Strong Women, Strong Nation – Redefining Women’s Roles in Maldives and Timor-Leste

Photo by Fathimath Nathasha Latheef/IFC.

For Fathimath Nathasha Latheef, the sky is the limit. When she was younger, Latheef was not sure if she could ever become a pilot: “The idea of a female pilot was foreign to me because I never thought it could be possible,” she says. Today, Latheef is the Maldives’ first female pilot to fly a commercial aircraft, the Airbus A320 – a remarkable feat in her 20-year aviation career.

Her professional journey was not straightforward. “There was always the question of whether a female can handle both the family and the aircraft. It was not something that my male counterparts were subjected to,” says Latheef, who now also serves as a Flight Operations Inspector. In a country where only 43 percent of women are actively employed, and mostly in informal sectors, Latheef is a trailblazer in an industry that is traditionally dominated by men.

On the other side of the Indian Ocean, Ligia Quiolia de Jesus B. Ferreira is on a unique journey of her own in Timor-Leste. She started her career as a civil engineer in 2016 and, like Latheef, is working in a traditionally male-dominated profession: the country’s infrastructure sector.

Ferreira played a crucial role in developing critical projects, including the Dili-Ainaro road, a 110-kilometer road corridor that connected the north and the south of the country, and the Tibar Bay Port, a state-of-the-art facility and Timor-Leste’s first public-private partnership (PPP), located on the outskirts of the capital, Dili.

Reflecting on her journey, Ferreira, who now serves as a civil engineering supervisor at Timor Port S.A., leading the infrastructure department in the preventive and repair maintenance of port facilities, says, “Working in a male-dominated industry like infrastructure is never easy. The path is filled with challenges, but when you look back and see how far you have come, the sense of accomplishment and pride is incomparable.”