All men and women are equal... really?

Most parents would be outraged if you suggested they pay their daughters less pocket money than their sons. And just try telling a 10-year-old girl that her brother deserves more money for the manly task of taking out the rubbish bins than she does for clearing the breakfast dishes. Yet this is the reality these siblings will face when they enter the workforce.

Believe it or not, the pay gap between men and women has still not been closed.

While paid maternity leave for fathers and the lack of child-care facilities usually dominate the debate over gender issues, unequal pay between men and women remains the overlooked nexus of work and family balance.

Maternity leave and more child-care places are a good start but we will never achieve work and family balance until we break free of the gender myths and stereotypes that prevent women from succeeding at work and inhibit men from succeeding as parents.

Increasingly we are hearing men argue for a greater involvement in their families, but the lack of affordable child care, combined with the fact that most women earn less than men, force most families to forfeit the earnings of the mother. Faced with the decision about who leaves the workforce to care for the children, the choice has as more to do with simple home economics than traditional beliefs. This in turn compounds pay inequality because the longer a woman stays out of the paid workforce the more difficult it is for her to return to a well-paid job.

Malta is signatory to two conventions that concern gender directly. These are the Equal Remuneration Convention 1951 (No. 100), ratified in 1988, and the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention 1958 (No. 111), ratified in 1968. The former establishes the principle of equal pay for women and men for work of equal value, while the latter addresses equality of treatment and opportunity, including access to employment and conditions of work.

In 1991, Malta ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, often described as an international bill of rights for women. One of its articles concerns the principle that women should receive equal pay to men for equal work. Nine years later the full-time average ordinary gross salary of women in Malta was 80 per cent of male salaries (NSO, Labour Force Survey, December 2000). By December 2002 it had risen two percentage points to 82 per cent of male salaries. At this rate it will be at least another nine years before we close the pay gap.

Unequal pay usually comes in two forms: women being paid less than men for doing a similar job; and women being paid less than men because they work in undervalued female-dominated occupations such as teaching, nursing and hospitality.

Unequal pay occurs across almost all sectors in Malta, even in the female-dominated education sector (61 per cent of all employees are women), where there is a 17 per cent pay gap in favour of male workers!

The only economic activities where women are having the better of men are agriculture, where women earn 50 per cent more than their male counterparts (though only seven per cent of those engaged in this activity are women), and in extra-territorial organisations where women earn a whopping 182 per cent more than men (hopefully not a statistical aberration).

Surprisingly, a man can expect to earn "only" 22.5 per cent more than a woman in the finance and insurance industry, perhaps because the financial intermediation industry seems to rely as much on women as men for its recruits.

Why has this happened? Despite years of legislation and education against sex discrimination, workplaces are still driven by a mindset that devalues the contribution of women. The notion of the full-time male breadwinner and his need to provide for a family remains entrenched, no matter how irrelevant, to the present.

Another reason is the outdated view that men perform skilled work, while women's work is not skilled but somehow based around innate capacities such as caring for infants, cutting and styling hair or performing human resource functions - because women are "better with people". Yet, in health and community services men still earn almost 32 per cent more than women, while in community, social and personal service activities women earn 6.5 per cent less.

What is more disturbing is that, even in the civil service, independent statutory bodies and state-owned companies, there is still an 18.4 per cent gap in average salaries in favour of males, even worse than the 12 per cent gap that existed in 2000.

Ask any employer whether they have equal pay and you will be met with a resounding yes. Ask them for proof and you will be met with a stone wall of confidentiality and privacy excuses.

The Employment and Training Corporation (ETC) believes that greater female participation in the labour market would be of both social and economic benefit and is committed to enabling this participation. This commitment was given added impetus in the Joint Assessment Paper of Employment Policy Priorities, signed by both the government of Malta and the European Commission in October 2001.

The objectives range from promoting women's economic rights and independence, including access to employment, appropriate working conditions and control over economic resources, through the elimination of occupational segregation and all forms of employment discrimination, to harmonisation of work and family responsibilities for women and men

EU Directive 75/117/EC requires member states to apply the principle of equal pay for men and women. The new Employment and Industrial Relations Act, 2002 transposes this directive.

The Equality for Men and Women Act 2003 also caters for EU Directive 97/80/EC, which places upon the respondent the burden of proof that he has not discriminated on the basis of sex.

The ETC's goal is to make the labour market equally inclusive of both women and men. This means that both are to have equal access to employment of their choice and to decent working conditions; to enjoy equal reward for work of equal value; and to be able to balance their work with their family responsibilities. Its Gender Equality Action Plan is being actively implemented in four key areas, though much work remains to be done in what is called the "Know Your Rights" component.

The National Commission for the Promotion of Equality, which is authorised to hear cases of alleged discrimination and rule on them, is still in its infancy and the necessary structures are not yet in place, though the chairman assures me that, should they receive any complaints even now, they will action them.

How far we still have to go is clear from the UN's Gender Equality Index, where Malta ranks 33rd in the world, out of 175 countries. The mecca for women's rights are Norway, Iceland and Sweden, which occupy the three top spots. Malta ranks behind such countries as Brunei and the Czech Republic but precedes Argentina and Poland.

It is very easy to blame women for not being assertive enough in pushing their wage claims, but it is almost impossible for individual women to fight a system that has been designed to exclude them. Women are not an interest group or minority demanding tokenism or special treatment. There is nothing special about wanting to be given a fair go.