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Sue Vella MSc, Malta Ministry for Social Policy
It can safely be said that the promotion
of gender equality is today an accepted wisdom. The concept of
equality has evolved with time. Perhaps the most pronounced policy
shift in recent years has been one from an equality defined as
equal treatment of the sexes, based however on a normatively male
lifestyle, to one where equality has been broadened to encompass
and adjust for the differences in lifestyle between women and
men. Under this paradigm, women's childbearing function and their
greater propensity to care for children and elderly relatives,
is taken into account in policies and practices such that it does
not serve to disadvantage women.
As the acceptance and management of diversity
has come to be seen as essential to productive and sustainable
social progress, so women and men are seen as having equally valuable
roles in both the public and private domains. In a number of countries,
measures were introduced to enable women's participation in public
life as well as to enable men to assume those domestic responsibilities
traditionally assumed by women. However, gender-specific measures
have not been found sufficient if a true valuing of difference
is to come about - it is the norm that must be gender-friendly.
Hence the need to bring equality issues into mainstream policy
and practice.
International commitment to mainstreaming
At the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995,
governments across the world adopted a Platform for Action that
involved the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in all their
policies and programmes. This adoption implied three key commitments:
• recognition on the part of governments
worldwide that policies and programmes, while often appearing
gender-blind, may in fact indirectly discriminate against women;
• acceptance of the need for a systematic
analysis of this differential impact to precede and inform all
decision-making processes and to track their outcomes;
• enabling of the requisite skills
such as advocacy and networking to bring the results of such analysis
to bear upon the planning and implementation of government activities.
Six months after the Beijing Conference,
the commitment to mainstreaming was reinforced, in the adoption
by the European Union, of a communication that called upon members
to take a mainstream perspective in all its policies and activities.(1)
Also in 1995, the Commonwealth Plan of Action
on Gender and Development sought to establish and reinforce the
institutional mechanisms for bringing a gender perspective into
all government activities. In 1998, the group of specialists appointed
by the Council of Europe to survey mainstreaming measures, submitted
its report.(2) This report included a broad overview of best practices
in various countries and developed its own conceptual framework
and mainstreaming methodology. The report was subsequently disseminated
to member states. The forthcoming sections provide an overview
of women in Malta, its national machinery and mainstreaming initiatives
to date.
Malta
Malta is a Mediterranean island in Southern Europe with a population
of 378,000. It is a small, open economy that enjoys substantial
foreign investment, an ongoing privatisation programme and well-established
services and manufacturing sectors. The island's geographical
location has always provided a pivotal link between the European
and Mediterranean regions, and Malta still makes optimal use of
this opportunity for transportation and other circulation services
in the region. Malta's current application to join the European
Union should enable the island to provide the structures for flexible
entry to the large European market. Realising that its few natural
resources require it to make optimal use of its human resources,
Malta has developed a multi-skilled and productive workforce.
Female participation in Malta
Malta's national awareness of the importance of its human resources
is reflected by a progressive increase in the labour market participation
of women over the last fifteen years, rising from 27.6 per cent
in 1983 to 34.5 per cent in 1995.(3) A number of measures in recent
years have facilitated this increase, most notably:
• free of charge kindergartens for
children over three years of age;
• improvement of the conditions of
work of part-timers;
• one year parental leave;
• career breaks of up to three years
for male and female employees in the public sector for child-rearing
purposes;
• separate income tax assessments for
married couples;
• summer school programmes for pupils
in primary schools;
• the setting up of a state-funded
childcare centre for children of working parents;
• reduced working hours for full-time
public sector employees with caring responsibilities;
• granting of responsibility leave
for public sector employees to enable them to care for dependent
elderly parents, dependent disabled children and dependent spouses;
• the establishment of regulations
protecting pregnant women at the workplace.
Women's participation in tertiary education
is strongly encouraging, as female students have more than doubled
in the last ten years and today constitute half the student population
at the University of Malta. While women feature predominantly
in healthcare, teaching and the arts, the number of women pursuing
law and engineering is also increasing.
Women's representation in Malta's key decision-making
processes is still limited. Although both of the major political
parties uphold the advancement of women, the number of women in
Cabinet and Parliament remains disproportionately low, with only
one female Minister and four female Members of Parliament in 1999.
Representation is similarly low in the Diplomatic Service, the
Judiciary and the top echelons of the Public Service. Rather more
encouraging is the proportion of women appointed to government
boards, that has risen from 10 per cent in 1995 to 18 per cent
by 1999. Furthermore, since the introduction of local government,
the number of women elected to run local councils has increased
steadily to reach 17.3 per cent in 1998.
Malta's national machinery
Generally speaking, the status of women in Malta has been greatly
strengthened in the last fifteen years. Married women enjoy rights
and responsibilities equal to their husband under Maltese law,
and Malta has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Plans for the drafting
of Gender Equality legislation are underway, as is the drafting
of legislation on violence against women.
Beyond equal treatment before the law, the
measures outlined in the above section have gone a long way in
enabling women to avail themselves of the opportunities in public
life traditionally enjoyed by men. These advances have been due
in large part to the national machinery for gender equality, set
up in 1989 by decision of Cabinet to implement government policy
on equality between the sexes. The aims of this policy are threefold(4):
• to promote gender equality;
• to eliminate all forms of sex-based
discrimination;
• to enable the advancement of women
in the legal, civil, political, economic and social spheres.
