Role models are an integral and important part of growing up and inspiring young people to follow their aspirations. However, a large part of society doesn’t see people like themselves enjoying nature, so they might not consider it a worthwhile hobby, let alone a career.

In many parts of the world, for example in the Middle East and South Africa, women are hugely underrepresented in conservation. The UK is faring slightly better, with some conservation organisations having worked hard to address the gender imbalance in their staff and wages. Among wardens, communicators and educators, there’s little discrimination in the paid ranks. However, gender inequality still persists, even if it’s unintentional. The top careers, such as at board, council or trustee level, are male-dominated. Women are also less likely to present at wildlife events, fairs, talks, conferences, not only because they’re not invited to participate, but also because the societal pressures and perceptions that have led to imposter syndrome, among other challenges, may convince women to decline an offer.

Globally, women are facing many gender-related barriers in conservation: salary inequality and difficulty negotiating pay levels; unequal hiring and promotion; informal exclusion; challenges to their competence; gendered language, sexual harassment and even violence, which is often met with an inadequate organisational response. In the last decade, many women have reported sexual harassment at numerous conservation organisations, including one the world's largest environmental organisations. Additionally, women are often met with assumptions that they are unqualified to do their work, unfit to be leaders, or that their sexuality has facilitated their employment and career progression. Their success is still often greeted with surprise.

All of this can hinder many female conservationists in implementing their ideas, thriving and progressing in their career and even cause them to quit altogether, especially if there’s no understanding and support in the workplace (including fieldwork).This poor representation also makes it difficult to encourage young girls to join the conservation sector, in which we need more diverse voices from different backgrounds. If it’s not for the moral prerogatives, then for the conservation impacts - studies have shown an increase in conservation outcomes when decision-making bodies are of mixed gender and more inclusive. Gender and cultural bias are also consistently hindering conservation by fueling divisive arguments over why and how to conserve nature.

Women of colour face even higher hurdles than their white female colleagues. Black, Hispanic and Asian American women have reported being singled out as “the only” conservationist of their race or ethnicity and having colleagues assume they were not leaders or scientists. They explained that white women might struggle to sit at the conservation table, but women of color faced many challenges to even get into the building.

There’s still a lot of work to be done to make the conservation sector more inclusive. However, many female conservationists are fighting these barriers every day to achieve their goals and they are doing remarkable work in mitigating climate change and restoring and protecting our biodiversity, empowering young generations to follow their steps. Let me introduce you to some of the pioneering female conservationists, who are showing us everyday that women can.

Dr.Jane Goodall

UK, Tanzania + Rest of the World

Many of you will have heard about Jane. She is a famous primatologist, scientist, conservationist, writer and mentor.
After completing high school, she went to a secretarial school in London, received a diploma, and worked different jobs in south England, ranging from assisting at a physiotherapy clinic, through administrative jobs and waitressing to choosing music for documentary films. She was considering going to university, but her family couldn’t afford it. Despite all this, her childhood dreams to travel to Africa and work with the animals prevailed.

When she was 23 she met Louis Leakey, who was an anthropologist and paleontologist working in Nairobi, and she started working as his secretary. Eventually, he helped her make her dreams come true - watching free, wild animals living their own, undisturbed lives, learning things that no one else knew and uncovering secrets through patient observation.

In July 1960, at the age of 26, she set foot on the Gombe National Park for the first time and began her journey with chimpanzees. Since then, she has provided us with many insights into the socially complex and fascinating lives of chimpanzees and discovered that they make and use tools in the wild, which most other non-human animals can’t do, as well as why it’s important to protect them and how we can do it. In the meantime, she also got a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Currently, she spends most of her time travelling and lecturing, advocating for animals, talking about biodiversity loss, climate change and how we can combat these challenges. In 1990, she started the Roots & Shoots programme, which is all about the value and importance of each living individual: human, animal and plant. She aims to give young people of all ages hope in the future and encourage them to protect the environment. By 2017, there were about 100-150,000 active groups in nearly 100 participating countries. She also created the Jane Goodall Institute, which works with local communities in Africa to improve their lives by, for example, showing them how to grow more food in a sustainable fashion and get cleaner water, and helping girls to stay in school longer (Goodall, 2011).

