Celebrating International Women’s Day and women in the water industry

This International Women's Day, we reinforce our commitment to celebrating diversity and fostering an inclusive work environment where everyone is valued. Important initiatives including our Gender Equality Action Plan, gender-neutral parental leave policy and Women in Leadership Development (WILD) membership are examples of the positive actions we’re taking to embrace equity.

We celebrate the progress made around gender equality and empowerment and support a more equitable workplace for women at all stages of their career. Two inspirational women at GWW share their stories and what International Women’s Day means to them.

Kareen - Graduate Engineer 

GWW Graduate Engineer, Kareen has made it her mission to "smash all glass ceilings" as a young woman in a traditionally male dominated industry.

"I have experienced subtle bias a few times during the early days at university, or work experiences, where I would get pushbacks on ideas or opinions because I was told I would be more suitable to do simpler things, or maybe not have knowledge required yet in comparison to my male peers."

Also being an immigrant and woman of colour has added another layer of complexity where it was not just my experience being questioned, but also my ability to fit into spaces that may not necessarily have others that look like me."

After second-guessing her decision to become an engineer during her fourth year at uni, Kareen's advice for girls and women considering a career in engineering is this:

"The first step to taking up space where you don’t see others that look like you, is feeling uncomfortable. I realised that I just needed to sit with the discomfort and learn to be firm, stand my ground and start by not believing in the limitations that I set for myself or were set for me."

I’ve also had the absolute honour to work with some very strong women at GWW that have all taught me so much about leadership, empathy, backing yourself and showing up as your true self to work."

Kessia - General Manager, Strategy and Partnerships

In her first graduate role as an Environmental Engineer in the mid-90s, Kessia Thomson was the only female engineer out of 45.

“At times it was really hard. There were many inappropriate comments and challenging situations. For example, there were no porta-loos provided on a worksite because they’d 'never had girls on site before'", she recalls.

Fast-forward to today and Kessia is proud to be GWW's General Manager, Strategy and Partnerships – where 50% of the leadership team is female, and six out of eight executives are female. "I think we need to start talking about the fact that leadership is hard for everyone and it is much harder when you are juggling multiple hats. We need to talk about how across society women still carry the majority of the burden for caring responsibilities, whether that is raising children, caring for parents or other family responsibilities and it is still a significant barrier to women putting their hands up for leadership roles."

"At GWW we have recently launched our Parental Plus gender neutral leave policy to provide equal access to all parents. We have removed the antiquated concept of primary and secondary carer, putting working parents on a more equal footing to share the care of children. Doing this aims to normalise sharing the care between men, women and gender diverse people. It's one step to help balance the scales and demonstrates GWW’s commitment to progressing gender equality."

So what does International Women's Day mean to Kessia?

"Celebrating all the awesome women in my life – from my darling 98-year-old grandmother, my awesome mum, the incredible women I work with, my wonderful friends and colleagues, and my amazing 15-year-old daughter, who stands upon the shoulders of all of the generations of women who have come before her and sees a world full of possibilities and hopefully less barriers."