Women voters, women floaters

It was good to see our largest political party moving with the times and addressing the issue of female representation in its political structures. We cannot forget that the Council of Europe suspended the right of both the Maltese and Irish delegations to vote in plenary sittings and committee meetings because their national delegations failed to contain even one representative of each sex. In Malta's and Ireland's case the problem was the absence of women but it would be equally wrong if no men were represented.

It is no coincidence that these two countries, where there is poor female representation, were and are deeply Catholic. Here, women are made to feel confused too. Women who work are all but criticised by the Church for doing so. The message seems to be: It is OK if you have to but if you're doing it for personal self fulfilment, oh dear! You have to put your children first.

Surely the authorities should address both men and women equally on the issue of a work life balance. We are tired of being depicted as Eves if we do our own thing! Women shouldn't have to explain themselves in this way. We don't all have to aspire to be Mother Theresas but the pressure to be so is enormous. Most of us actually come between an Eve and a Mother Theresa, yet there is no image of this anywhere.

Even where you look at where we have women ministers and parliamentary secretaries, two of the three have the caring roles of social policy and health. We need not only more women on board but more women in the areas of finance, foreign policy and land use, which is precisely where all the power is. The trouble is once women get into a profession it gets devalued. Look at Russia where women doctors are two a penny and how badly paid and practically disrespected many of them are. Here we have tons of women in teaching and nursing and yet tons of men who always seem to represent them. I bet you anything that if the majority of accountants were to be women it would become an underpaid profession like nursing.

Our main politicians are men. Our trade union leaders are men. Our Church leaders are men. Just look at the MCESD images of endless men trooping in and out. I went to a PPP (private-public partnerships) seminar lately and you really had to look for any women. No women speakers, of course! Practically no women in the audience. There were women, of course, helping with the mike, doing the teas and coffees etc. It really is too much and the decisions taken by the Nationalist Party are very welcome. I would also like to see them working with the Malta Labour Party on ways of improving women's representation in Parliament. We simply have too many men and too many lawyers to have any form of a representative government. And unlike that not-so-bright spark who spoke up at the PN council and warned the Prime Minister he could lose his job to a woman one day, I just don't see that as an issue. I'm sure the PM is not remotely worried either!

Some of the men who spoke up against really do need to move a bit with the times. Don't these men have daughters? Haven't they seen them do just as well as the boys at school, if not better? Do we want to flush all that away because they become wives and mothers? So far the older generation in Malta has preferred to stay at home and bring up the kids, to always have a hot meal ready when hubby comes home and to generally spoil and mother many Maltese men. That was their choice (if you exclude all the years of indoctrination) and I have no doubt that in an unintelligent way that does help with stability in marriages.

But women do not have to feel obliged to work more than their husbands. If they are both working when they come home they both share the chores. Some Maltese mothers who currently spoil their boys rotten are not helping them for the future. In so many households today the girl still helps with housework, or is expected to clear up after dinner while the dear boy goes back to his studying. It's a bad example and, I would suggest, a serious reason why so may young marriages are breaking down.

Research in the UK has shown that young women, and single parent mothers particularly, are the most likely to float in their vote. This will probably happen here too. Any political party worth its salt is going to have to be attractive to two very different kinds of women, with two very different takes on life. There is a huge generational divide today between young women and their mums, which is far greater than that between the sons and their dads.

Getting more women into the party structures is one first and positive step. Let's hope it's followed up by many more, including some which should be jointly agreed upon by our two major political parties...