Time for celebration or gnashing of teeth?

Whether you are jubilant or downcast will depend on what time you are reading this and on whether you want to join Europe or not.

As predicted, we have had a bellyfull of pundits, besides the politicians, telling us what is best for us, to the point where I was almost throwing up when I opened the papers or switched on to any local radio or TV programme.

Thankfully, today's papers will be different, or will they? Maybe it's just wishful thinking and they will not have bothered to roust out something other than more on the referendum. At least we shall be spared all the pundits, rolled out for the occassion.

Surfing the Net I was surprised to read a BBC story which said that most Maltese are unenthusiastic about EU membership. Considering all the ballyhoo and the noisy mass meetings, "unenthusiastic" hardly describes how the Maltese are reacting, whether they want to join or not. Admittedly the article was written in January, but it certainly does not reflect how the Maltese are reacting today.

A Reuters report, saying that "the Maltese are bitterly divided along party lines over EU membership", is nearer the mark.

As with the last couple of general elections, it is the undecided who can hold sway on which way the vote will go. A vote against joining will be a personal political defeat for the Prime Minister, who has put all his eggs in the EU basket, and although he has performed much better than his opponent, Alfred Sant, in public debates, it could spell trouble for the Nationalist Party at the general election to be held soon.

Speculation on what Alfred Sant will do if the the vote goes in favour of joining is rife. Considering his hardline stance, it would be difficult for him to backtrack if he sees the Yes vote as securing the Nationalists yet another term in office.

Now, as those of you who read my column know, I am hoping we do join Europe. I have not been scared by all the doomsday predictions touted by the MLP; on the other hand neither have I felt it necessary to ram my opinion down readers' throats like force-feeding geese.

If there are people who will vote the way their political leaders tell them to, no opinion writer will alter that. As for the free thinkers, they do not need endless reams of more of the same to help them come to a decision.

However, it does make me very nervous that serious decisions can be influenced not by thoughtful debate but by diktat from above and scaremongering. No doubt late today and tomorrow we shall have a lot to talk about and mull over. The fun is about to begin.

Long way from jubilation

Scanning the papers to find a different topic I could get my teeth into, I discover it was "Women's Day" yesterday. As I read the local papers I found information which was, to put it mildly, pathetic.

It told me that according to the National Statistics Office, females accounted for 51.5 per cent of the population while in 2002 this proportion stood at 50.4. That no changes are envisaged for the next 50 years and that women live longer than men. Wow! How is that for advancement?

It would have been more relevant to know how many women are earning the same as men. On average, women receive between 30 and 40 per cent less pay than men earn for the same work in so-called advanced countries. It will be interesting to know what the statistics are here.

What is being done about child care facilities and generally makeing things easier for women to gain independence without having to give up having a family, would have made interesting reading.

At least Labour MP Helena Dalli pushed for legal protection for victims of domestic violence and the PN women's movement appealed for support structures which would encourage women to join the workforce. The National Youth Council decried the under-representaion of women in decison making posts and the National Commission Persons with Disability highlighted the setbacks that disabled women have as an extra handicap.

There was no statement from the Commission for the Advancement of Women.

I am well aware of the setbacks we women still encounter in Malta, however. I was interested to know what was happening in the rest of the world.

Geeta Gupta, head of the non-governmental International Centre for Research on Women, said solid progress has been made in the education of women, for example, but women continue to lag behind men in other areas. "We still have huge gaps in women's access to economic assets and economic resources," she said.

South Asia stands out in terms of certain measures, gender inequality for example, but frankly, in every part of the world, women do not earn the same wages, do not get access to the same jobs...", she said.

According to Australia's The Age, Australian women are still waiting to receive a taxpayer-funded maternity leave benefit. But paid maternity leave will not by itself solve the difficulties of combining paid work and parenting.

Individual workplaces have come up with innovative plans to accommodate the needs of working parents, but the changes so far have been piecemeal and sporadic.

Women continue to earn less than men. And they continue to be under-represented in Australian boardrooms, making family-friendly workplace reform more elusive.

In other nations, however, it remains true that the gains Australian women take for granted represent extraordinary freedoms. According to the United Nations, about 5,000 women are killed annually around the world by their husbands, brothers and fathers for reasons of "honour" - suspected infidelity, seeking a divorce or pre-marital sex.

In Australia only the well-off can afford child care, said journalist, editor and author Anne Summers, who was an adviser on women's policy in the Hawke and Keating governments, in her Pamela Denoon lecture, delivered in Canberra on Friday evening.

Lambasting John Howard, she said that Australia had got its most reactionary Prime Minister for at least 30 years. Once installed in office, he immediately began his assault on the employment opportunities of women.

Increasingly, women have responded to the hard choices now confronting them by having fewer children, having them later in life or, in almost 30 per cent of cases, not having them at all.

The result has been a drastic decline in the birthrate that has policy makers concerned about an ageing population and, increasingly and ominously, blaming women for this.

The United Nations released a report last week saying that Canada is failing women on such issues as parental leave, child care, and pay equity.

The highly critical report authored by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women says social funding cuts are hurting women.

"This is the most critical report that Canada has ever received from this committee," Shelagh Day, of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, said.

The committee cites the poverty rate of Canadian women as a key concern. "The committee is concerned about the high percentage of women living in poverty, in particular, elderly women living alone, female lone parents, aboriginal women, older women, women of colour, immigrant women and women with disabilities, for whom poverty persists or even deepens," the report says.

The group would like the federal government to expand affordable child care across the country and boost funding for battered women. It would also like Ottawa to speed up efforts to ensure pay equity for Canadian women.

In a message to mark International Women's Day, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said investing in women is an essential part of building a stronger world. "When women thrive, all of society benefits, and succeeding generations are given a better start in life... gender equality is part of the UN's Millennium Development Goals," Annan said.

Some 5,000 people took to the streets of Seoul seeking greater funding for gender-equality policies and gathering signatures for a campaign to press for the abolition of South Korea's family registry system, under which only men can register as head of family.

Women in the Indonesian capital Jakarta used yesterday's International Women's Day, a UN-organised event, to chastise their female president Megawati Sukarnoputri for not paying enough attention to women's rights. "Indonesia is led by a woman but we think she's not paying adequate attention to our aspirations," said former popular singer and activist Titik Qadarsih.

Women MPs in India jettisoned their political loyalties to revive a seven-year-old bill reserving them a third of parliamentary seats, for which Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has registered his strong support.

However, such political will was absent from China, where the ongoing National People's Congress' 2,900 delegates includes only about 20 per cent women.

Yes, girls, we have a long way to go yet.

On hunting

A couple of weeks back I made fun of a ruling by Mr Justice Joe Galea Debono on an appeal lodged by a hunter, because according to the report in the papers the hunter was let off because his shotgun was in its cover at the back of the car.

However, what the reports failed to mention was that the hunter was stopped just after noon when shooting was allowed till noon on that day, I was informed by the judge. Which means it was accepted that the hunter was on his way home not on his way to hunt.