Ismail Ibrahim

President, Association of Civil Engineers

Assalaam alaikum!

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, this year I would like to acknowledge the steady growth in women in engineering – albeit at a slower rate than we would all like to see. Perhaps civil engineering has seen more female representation than other engineering disciplines but I feel there is a lot more potential to draw into the profession.

As we start to recognize the contribution of active female engineers to the profession, I am confident that more burgeoning engineers will look to them as role models for successful and rewarding careers. This year, I am pleased to note that for the first time, we have two women taking organizational lead roles in the Association with the election of Asrar Ibrahim and Aishath Abdul Rahman to the Engineering Council of ACE for the 2021 – 2023 term.

This International Women’s Day, we have been posting profiles of a few Maldivian female civil engineers on our social media platforms. The purpose of these posts is to draw attention to the contribution of female engineers to the infrastructure development sector of Maldives. We hope to raise public awareness of our female engineers’ role in the industry and the wider society. Most importantly, we hope that these posts will help to inspire more little girls to follow suit and choose to pursue civil engineering.

ACE is proud to recognize and applaud the diversity and value that our female engineers continue to bring to the profession, as exhibited by the variety of positions filled by the women engineers we have profiled today. I would like to call upon the engineers who have not yet registered with ACE to come forward and get registered, and together with our current members, to actively encourage and draw more girls into the profession.

Happy Women’s Day!