CELEBRATING the recent 2026 National Women’s Month — themed “Lead Like the Babaylans, Filipinas!” — and the World Water Day, today’s column highlights how women, Filipinas and worldwide, are leading water stewardship at household, community and technical levels, even as they remain underrepresented in formal water institutions. During a forum at the Manila Water Co., Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Undersecretary Analiza Rebuelta-Teh made the paradox clear: women shoulder much of the practical responsibility for water but occupy fewer than 1 in 5 paid water-sector jobs globally. Closing that gap is a matter of equity that is essential to building resilient, equitable water systems in an era of intensifying climate risk.
In households and communities, women collect, store and allocate water; manage sanitation and hygiene; and steward local ecosystems that regulate flows and water quality. This lived knowledge, refined across seasons, droughts and floods, is invaluable human capital for designing systems that work for people. Yet legal, structural and social barriers continue to block full participation. Some countries’ discriminatory regulations restrict women’s work in certain trades. Lack of land tenure, finance and technical training constrains leadership pathways. Safety concerns in public and digital spheres deter engagement. Furthermore, a persistent data gap leads to a lack of gender-disaggregated information on employment and governance roles in water institutions, resulting in policies that often fail to address women’s specific needs or leverage their solutions.
Oriental Mindoro’s Dao Waterlily Association exemplifies how women convert ecological knowledge into livelihoods while protecting an important water corridor. Members harvest waterlilies and produce handicrafts, waterlily bags and ecotourism services that diversify incomes and provide incentives for conservation. Their stewardship keeps the Butas River corridor functioning as a vital conduit from Naujan Lake to the sea, preserving local hydrology, reducing erosion, and sustaining fisheries and farm irrigation.
Dao’s model delivers multilayered returns. By protecting riparian vegetation and maintaining natural flows, the association reduces pollution and habitat loss. Generating nature-based income reduces pressure on fragile resources. This demonstrates that investment in women-led, place-based enterprises yields social, ecological and economic benefits simultaneously, a case for directing more funding and technical support toward community women’s groups.
Women’s leadership in water extends to technical invention. Chemical and materials engineer Eleanor Olegario developed a foldable rainwater tank and a ceramic-based filter using locally sourced zeolites to harvest and purify rainwater for schools and households. Her design reduces reliance on intermittent centralized supply, eases the physical burden of water collection and provides cost-effective decentralized resilience for schools and remote communities.
Olegario’s work shows that women with technical training can design practical and scalable context-sensitive technologies. Unlocking such innovation requires research support, pilot funding, regulatory pathways and market access. When these elements align, locally developed inventions can spread quickly and deliver improvements in access and water quality.
A practical
policy road map
To translate these insights into durable change, policymakers, financiers and private-sector actors must move beyond symbolic inclusion to genuine power-sharing. A gender-responsive water governance agenda can include the following:
– Investment in women-led solutions, finance grants and loan facilities to scale community enterprises and technical pilots with proven social and environmental returns.
– Closing the data gap by collecting gender-disaggregated metrics on employment, decision-making roles, and project outcomes to guide policy and measure progress.
– Building capacity and pipelines: scholarships, technical training, mentorships and leadership programs that prepare women for technical, managerial and governance roles.
– Governance reform guaranteeing women voting seats in river-basin organizations, utility boards and planning councils, ensuring that participation translates into influence over budgets and priorities.
– Private-sector engagement. Require gender targets in hiring and promotion, provide safe workplaces and partner on apprenticeships that feed women into water careers.
– Embed gender-responsive measures in water security strategies, the National Adaptation Plan, and development frameworks aligned with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 and SDG 5.
A practical next step is funding pilots that pair community enterprises with technical innovations, supported by rigorous monitoring of environmental, social and economic outcomes. Such pilots can build the evidence base needed to persuade national planners and international donors that investing in women delivers measurable resilience dividends.
“Lead Like the Babaylans, Filipinas!” is a call to action. “Nothing about women without women,” DENR Undersecretary Teh’s closing statement, should guide water governance. Policies crafted without the full participation of those who manage water will miss critical innovations and priorities. Giving women, who shoulder much of the world’s water burden, resources, recognition and real seats at decision tables strengthens rivers, mangroves, taps and towns against mounting climate threats. As nations race toward 2030 goals, unlocking women’s leadership in water is urgent, practical and within reach.
The author is the founder and chief strategic advisor of the Young Environmental Forum and a subject-matter expert at the Co-operative College of the Philippines. He completed a climate change and development course at the University of East Anglia (UK) and an executive program on sustainability leadership at Yale University (USA). You can email him at ludwig.federigan@gmail.com.