You can read more about her work and journey in her books, e.g. My Life with Chimpanzees.

Dr. Shivani Bhalia

Kenya

Shivani believes the key to lion conservation is working in partnership with local communities. She founded Ewaso Lions in 2007 to promote co-existence between carnivores and people. She’s working as an executive director of the organisation and lives in the Ewaso Lions Camp in Westgate Conservancy in Kenya. She has also worked for the Kenya Wildlife Service and Save The Elephants.

Shivani has a BSc in Environmental Science from Lancaster University, received her MSc in Wildlife Biology and Conservation from Edinburgh Napier University and was awarded her DPhil in Zoology from Oxford University.

She is a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group, African Lion Working Group, Large Carnivore Taskforce and a founding member of the Pride Lion Conservation Alliance. Her work on Kenya’s lions has earned her a 2014 Whitley Award, the 2013 Rabinowitz-Kaplan Prize for the Next Generation in Wild Cat Conservation, the ‘Africa’s Young Women Conservation Biologist of 2009′ award by the Society of Conservation Biology, the Virginia McKenna Award for Compassionate Conservation from the Born Free Foundation, and she has been named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic.

The Black Mambas Anti-Poaching Unit

Balule Nature Reserve, South Africa

The Black Mambas Anti-Poaching Unit was founded in 2013 to protect the Olifants West Region of Balule Nature Reserve. Within the first year of operation, the Black Mambas were invited to expand into other regions and now protect all boundaries of the 62,000 ha Balule Nature Reserve, part of the Greater Kruger Area in South Africa.

It is the world's first all-female anti-poaching unit, which is working with other local women in saving South Africa's endangered rhinos and elephants. They believe that the war on poaching will not be won with guns and bullets, but through close monitoring, community building, and education. They’re striving to make their area of influence the most undesirable, most difficult and least profitable place to poach any species.

These 23 young rangers and 7 Environmental Monitors want their communities to understand that the benefits are greater through rhino conservation rather than poaching. The award-winning nonprofit has significantly reduced incidents of snaring and poaching by as much as 76%. And they’re considered role models in their community.

Dr. Sylvia Earle

USA

Sylvia is an oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer with experience as a field research scientist, government official, and director for several corporate and non-profit organizations. She’s the president and chairman of Mission Blue / The Sylvia Earle Alliance, an organization that advocates for legal protection and conservation of the world’s oceans. Currently, the Mission Blue alliance includes more than 200 respected ocean conservation groups and like-minded organizations, from large multinational companies to individual scientific teams.

Additionally, Sylvia is a National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence, and has been called Her Deepness by The New Yorker and The New York Times, Living Legend by the Library of Congress, and first Hero for the Planet by Time Magazine. She’s also the first woman to become chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sonja Fordham

USA

Shark Advocates International founder and President, Sonja Fordham, has been a leader in the field of shark conservation for nearly three decades. She directed shark conservation projects at the Ocean Conservancy from 1991-2009. In mid-2006, she began a three and a half year assignment in Brussels as policy director for the Shark Alliance. Her work has focused on publicizing the plight of sharks and advocating science-based policies on their behalf before fishery management and wildlife conservation bodies.

Sonja has been at the forefront of numerous, landmark shark conservation actions, including the first US Atlantic shark management plan and finning ban (1993), first international shark protections through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (2002), United Nations General Assembly Resolutions encouraging shark conservation (2003, 2004, 2007) and the EU protections for numerous endangered shark and ray species (2008 - 2010).

She serves as Deputy Chair for the Shark Specialist Group of the IUCN and Chair of the Conservation Committee for the American Elasmobranch Society, the world's foremost association of shark scientists. She has co-authored numerous publications on shark fisheries management and has been appointed to several advisory panels, such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

What’s more, Sonja received a U.S. Department of Commerce Environmental Hero Award in 2000, a Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council Fishery Achievement Award in 2004, the inaugural Peter Benchley Shark Conservation Award in 2007, and the IUCN Harry Messel Award for Conservation Leadership in 2012. In 2008, Washingtonian magazine named her one of 30 local Eco-Heroes.