This machinery comprises two main entities.
The Commission for the Advancement of Women is mandated by the
Prime Minister to advise Government on issues of gender equality
and to raise public awareness thereon.
The Department, Women in Society forms part
of the civil service and falls under the Ministry for Social Policy.
This Department works within the civil service to ensure that
government activities have a positive effect on women. It also
collaborates with other professionals and civil society entities
to promote equal opportunities for women.
Mainstreaming in Malta
The concept of mainstreaming is not new to Malta. In 1989, a circular
was issued by the Office of the Prime Minister, wherein government
firmly declared its policy on gender equality and the elimination
of all forms of discrimination, and held that gender equality
was to be an "integral and natural part of Maltese culture".
Stressing the importance of incorporating women's issues in mainstream
policy, the circular called upon the public service to accelerate
the achievement of equality. In so doing, consultation was to
be held with the national machinery in order to assess the gender
impact of government activities, and equality of opportunity for
recruitment and promotion was to be upheld.
In 1995, along with other countries worldwide,
Malta adopted the Final Report and the Platform for Action of
the Fourth World Conference in Beijing - thereby committing itself
to mainstream gender equality in all areas of Maltese society.
Since Beijing, the national machinery has disseminated information
on Malta's strategy to implement the Platform for Action. This
information was distributed both within government as well as
to NGOs, the Church, social partners, professionals and the media
through various workshops and briefing sessions.
Along with its awareness-raising activities,
the national machinery compiles detailed reports on an annual
basis, covering its activities in the previous year, relevant
sex-disaggregated data and issues that require addressing in the
forthcoming year. These reports are widely disseminated to politicians,
professionals, high officials in the public service, and the media.
The Department, Women in Society also holds a database of qualified
women for nomination purposes, and runs a Documentation Centre
to assist researchers and students with an interest in gender
issues. In 1998, the Department liaised closely with the Central
Office of Statistics to issue two publications based on sex-disaggregated
statistics from the Population Census of 1995, which gave a clear
picture of women's position in the social, economic and political
spheres.
Equality-related training has increased in
recent years. Both in 1991 and 1996, the Commonwealth Secretariat
assisted the Department to run courses on gender equality and
on impact assessment respectively. The Staff Development Organisation,
within the Office of the Prime Minister, also runs various courses
with a gender focus, such as that on Women in Management to be
organised in March 2000. State school teachers also receive in-service
training on gender equality and have received a manual on gender
issues. The Department assists the University to run a Diploma
course on Women and Development and advises various faculties
on the inclusion of a gender focus in its various courses. Moreover,
the Department runs other courses in support of its aims, promoting
competencies such as interpersonal and political skills.
In 1999, Cabinet re-endorsed the concept
of gender mainstreaming. The Commission for the Advancement of
Women was asked to identify the methods and instruments whereby
a gender focus could be brought into the mainstream of public
administration. A report to this effect was prepared in September
1999. (5) The report emphasised the importance of carrying out
a gender impact analysis at a very early stage in the formulation
of policies, projects and proposals, and that the responsibility
for such analysis belonged to each Ministry. The importance of
a two-fold approach was upheld, namely, the coupling of gender
mainstreaming structures with a co-ordinating national machinery.
The report identified two key issues that
must be addressed for the effective implementation of gender mainstreaming.
The first relates to the need for sex-disaggregated statistics,
which in turn implies the need to identify current issues and
related data requirements and indicators. The second relates to
the need to raise the level of knowledge on gender equality and
mainstreaming strategies among policy makers and top management
structures. These two issues point to the need for more local
expertise as regards both gender research and training.
The report made a number of key recommendations,
namely, that the gender mainstreaming policy be publicised among
all Ministries and Departments, and that a framework be established
within the Public Service to facilitate the mainstreaming process.
This framework is currently being developed. Proposals have been
drawn up regarding training initiatives; gender impact assessment
guidelines; and monitoring and evaluation tools. The Commission's
report also sets out a workplan for the next three years. Each
Department will now be required to submit annual departmental
reports on gender equality initiatives to the national machinery
on gender issues.
To conclude, the legal and social status
of women in Malta has come forward by leaps and bounds in the
past two decades. It could not have been done without the commitment
of successive administrations to measuring progress in terms of
social wellbeing as well as economic progress. Only this fundamental
valuing of human growth can bring about effective equal opportunities
for both men and women. It is augured that the unstinting efforts
of Malta's national machinery since its establishment ten years
ago are met with open hearts and broad vision within the public
service, and that the proposed institutionalisation of mainstreaming
further enable the valuable contribution of women to Maltese public
life.
References
1 COM(96)67
2 EG-S-MS(98)2
3 Proportion of total employment to working
age population, ie, between the ages of 16 and 60; However, since
1999, estimation of the female workforce has been brought in line
with European standards, and is now calculated as the proportion
of total female employment to all females aged 15 and over. The
participation rate thus calculated is 27 per cent.
4 Department for the Equal Status of Women,
Post-Beijing, Implementation of Platform for Action, Malta, 1996
5 Commission for the Advancement of
Women, Gender Mainstreaming in Government, Mechanisms for Implementation,
Malta, 1999
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