Maldivian women seldom seen by tourists: BBC Women’s Hour

Dr Faizal and Olympic rower Guin Batten – who recently set a record for the ‘zero degree’ crossing in the Maldives and is trying to reintroduce rowing to the country – were interviewed yesterday by journalist Jane Garvey.

Dr Faizal explained that since the introduction of tourism to the Maldives, women tended to stay on their home islands to look after their families while the men went away to work on the resorts: “There is also little in the way of commuting on the islands so it’s not easy to travel to resorts to work on a daily basis. This has meant that women no longer have the economic empowerment they used to have,” she said.

Reiterating her comment last week in the UK House of Parliament that religious extremism was “among the greatest threats to democracy in the Maldives”, Dr Faizal suggested that the rise of extremism in the Maldives was attributable to people being allowed to vocalise their views more in the new liberal democracy, “whereas in the previous autocratic regime – who were by no means radical, they were quite liberal actually – they were simply locked up.”