Read about her story here.

Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente

Spain

Odile holds a BSc in Biological Sciences and a BA in Cinema Production from the University of Southern California.

She started her career in 1996 at National Geographic Television in Washington DC as an intern, associate producer and producer. Among others, she worked on a film about rainforests in Mexico and a major, worldwide communication campaign on conservation, in collaboration with IUCN.

In 2004, Odile founded the Fundación Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, an important NGO in Spain, named after her father who was a famous Spanish nature filmmaker. She has managed many projects regarding environmental awareness, such as large multimedia exhibitions, a quarterly magazine Agenda Viva, online platforms, TV documentaries, books, apps, LIFE projects. She has collaborated over 4 years with a radio show about environmental matters, lectured at different conferences and written discussion articles for mainstream Newspapers like El País or El Mundo. She is currently involved in several advisory committees and environmental workgroups in Spain. She has also been elected as one of the first “Women Visionaries” by the Wild Foundation and co-chaired the international WILD10 Congress in Spain.

Odile is currently focusing her efforts in tackling climate change. She has recently collaborated with Mitsubishi as the main speaker in a Spanish country-wide campaign designed to raise awareness about climate change. She is a member of the scientific committee on climate change of Madrid´s Autonomous Community.

Odile has also been working for Rewilding Europe as a communicator and networking facilitator, representing the initiative towards certain external audiences, especially in the Mediterranean parts of Europe. She helps reach certain target groups, such as major landowners/holders in the rewilding areas, national top media, and early adopters within the key government structures in Spain and Portugal.

Maggie Muurmans

UK, Costa Rica, Australia ETC.

Maggie started her career at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey, where she worked as a mammal keeper. She then traded her captive management experience for field work and started working as a research assistant with sea turtles in Costa Rica. Afterwards, she worked as a research and project coordinator for a British organisation in Nicaragua, and helped set up management plans and sea turtle projects in 3 protected nature reserves in the northwest of the country.

In Indonesia, Maggie created a sea turtle conservation and monitoring program in Sumatra, in close collaboration with the community of Pulau Banyak, to protect the endangered turtles nesting and foraging in the archipelago. The project included eco-tourism development, poverty alleviation projects and environmental education.

Maggie’s work towards conservation and environmental work was recognised by the internationally acknowledged Future for Nature award in 2009 (given to her by David Attenborough) and the Woman of the Earth award in 2011. She also received the Griffith University's vice chancellor award for excellence in community engagement and service in 2018.

Her experience extends to developing and delivering environmental education programmes in developing countries as well as teaching primary, secondary and tertiary students in the UK, Malaysia, Vanuatu and Australia. Maggie currently holds a seasonal lecturer position at the University of Queensland, works as a research fellow in the Yunus centre at Griffith University and is conducting a PhD on community engagement for nature conservation for small communities in a developing country context.

Maggie also co-founded Ocean Connect Incorporated. A non-profit organisation that focuses on environmental education and citizen science for the Gold Coast marine environment.

Iroro Tanshi

Nigeria

Iroro Tanshi is a PhD student at Texas Tech University, where she focuses on drivers of bat assemblage structure along elevational gradients and other aspects of bat ecology. Iroro is also a lecturer at the University of Benin in Nigeria.

She is a dedicated bat specialist and has conducted multiple bat surveys across Nigeria. Iroro protected the largest in-country colony of the straw-coloured fruit bat from a government-proposed roost tree destruction. She developed a national database of Nigerian bat records and co-founded an NGO called Small Mammal Conservation Organisation, focused on protecting bat species and other small mammals.

What’s more, she discovered the first population of the short-tailed roundleaf bat Hipposideros curtus in Nigeria, a species that hadn’t been sighted in the wild for 43 years.

