers in the water sector, including biases in the hiring process, inadequate family-friendly policies and fewer training opportunities. However, evidence shows that there are many solutions that can be implemented by water institutions to address these challenges, improve female representation in the sector and make the workplace more inclusive.