July 2017, Vol. 12, No.

Wanted: More Women in STEM!

Promoting Gender Equality at the Water Authority of Fiji
!
By Imrana Jalal
!
The women of the Water Authority of
Fiji (WAF) are making waves in the
water sector, taking on jobs that used to
be closed to women.
Thats no surprise to workplace
pioneers like Nanise Tuwai. I am used
to being a minority in engineering
circles, says the WAF engineer who
happens to be the only Water
Modeler in Fiji. Her comments are
echoed by Shomal Narayan and Sonam
Lata, two other WAF women. The trio
are part of the approximately 12%
female WAF sta, and women continue
to be minorities at universities and
technical schools where the gender
imbalance is especially evident in the
fi e l d s o f s c i e n c e , t e c h n o l o g y,
engineering and math (STEM): Tuwai
was the only female in a class of 30.
If it werent for the opportunity of a
scholarship, Lata would have been
washing dishes at home, as she puts
it, instead of studying water
engineering. Latas career as a water
engineer at WAF is even more
surprising, considering she initially
wanted to be a dentist.
Narayan, a graduate engineer, is also
breaking ground as a Process Engineer
in the water sector. She received a
Bachelors degree in the hard sciences
at the University of the South Pacific in
Fiji.
Women make up 12% of the overall sta
at WAF (375 women out of 3126), while
they comprise about 4 % of the
engineering and technical sta.
Notably, of the 375 women at WAF, 93
of them are in engineering and technical
fields thus about 25% of all females at
WAF are those in the engineering and
technical field.
! !
We must
encourage women,
we must encourage
girls. !
WAF CEO Opetaia Ravai
Shomal Narayan is breaking ground as a Process Engineer in the water sector.
A dearth of women in STEM and
water management
The lack of female water professionals
can be partially attributed to cultural
attitudes, social norms, and historical
and systemic gender discrimination.
Sociocultural factors include an
unconscious bias toward a preference for
male leadership, along with social norms
and cultural beliefs that women are
inflexible and inadequate leaders or
managers.1
Attitudes at home make a significant
impact on whether women venture into
careers dominated by men. This
traditional and current male
preponderance is due to gender
stereotypes about womens work and to
the typically gender-segregated labor
market Fiji is no dierent from other
countries globally in this regard where
occupations are generally heavily
gender-segregated. What distinguishes
these three WAF women is that they had
unusually supportive parents who did not
see their entry into the non-traditional
gender occupations as a barrier.
The quality of leadership at the top levels
of management is critical to creating an
enabling environment that allows
females to thrive.
The three women state that they work in
a supportive environment and that their
male colleagues and predominantly male
management treat them as professionals
without gender discrimination.
In many technical positions, required
field activities undertaken with male
colleagues, such as extensive travel and
overnight stays, may deter women, given
prevailing social norms and sociocultural
attitudes. While fieldwork did initially
pose problems for the three women, they
worked around these obstacles through
the support of understanding parents
and spouses.
On top of the challenges that are unique
to the sector, they also faced challenges
common to women workers everywhere
how to balance the interests of
spouses and partners, children, home
and family responsibilities, and how to
advance careers when time is at a
premium.

1
These factors, combined with the absence
of inspiring female role models, limited
mentoring opportunities, and the
challenges of maintaining a work-life
balance, are just some of the reasons that
explain the dearth of women in water
leadership positions.2
Earning a better income was cited as a
major factor that attracted women to the
water sector. This is a good enough reason
to motivate women to aspire to the jobs
traditionally held by men. Economic
empowerment is a major shaper of overall
gender equality.
Proactively promoting gender
balance at WAF
I never thought I would end up as a water
lawyer, says Ligairi Talei, the legal
manager at WAF one of 13 managers
and she is possibly the only specialized
infrastructure lawyer in Fiji. As Fiji
produces more lawyers, specialization in a
niche area makes sense in many ways,
though the learning curve was very steep
for Talei to specialize in the water sector.
She admits that the work-life balance can
be challenging as the mother of two young
children. Like Tuwai, Talei lives with her
in-laws, suggesting that the Pacific style of
extended family living can be a major
advantage to women who wish to pursue
careers in dicult non-traditional sectors.
