Working women

More and more women are moving away from the traditional notion that a woman's place is at home and are going out to work, looking for something satisfactory and fulfilling. Working women usually look for various solutions to the problems of juggling work and family, making ends meet and finding respect, dignity and opportunities in a job. The number of female workers has increased steadily and continues to grow.

Although female workers are still more concentrated in certain industries and occupations than men, women have made significant progress by taking on new roles in the workplace and taking up certain traditionally male occupations. Until the beginning of the 1990s, typically women were more likely to be employed in an administrative support job, such as secretary, rather than in a managerial or professional job. In recent years, the opposite is taking place.

It is enough to see that the presence of women in once male-dominated professions such as medicine, dentistry and law has increased significantly when comparing the 90s to recent years. However, the presence of women in traditionally male technical and trade occupations, such as carpentry, remains extremely rare.

Treatment of Women in the past

The idea of what a woman should do is firmly entrenched in the past. Traditionally, it was thought that a woman should concentrate all her efforts on looking after the family and the house, cooking, washing dishes and clothes and taking children to and from school. However, as time went by, this idea started evolving. We all remember a time when women, even in Malta, did not have the right to express themselves in one of the most democratic of processes - an election.

Womens' rights grew from literally nothing. Millions of women throughout the world live in conditions of abject deprivation of, and attacks against, their fundamental human rights for no other reason than that they are women.

As a direct result of inequalities found in their countries of origin, women from countries such as Ukraine, Moldova, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, Burma and Thailand are bought and sold, and trafficked to work in forced prostitution, with insufficient government attention to protect their rights and punish the traffickers.

In Guatemala, South Africa, and Mexico, women's ability to enter and remain in the workforce is obstructed by private employers who use women's reproductive status to exclude them from work and by discriminatory employment laws or discriminatory enforcement of the law.

In the United States, some students discriminate against and attack girls in school who are lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, or who do not conform, in one way or another, to male standards of female behaviour.

Women in Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are said to face government-sponsored discrimination that renders them unequal before the law - including discriminatory family codes that take away women's legal authority and place it in the hands of male family members. The law in these countries also restricts women's participation in public life.

Moreover, abuses against women are relentless, systematic and widely tolerated, if not explicitly condoned. Violence and discrimination against women are quasi-global social epidemics, notwithstanding the very real progress of the international women's human rights movement in identifying, raising awareness about, and challenging impunity for women's human rights violations.

We live in a world where women do not always have basic control over what happens to their bodies. Millions of women and girls are forced to marry and have sex with men they do not desire. Many women are unable to depend on the government to protect them from physical violence in the home. They are sometimes punished for having sex outside marriage or with a person of their own choice, rather than with one of their family's choice.

Women workers in Malta

According to statistics published by the National Statistics Office (NSO), in June 2003 there were 6,578 people registered on the unemployment register. Of these 5,392 were males while 1,186 were females.

Let us just consider the women: of the 1,186 mentioned, 305 were under 20 years old, 229 were aged between 20 and 24 years, 117 were between 25 and 29 years old, 301 were between 30 and 44 years old and 234 were over 45 years of age.

Unemployment - applicable for both sexes - can mean one of two things: it is either that they are looking for a job and cannot find one, or else had a job, lost it or left, for some reason or another, and now cannot find alternative employment.

Statistics issued by the NSO on the labour supply show relatively positive results with regard to working women. Since February, the number of women gainfully occupied, including those self-employed reached, 39,953. Of these, 2,018 were self-employed. The public sector employed 12,703 females and 35,289 males.

Female participation

With a female participation rate in the Maltese economy standing at 41.7 per cent, this is one of the lowest rankings among European Union member and accession states. This was what prompted a research project conducted by 25 students following a Diploma in Gender and Development at the University of Malta.

The study, published recently, attempted to provide reasons for the low female participation rate in the world of work. For the purpose of this study, three categories of Maltese women were questioned.

These were women who are not economically active in the formal market and are not interested in taking up such work, women who would be interested in taking up such work and women who are active in the informal economy. A good eight per cent of women questioned said they are proud to declare that they do not need to work for money or because they believe working would threaten alternative sources of income.

Some women also remarked that the local income tax and social security regimes were already too oppressive and so this served as a disincentive to seek further income than the one already achieved by another member of the same household. The study also showed that Maltese women are not active in the formal market because of situations beyond their control, such as caring obligations, resistance by family members and pressure of household work. Others said they were too old to work.

The Gender Equality Act

The Gender Equality Act was passed through parliament in February and serves the purpose of promoting equality between men and women both in and out of the workplace.

This Act gives a detailed definition of what constitutes direct and indirect discrimination based entirely on sex. It strengthens the principle of equal treatment and equal opportunities for men as well as women with regards to access to employment. It also obliges the employer to report, when requested, an allegation of discrimination he or she receives.

With regards to self-employment, the Act makes it illegal for a bank or a financial institution to sexually discriminate in the granting of any facility except in genuine cases based on financial risk.

The Act also prohibits gender discrimination with regards to access to all types of vocational guidance, training and re-training. It also defines sexual harassment at the workplace and extends this concept to persons responsible for any work place, educational establishment or entity that provides vocational training or for establishment that offers goods and services to the public.

By way of this Act, we shall see the setting up of the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality for Men and Women. The commission's functions will include the carrying out of general investigations and investigations of complaints of a more individual character in order to determine whether the provisions of this Act are being contravened with respect to the complainant and, where deemed appropriate, to mediate in this regard.

The Act also addresses the images of men and women in advertising. It states that these should not compromise respect for human dignity or contain discrimination on grounds of sex. Thus, it makes it illegal to publish any advertisement for job vacancies that discriminates or promotes discrimination in any way.

CSB Recruitment Agency has been supporting the local business community with its services since 1987. For further information you can write to us at Vincenti Buildings, 14/19 Strait Street, Valletta VLT 08, or call us on 2122-5800 or 2124-6543, fax: 2123-0520, e-mail: jobs@vacancycentre.com, or visit www.VacancyCentre.com.