I Saw None, so I Built One: Women in the Tech Community

The TEDxBaaAtoll talk’s published summary begins with a familiar fear: Aishath Adnan once worried that she would be steered into the domestic role society expected of women. She chose a career in technology, then found few women working in the field. The title, “I Saw None, so I Built One,” turns that absence into an action: rather than displaying a handful of women technologists as exceptions, she and her peers created a place where they could find, learn from and support one another.

In an interview with the Maldives Financial Review, Women in Tech Maldives’ co-founders recalled an early gathering of more than a dozen women and the development of that network into a sustained organization. The interview also widens the question beyond workplace representation: connectivity to outer islands, public digital services in Dhivehi, opportunities for local technology workers in public projects, and women leaving or interrupting careers because of care responsibilities. These points are not quotations from TED’s synopsis; they help describe the environment in which the community was built.

From a feminist perspective, a network can be infrastructure: it counters isolation, circulates knowledge and makes opportunities easier to find. But it cannot replace schools, employers and government addressing connectivity, education, hiring and working conditions. Calling the problem a lack of women’s confidence would once again shift the burden of repair onto women. Remote or flexible work may open some routes, but it should not become the only solution—one that asks women to combine paid technology work with care labor that remains unequally distributed.

Visibility is therefore not the endpoint. The questions are whether girls can access education and connectivity, whether women’s expertise is formally recognized, and whether communities can help change the rules. For another perspective on women’s professional communities in technology, see Melina Masnatta’s talk on women and technology.

Talk and further reading

• Official TED talk
• Maldives Financial Review: Women in Tech co-founders on technology and gender
• UNDP Maldives: technology manager Aishath Adnan