There was a moment during the recent workshop on women’s participation in climate governance conducted by Fuvahmulah Women’s Development Committee in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and the Maldives Policy Thinktank, that has stayed with me.
As participants shared their experiences, one comment in particular cut through the room. Thinadhoo WDC President Mariyam Sharoona Adil spoke about a reality that many women around the table immediately recognised. And this was a room full of powerful women, formidable leaders in their communities, who have overcome overwhelming obstacles and challenged biases to get where they are today, who continue to do so to claim their space and use it for good.
“Women are consulted. They are invited to meetings. They are expected to participate. But when the final decisions are made, they often find themselves sidelined. Then, when everything is over, they are called back for the group photograph.”
It was a simple observation, yet it perfectly captured a much larger problem. Women are in the photos, but they are often not in the picture.
Across the Maldives, women have become increasingly visible in public life. The passage of the Gender Equality Act in 2016 and the amendment to the Decentralisation Act in 2019, among others, helped boost women’s visibility on various platforms. We see them on conference panels, at consultations, in community meetings, at project launches and national events. Their attendance demonstrates that organisers understand the importance of inclusion. Yet visibility alone does not equal influence. Being present is not the same as being heard, and being heard is not the same as having the power to shape outcomes.
Too often, women’s participation ends where decision-making begins. This is not always intentional, or maliciously engineered. In many cases, it is the result of long-established institutional cultures where authority continues to rest with the same individuals and the same structures. Women are invited to contribute ideas, provide community perspectives and mobilise local participation. Important roles, yes, but when priorities are set, budgets allocated or policies finalised, those same voices frequently become advisory rather than decisive.
The irony is particularly striking in climate governance, because women are often among those most directly affected by climate change. They manage households during increasingly unpredictable weather, organise community responses after disasters, oversee water and food security within families, and carry extensive knowledge of local environmental changes. Women’s Development Committees, in particular, possess an intimate understanding of community needs because they work closest to them. Women perform crucial dual roles in their communities; that of service providers and of care givers in daily life and especially so in times of crisis. If climate governance is to be genuinely community-centred, then excluding women from meaningful decision-making is not merely unfair, it is inefficient.
Better decisions are made when diverse perspectives are genuinely considered. This is no longer simply an argument about representation, but rather one about effectiveness.
Tokenism can be difficult to recognise because, on the surface, it often looks like inclusion. There are invitations, consultations, photographs and acknowledgements. The appearance of participation is carefully maintained. Yet genuine participation requires something much deeper: the ability to influence agendas, question assumptions, shape priorities and share responsibility for the final decision. Without that, representation sadly remains symbolic rather than substantive.
The photograph itself becomes a metaphor. It documents who was present, but not whose ideas mattered. Years later, history may record that women attended the meeting, while remaining silent about whether they had any meaningful role in determining its outcome. This distinction matters so significantly because democracy is measured not only by who occupies the room but by who holds influence within it.
Changing this reality requires more than increasing the number of women invited to meetings. It requires institutions to examine how decisions are actually made. Are women involved from the earliest stages of planning? Are they included in the smaller conversations where consensus is built? Do they have equal access to information? Are their recommendations reflected in final decisions? And perhaps most importantly, are they trusted with authority rather than simply participation? These questions extend well beyond climate governance. They apply equally to local government, national policymaking, community development and countless other spaces where decisions shape people’s lives.
The experiences shared during the workshop were not stories of women asking for special treatment. They were asking for something far simpler: that their expertise, experience and judgement carry the same weight as anyone else’s.
The Maldives has made important progress in creating spaces for women to participate, and that progress deserves recognition. But participation should never become the destination, it should rather be the starting point.
The measure of inclusion truly is not whether women appear in the group photograph. It is whether, when the camera is put away and the real decisions begin, they remain in the room, that they remain in the picture.
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