She is on a mission to protect this last known stable roost in Nigeria that is under the threats of hunting and man-made fires. Her ‘Zero Wildfire Campaign’ that engages local people to protect critical habitat for this bat species is yielding results to help bring back this species from the brink of extinction. In the three years since the campaign started, there were no outbreaks of fire, except for only one incident.

Iroro is also very passionate about teaching local science in West Africa. Scientific expertise is limited in Nigeria, so Iroro is committed towards mentoring the next generation of bat biologists/conservationists in Nigeria

In recognition of her work and dedication, Tanshi was named among the winners of 2020 Future for Nature Foundation’s awards for young conservationists.

Trang Nguyen

Vietnam

Trang is an early-career conservation leader in Vietnam. She has an MPhil in Conservation Leadership & Management from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Biodiversity Management from the University of Kent.

She is working to end illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam and internationally. At a young age, she witnessed the harvesting of bile from a live bear to be used in traditional Asian medicine. Since then, she decided to start the NGO WildAct that focused on monitoring the international wildlife trade. Trang now devotes her time to researching and monitoring the markets for illegal wildlife products.

Currently, there is a big communication gap between the "source" continent of Africa and the "end-use markets" of Asia, in regards to the poaching crisis of large mammals such as elephants and rhinos . Trang believes that the misunderstanding and miscommunication between the two continents will seriously undermine conservation efforts, both in the present and the future. Therefore, she is seeking out opportunities to address this crisis and bridge the gap using her own knowledge of Asian cultures and her work experience in Africa.

Besides research, Trang and her team also invest in educating and raising awareness on this subject among Vietnamese youth.

In 2020, WildAct started a new programme called Empowering Women in Conservation, which aims to protect female conservationists in Vietnam from sexual and gender-based violence.

Trang was recently listed in the Forbes Asia 30Under30 – Social Entrepreneurs 2020.

Nemonte Nenquimo

Ecuadorian Amazon

Nemonte is a prominent Indigenous leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon, who is fighting to protect her ancestral territory, culture, and way of life. In 2019, she led her people’s historic legal victory against the Ecuadorian government, protecting half-a-million acres of primary rainforest from oil drilling and setting a precedent for Indigenous rights across the region. She is a member of the Waorani nation, legendary hunter-harvesters of the southcentral Ecuadorian Amazon, who currently number approximately 5000 spread across 54 communities over roughly 2.5 million acres of some of the most richly biodiverse and threatened rainforest on the planet. Raised in the traditional community of Nemonpare in the Pastaza region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, she co-founded the Indigenous-led nonprofit organization Ceibo Alliance in 2015 to protect Indigenous lands and livelihoods from resource extraction within their territories. In 2018, she was elected the first female president of CONCONAWEP, the Waorani organization of Pastaza province.

TIME has placed Nemonte on the 2020 TIME 100 list, its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is the only Indigenous woman featured on the 2020 TIME list, among the first Amazonians to ever receive the accolade, and only the second Ecuadorian to be named to the TIME100 list.

See her story here. And the message she sent to the world in 2020.

Being a conservationist is hard work, and being a female conservationist in a patriarchal world is even harder. The pressures are enormous and the barriers might seem overwhelming and unbreakable. Despite this, women across the world show us that sex and gender cannot limit your potential and define your competence. Their bravery and achievements are making the world a better place, from advocating for minorities, important habitats and endangered species, through doing research and making art, to changing the laws and engaging with young people.

You can be one of them too. Let’s follow their steps and take the centre stage, go for the top jobs, follow your passion, make mistakes and learn from them. You’re more than good enough, I promise you.

Weronika Pasieczna

Ron is a zoology student at the University of Sheffield and has a diploma in environmental ethics from the University of Helsinki. She is a bird ringer in training, Student Hedgehog Ambassador for the Hedgehog Friendly Campus campaign, and she volunteers for BTO, River Stewardship Company and Don Catchment River Trust. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, spending time in nature and participating in citizen science projects. Her main interests are animal behaviour, conservation, ecology and biological recording.

You can find her on Instagram @rongoeswild and on Twitter @rongoeswild.

A Celebration of Influential Women in Conservation