June Event Recap

We were fortunate to hold our June event at the Law building on the University of Utah campus this past Tuesday. The seminar featured several faculty members from the University of Utah as well as Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET) who were able to join via Skype.
We were joined by Shabnam Balouch and Uzma Imran, who

• reported positive experiences from their experiences working with men and women in Utah over the past year
• shared stories from colleagues and personal experiences, 
• detailed efforts that are being made at MUET to establish a Women's Resource Center and to institutionalize policies that will improve women's involvement in different sectors of the water industry

The US-PCAS-W (United States-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water) project will continue to train faculty and students and support gender equity in the water sector. We look forward to hearing about their progress, and we a grateful to our speakers and those at the center who made this event possible, including Dr. Burian, Dr. Pomeroy, Ms. Balouch, and Ms. Imran.

During lunch we had an informal discussion, sharing perspectives on challenges and careers in the water industry in Utah, as well as feelings towards international projects. The results of the polls of the event attendees are shown below:

We decided that "Other" means "all of the above," because there are so many good reasons for working in the water industry!

The issues of few female leaders and difficulty in negotiating positions were echoed by our speakers from Pakistan.

There was an interesting split in our members' responses, showing that our members have diverse experiences.

These responses reflected that our some of our members prefer local projects, while those that enjoy international projects especially like working with people from other countries. That is such an important reminder that international projects are more than just technical solutions, but also include opportunities to engage and work together.