Crossing troubled waters: building a bridge across gender divisions among water professionals in South Asia

Abstract

This paper examines the reasons for the limited presence of women in the water sector in South Asia and reviews recent efforts at reversing this trend. The reasons for the under representation of women in the sector are the perceived masculine nature of the sector, gender-based discrimination at the work place, and the absence of gender sensitive working environment. A change in the curricula of water education programs from engineering-oriented programs to inter-disciplinary programs and the launch of new inter-disciplinary water resources education programs is likely to reverse this trend. Increased donor interest in this has given a push to such efforts. The launch of new initiatives and programs is likely to increase the number of women water professionals in the near future; however, given the large absolute numbers of men, these numbers would still relatively be low. Financial and administrative support to female students will be necessary to make the water sector more gender sensitive and gender balanced, along with creating conditions that would allow a better expression of women’s interests.