6 - Race, gender & justice

Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years 💻

A new book aims to shape the national conversation Now available from Palgrave Macmillan In December 2024, the La Follette School at UW-Madison and the Water & Health Advisory Council gathered researchers, regulators, water sector executives, and community

Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years 📖

Palgrave Macmillan Manuel P. Teodoro, Editor In this open access book, contributors explore current challenges and opportunities to improve drinking water regulation, governance, management, environmental justice, and more. In 2024, the United States marked

From Cap & Gown to Corner Office 💻

Exploring the diverse academic backgrounds of water’s top leaders School’s out for summer, so I finally have a bit more time to blog about… school.🙃 This post continues an occasional series on water utility

Medium and Message by Mail🎓

A Field Experiment to Promote Low-Income Assistance Programs Public Administration Review, January 2025 Manuel P. TeodoroJean Smith Summary Direct mail can reduce learning burdens associated with assistance programs, increase awareness of those programs, and

The Slow Flow of Progress💻

Racial diversity in water leadership AI's idea of diverse water utility leaders. Creepy, I know. Long ignored, racial and ethnic diversity are now high priorities for the water sector.* Diversity is especially important in

Profits of Distrust: The Comic 📖

Healthier water makes a healthier Republic When writing The Profits of Distrust, Samantha Zuhlke, David Switzer and I wanted to craft a book that had the theoretical depth and empirical rigor of an academic

Men & Women & Ramps & Ladders 💻

Gendered routes to water utilities’ top executive jobs different ways to the top for boys and girls Once an afterthought, workforce and leadership diversity is by now a subject of major attention in the

Women in Water’s Corner Offices 💻

Data on a thousand utilities’ CEOs tell a tale of uneven progress A decade ago, I published a national study of American water utility chief executive officers (CEOs) with data gathered in 2011. That

Women, SNAP, and Bottled Water 💻

The gendered pattern of water consumption among federal food assistance participants My last post showed that there’s a gendered relationship between household income and bottled water consumption in the United States. For men, there

Profits of Distrust at Seminary Co-op Bookstore 🎦

A conversation with Sabina Shaikh, University of Chicago The burgeoning bottled water industry presents a paradox: Why do people choose expensive, environmentally destructive bottled water, rather than cheaper, sustainable, and more rigorously regulated tap

Broken politics, broken pipes 💻

Sustainable solutions for Jackson, Mississippi not a sustainable solution National attention is back on drinking water utilities, and once again for all the wrong reasons. As readers of this blog surely know by now,

The Profits of Distrust 📖

Citizen-Consumers, Drinking Water, and the Crisis of Confidence in American Government Cambridge University Press, 2022 The choices people make about drinking water reveal deeper lessons about trust in government and civic life. The burgeoning

And Water for All 🎦

Ramiro Berardo, Director ...And Water For All is an educational documentary about water affordability in Ohio. The film aims to amplify the voices of those who work toward providing clean, affordable water for all.

Environmental Federalism in Indian Country 🎓

Sovereignty, primacy & environmental protection Policy Studies Journal, May 2020 Mellie Haider, Manuel P. Teodoro The landmark American environmental laws of the 1970s originally made no mention of American Indian tribal lands, and subsequent

Clean water regulation in Indian Country 💻

Sovereignty isn’t what’s on paper, it’s what flows through taps and rivers Environmental sovereignty (Photo: nativenewsonline.net) America is slowly awakening to the dire state of tribal water and sewer systems. Access to drinking water

Water Color 💻

Water Sector Reform #5: Environmental Justice Photo: EJCW.org With a major federal investment in water infrastructure possibly on the horizon, the United States has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage that money into a structural transformation

Race, Ethnicity, and Water Service Experiences 💻

Black, White, and Hispanic Americans experience water utility service differently What discontents lurk behind those enigmatic eyes? Over the past couple of years there’s been a growing recognition that drinking water policy is an

Income and Water Service Experiences 💻

Another way in which it’s tough to be poor Better with more money Drinking water utilities are great, but they aren’t perfect. Sometimes there are problems. Do those problems occur randomly? Or are there

Men, Women, and Water 💻

Gender predicts concern for water utility issues coliform contamination would make this way less romantic Do men and women think differently about their water utilities? In a recent post I wrote about some findings

Boys Will Be Superintendents 🎓

School leadership as a gendered profession PDK: Phi Delta Kappan Robert Maranto, Kristen Carroll, Albert Cheng, and Manuel P. Teodoro Even though the teaching profession is dominated by women, men hold more superintendent positions.

Gendered Ambition 🎓

Men’s and Women’s Career Advancement in Public Administration ARPA: The American Review of Public Administration Robert Maranto, Manuel P. Teodoro, Kristen Carroll, and Albert Cheng My kids. Clinton, NY. 2009 We explore the relationships

Hyperopia at the tap 💻

hyperopia (hīˌpə-rōˈpē-ə). n. A condition in which visual images come to a focus behind the retina of the eye and vision is better for distant than for near objects Last week I had the pleasure of

Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Justice in Safe Drinking Water Act Compliance 🎓

Social Science Quarterly David Switzer & Manuel P. Teodoro See Full Article Objective Past research yields inconsistent evidence of disparities in environmental quality by socioeconomic status (SES), race, and/or ethnicity. Since the political significance

U.S. Environmental Policy Implementation on Tribal Lands 🎓

Trust, Neglect, and Justice PSJ: Policy Studies Journal Manuel P. Teodoro, Mellie Haider, David Switzer This study investigates the implementation of U.S. environmental protection laws under American Indian tribal governance. The landmark laws of

Advancing methods for research on household water insecurity 🎓

Studying entitlements and capabilities, socio-cultural dynamics, and political processes, institutions and governance Water Security Amber Wutich, Jessica Buddz, Laura Eichelberger, Jo Geere, Leila Harris, Wendy Jepson, Emma Norman, Kathleen O’Reilly, Amber Pearson, Sameer Shah,

Water Utility Executive Leadership for the 21st Century 📜

Water Research Foundation Manuel Teodoro & Linda Reekie This study developed a summary of the drinking water community executive ranks, including their demographics, educational qualifications, professional backgrounds, skills, career paths, and personalities. This information

Measuring Fairness 🎓

Assessing the Equity of Municipal Water Rates Journal AWWA Manuel P. Teodoro Meaningful, scientific measures of water rate equity are elusive. Without a sound metric for equity, discussions of fairness in water rates are