International Women’s Day 2026 asks something quite demanding of all of us: to live the words “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls,” not just quote them.
At Digby Wells, that begins with how we see women: not as a line in a stakeholder matrix, but as colleagues, clients, community leaders, caregivers and knowledge holders whose lives are bound up with the land, water and projects we work on. We operate in places where the unequal burden carried by women is impossible to ignore. When water is scarce, it is women and girls who walk further. When land and livelihoods shift, they absorb the shock. When prices rise or safety is at risk, they often earn less and have the smallest say in the decisions that set those changes in motion.
The true nature of empowerment, for us, is not about adding women to an unchanged system. It is about shifting who is heard, who is protected and who shares in the benefits. In our advisory work with clients, that means co designing engagement and assessment processes that actively reach women on their own terms and in their own spaces. It means insisting that social baselines and impact assessments ask gender aware questions about livelihoods, safety, water access and health and it means ensuring that the answers women give genuinely shape how projects are planned, financed and monitored. It also means encouraging clients to see women not only as “vulnerable groups” but as experts in local water and food systems, social cohesion and community risk and as holders of deep traditional and ancestral knowledge about how their environments function and change over time.
Inside Digby Wells, we try to hold ourselves to the same standard. We invest in women as scientists, social practitioners, GIS specialists, project managers and leaders, supported by meaningful training, mentoring and a culture that takes health, safety and emotional wellbeing seriously. From sexual-harassment prevention training and confidential counselling, to bursaries in environmental and social sciences and clear pathways from intern to consultant, we are working to build a company where women do not have to choose between impact and safety, or between technical excellence and being themselves.
This is ongoing, deliberate work. It is a direction of travel we share with our clients and with the communities that trust us enough to speak honestly about their realities. Project by project and decision by decision, we are trying to use our science, our listening and our influence to move closer to a future where every woman and girl in the communities we touch and the businesses we work in can claim her rights, experience justice and see real, tangible action on the issues that define her life.
About the Author:
Samantha Schoeman is the Manager of Sustainability Services at Digby Wells Environmental, where she leads complex sustainability reporting and ESG assignments primarily across Africa, with additional international experience. She brings a strong blend of strategic insight, technical rigour and clear communication to help organisations interpret evolving standards and develop decision‑useful sustainability and impact reports, robust double materiality assessments and ESG frameworks. Clients value her ability to organise complexity, see the bigger picture, and turn fragmented ESG information into structured insights that support credible, long‑term sustainability commitments.