Women’s participation in the water and sanitation sector has gained visibility in Latin America and the Caribbean in recent years, but significant gaps remain in their access to technical, operational, and leadership roles, especially in areas historically perceived as male-dominated, such as infrastructure operation and wastewater treatment. For ECLAC, closing this gap is not only a matter of rights and equity, but also a condition for strengthening water governance and advancing more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable services.

ECLAC’s publication Gaps, Challenges and Opportunities in Water and Gender in Latin America and the Caribbean (2022) shows that gender inequalities are expressed across multiple dimensions of the water cycle and continue to limit women’s effective participation in the sector’s management, operation, and decision-making. The study identifies four structural gaps that shape this participation: access to and infrastructure for water and sanitation, agricultural productivity, water collection and management, and governance and participation. It also concludes that, in the region, the policies analyzed tend to focus primarily on mainstreaming the gender approach in management, governance, and participation, while practical implementation, investment, and institutional mechanisms capable of turning those intentions into lasting change still lag behind.

In highly technical spaces such as wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), this gap remains particularly visible. Although women play a central role in the day-to-day management of water at the household and community levels, their participation in the operation and management of sanitation systems continues to be exceptional. That is why listening to those who are already working in these plants makes it possible to understand more deeply not only the barriers that persist, but also the transformations already underway.

To complement this analysis, interviews were conducted in 2023 and 2024 with women professionals working in WWTPs in Panama, Mexico, and El Salvador. Their testimonies show that entering the sector was neither linear nor easy. Several recalled having to confront stereotypes from their academic training onward, stereotypes that associated sanitation work and water engineering with “men’s work.” One of them recounted that during her university studies she was mocked for choosing a specialization related to water and sanitation, and reflected that women themselves often end up internalizing limits that respond more to the education they have received and to cultural norms than to their actual abilities or interests.

That pattern became even clearer once they entered the workplace. In one plant, a professional recalled having to work with more than 40 men, with the only women present being the secretary and herself. She heard comments such as: “A woman is going to boss me around?” Another explained that, when she joined as one of the first women in operational staff, she had to confront the idea that a woman could not correct work that men had been carrying out for years. In another case, there were even bets on how long she would last before resigning, based on the belief that this kind of work “was not for women.”

These experiences reveal that exclusion is not always expressed through formal rules, but often through deeply rooted symbolic and cultural barriers. The initial doubts about their authority, the need to constantly prove their capabilities, and the isolation of being “the only woman in the plant” are concrete expressions of what ECLAC has described as a structural invisibilization of women’s contribution in the water sector.

However, the interviews also show that these women not only managed to remain, but have also helped redefine how work is done and how leadership is exercised within these spaces. Far from reproducing authoritarian models in order to gain legitimacy, several described a leadership style grounded in technical knowledge, professional humility, field presence, and trust-building. One of them summed up her approach very clearly: “I want to learn from you, and you learn from me… mutual respect, teamwork.” Another insisted that authority is not sustained through imposition, but through example, consistency, and the ability to solve problems with the team.

Another issue that emerged strongly in the interviews is the tension between professional development and care responsibilities. One interviewee, the mother of two girls, emphasized that motherhood should not be seen as an obstacle to advancing in the sector, although she acknowledged that it demands an additional burden and sustained effort. Her experience reflects one of the most persistent gaps in water and gender policies: the impact of unpaid care work on career paths, technical specialization, and access to higher-responsibility positions.

Perhaps one of the most powerful elements emerging from these conversations is the value of role models. One professional recalled that, during a technical visit to Japan, she saw for the first time a woman operator in charge of a plant’s system and logbooks. That moment, she said, was decisive: “I thought: yes, it can be done.” The importance of seeing other women occupying these spaces cannot be overstated. In sectors where women’s presence remains limited, role models help break the idea that women in such positions are exceptions and open the way for others to imagine themselves there too.

These testimonies also help connect the discussion on gender with today’s challenges in sanitation and sustainability. The women interviewed do not speak of sanitation as a merely technical issue, but as an essential public service linked to health, dignity, and collective well-being. This broader view is consistent with ECLAC’s perspective that water governance requires not only infrastructure and financing, but also inclusion, legitimacy, and diversity of capacities.

This practical learning finds strong support in the 2026 United Nations World Water Development Report, Water for All People: Equal Rights and Opportunities. The report stresses that gender equality in water is inseparable from more effective and just governance, and warns that women remain underrepresented in the sector’s management and leadership. Globally, fewer than 20% of formal workers in water utilities are women, and gaps persist in access, employment, governance, leadership, and financing.

The same report highlights that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, mainstreaming gender equality in water policies is possible and transformative, but that scaling it up remains insufficient. It also recognizes that women, especially in rural and Indigenous communities, play a vital and often underrecognized role in access to, management of, and environmental protection of water. When their leadership is supported through inclusive policies and programmes, it can contribute to more equitable and sustainable governance.

Taken together, the inclusion of more women in technical, operational, and leadership roles is not a secondary element of the water sector. It is a condition for improving operations, strengthening management, expanding institutional legitimacy, and building more sustainable systems. In other words, gender equality in sanitation not only corrects a historic inequality; it also improves the sector’s performance.

These lessons are especially relevant for future water-energy nexus and circular economy projects, including those related to the energy recovery of biogas, the modernization of WWTPs, and innovation in sanitation. Incorporating gender and social inclusion approaches from the design stage improves not only project equity, but also its operational capacity, institutional acceptance, and long-term sustainability.

In line with this work, ECLAC has been promoting spaces for dialogue and visibility with women leaders in the regional water sector, including at high-level events such as Regional Water Week 2025. One example was the session on circular economy, which brought together professionals such as Ruth Quevedo, Vice Minister of Water; Ethel Cabrera, President of the Salvadoran Water Authority (ASA); and Nelly Mogollón Montañez, then Executive Director of Colombia’s Water and Basic Sanitation Regulatory Commission (CRA), along with other specialists and stakeholders. This effort seeks not only to strengthen the role of women already occupying decision-making spaces, but also to make female role models more visible in fields where their presence has historically been limited. Demonstrating that women today hold senior technical, regulatory, and institutional positions is also a way of inspiring new generations of girls and young women to see themselves in the water sector.