Major hurdles to improving the gender
balance in STEM subjects are the
socio-cultural gender barriers and
unconscious bias against these
subjects
We need to be proactive in encouraging
young women to consider engineering or
technical careers at WAF, says Chief
Executive Ocer Opetaia Ravai who is
enthusiastic and supportive about
increasing the numbers of female water
professionals. If they are qualified and
prepared to work hard, he does not
envisage any obvious WAF institutional
barriers to advancement.
We must encourage women, we must
encourage girls. This year (2017) we will
be going to universities and high schools
to try and encourage young girls to choose
a career at WAF, he says, clearly
understanding that the main challenge lies
in getting girls to undertake studies and
training in STEM so there is a pipeline for
careers in the water sector. However,
major hurdles to improving the gender
balance in STEM subjects are the socio-
Nanise Tuwai downloads data from a data logger in
Suva
cultural gender barriers and unconscious
bias against these subjects in the
psychology of young girls rooted in social
norms.
Undoubtedly, a very limited number of
women water professionalsengineers,
water technicians, environment
specialists, and scientistsare qualified
and ready to fill professional positions in
the water sector. Gender streaming and
stereotyping in secondary education
continues to steer girls away from STEM
and medical studies at university, hence
few women emerge with the qualifications
required for future employment
opportunities as water professionals. Even
technical, vocational educational and
training programs that train water
technicians tend to be highly gender-
segregated.3
WAF is a strong advocate for gender
equality. We not only talk about it, we
implement it through our recruitment, our
promotions, our training, and even to the
extent we put it in our policy, says Ravai.
! only is she the first female WAF employee
To honor the role of female employees and
institutional gender mainstreaming at
WAF, it inaugurated the Best Women
Water Professional of the Year award in
2016, with the first ever recipient being the
WAF female Team Leader, Tuwai of the
Water Network Modeling unit.
WAF also established a Water Champions
program in 2014 to raise awareness with
schools, communities, and private sector
businesses to promote water conservation
and encourage young women to consider
engineering careers. On 24 April 2017,
WAF received the international Water
Leaders Distinction Award at the Global
Water Intelligence 2017 Global Water
Awards.
Missing women in water sector
leadership is due mainly to the scarcity of
women water professionals, die-hard
cultural and traditional attitudes, gender
stereotyping, and beliefs that women
2
!
A Supermodel of a Dierent
Kind: Nanise Tuwai, the First
Water Modeler in the Pacific
!
I changed my heels for boots.
With this powerful statement, Nanise
Tuwai proves that breaking the glass ceiling
and shifting within the sticky floors of
gender-segregated employment, is a real
possibility, even in small economies like
Fiji. In so doing, she paves the way for
opening possibilities for younger women in
the water sector.
.
I changed my
heels for boots!
Tuwai describes her heels-for-boots
!
journey as remarkable. Starting as an
attach (intern) at WAF, through time,
h a r d w o r k , a n d WA F - s u p p o r t e d
professional development especially in
modeling the water reticulation network at
Hunter Water in Australia she became
the Team Leader of a predominantly male
team that digs and verifies pipe pressures
and water flows for water-modeling
purposes.
!
Tuwai had initially considered a career in
medicine but a college career expo helped
changed her mind and she enrolled in civil
engineering instead. Tuwai graduated with
both a Diploma and an Advanced Diploma
in Civil Engineering and is currently
completing her Bachelors degree. Not
to become a Project Leader (Team Leader
Water Network Modelling), but is also the
first person in the Pacific Island countries
to become proficient in water modeling.
!
Tuwai credits both her spouse, and
mother-in-law who lives with them, for
providing vital domestic support for her to
pursue her studies and ambitions.
Although she misses her four-year old son
when she has to work or study late, she
does not feel guilty about this and rightly
sees no reason why she should.
!
In a quirk of feminist fate, a female water
professional who had inspired Tuwai to
reach for the stars was Kristina Karavasili
formerly of the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) who had been attached to WAF for
a year. This underscores the importance of
having female mentors and role models.
!
Sources: Water Authority of Fiji, Press Release, February 2017;
interview by Imrana Jalal, WAF headquarters, Nasinu, Fiji, 21
April 2017

Sonam Lata is part of the approximately 12% female WAF staff. If it werent for a scholarship, she
says shed be washing dishes at home.
women inherently lack managerial and
technical skills. While no single factor can
adequately explain the lack of women in
water governance, policymaking, and
water agencies, it is likely that a
combination of factors keep women at the
margins of water leadership. This is
despite the fact that companies with
greater gender diversity in their leadership
teams outperform those with lesser
diversityoften by as much as 30%.4
! sector.
