Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) awarded Athena a grant to analyze barriers limiting women's participation in leadership roles in sanitation-related public bodies in Kenya. The grant falls under its Urban Sanitation Research Initiative. The research design employed mixed methods to assess gender balance in decision-making/technical roles. It also identified barriers to female participation in those roles. The study aimed to capture how gender might impact, shape, or shift the definition of sanitation among decision-makers. It then looked at how this leads to differing policy priorities, or intervention approaches where women are given greater presence, voice, and power in the sanitation sector. The research examined the internal workings of organizations in the sanitation sector, as a potential source of gender inequity in their external service delivery.

As part of this research, Athena Infonomics conducted a policy brief on gender representation in Kenyan sanitation institutions. The brief found that, across six national and county sanitation-related institutions in Kenya, an average of 37% of top-level staff were women. Corporate leadership roles are particularly unevenly split between genders.