In Timor-Leste, water is a woman’s problem. In rural and regional areas, water generally isn’t delivered into homes – women and children manually fetch water from the natural springs and carry the household’s water supply back home every morning. It’s heavy work and can take them quite far afield in an often rocky, mountainous region.

Although water is a woman’s responsibility, and the burden of poor water infrastructure becomes a woman’s problem, there aren’t many women engineers working in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.  

Engineering continues to be a male-dominated industry, especially in a country like Timor-Leste, where traditional gender roles are still influential in dictating what people do for work. But a new program delivered by the Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) team in Timor-Leste seeks to change that.