Commitment to gender
mainstreaming
The strong regional commitment of the
Asian Development Bank (ADB) to
gender equality and WAF s local
commitment to gender mainstreaming
coincided in a Green Climate Fund-
financed project, the ADB-funded Urban
Wa t e r S u p p l y a n d Wa s t e w a t e r
M a n a g e m e n t Inve s t m e n t Prog ra m
(UWSWMIP).5 The program will help
deliver vital urban infrastructure and
services to support water supply and
sanitation in the greater Suva area. WAF
was selected by ADB from over 500
utilities in Asia and the Pacific region to
undertake the Aqua Rating Benchmarking
exercise that includes addressing the
Suva-Nausori Water Supply system and
will improve water supply for almost
400,000 people, including more than 50%
women who will benefit from decreased
time poverty. Women are the main users
of domestic water supply and bear the
main brunt of water-related illnesses and
the domestic burden of caring for the sick
and elderly.
The ADB-supported WAF project is
categorized as an Eective Gender
Mainstreaming project under ADBs
gender mainstreaming system. It attempts
to bridge the gender gap in the water
sector through a project Gender Action
Plan (GAP) with targeted gender designs.
The GAP includes assistance to WAF to
develop strategies to increase the number
of women employed in technical and
develop strategies to increase the number
of women employed in technical and
management roles and to increase
womens economic opportunities in the
water supply and wastewater management
Quantitative targets in the GAP include
earmarking at least 25% of unskilled labor
contracts in project-generated
infrastructure works for women, a 30%
target for womens employment, and
ensuring that 50% of participants in all
public consultations and sewage
connection activities are women. The
GAP will ensure at least 30% womens
representation on related planning teams
that address the design and development
of d i s t r i c t m e t e r i n g a n d d e m a n d
management plans.
3 any errors, omissions, or inadvertent alterations that
Shomal Narayan at the Namau Water Treatment
Plant in Tailevu
Included in this groundbreaking Fiji
gender mainstreaming water project are
gender designs that promote womens
employment opportunities and
economic security through infrastructure
development and upgrading. The
program will advertise new project-
related jobs with a statement
encouraging women to apply; ensure that
at least 30% of new roles or additional
sta are women; promote womens
employment across higher-skill and
technical roles and provide on-the-job
training as needed; earmark at least 30%
of new field-based positions, e.g., meter
reading, for women; and ensure womens
wages are paid directly to them. It will
promote the professional advancement
of women sta by ensuring at least 30%
female participants in training on
accounting, utility management,
technical and project, and sector
management-related skills training.
Several other gender designs require
WAF to promote and monitor gender
equality principles and practices as well
as the status of women within WAF using
tailored guidelines and tools.
Projects such as UWSWMIP are critical
in addressing the gender gaps in the
water sector. Women leaders are needed
at all levels of society, in water utilities,
government water agencies, and
international and regional water
institutions to reduce the democratic
gender gap in water leadership.
Technical skills in the water sector are
needed to feed the pipeline for female
leadership.
!
Disclaimer: The Asian Development Bank provides
the information contained in this article, its Gender
Network Newsletter, and links to its web site solely
as a resource. While ADB tries to provide high-
quality content on its web site, it does not guarantee
the accuracy, reliability, or timeliness of this
information; and therefore, will not be liable in any
capacity for damages or losses to the user that may
result from the use of this information. ADB and its
aliate oces, likewise, will not be responsible for
may occur in the disclosure of content in this article,
the newsletter, or on its web site.
Notes:
1 I. Jalal. 2014. Women, Water and Leadership. ADB Briefs. No. 24.
Manila: ADB
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
4 I. Jalal. 2015. The Stupid Curve: Asias Missing Women Leaders.
hBps://blogs.adb.org/blog/stupid-curve-asia-s-missing-women-
leaders; McKinsey & Company. 2015. Diversity Ma>ers.
5 ADB. 2016. Mul@tranche Financing Facility to Republic of Fiji for
Urban Water Supply and Wastewater Management Investment
Program. Manila.