Not on the agenda

It's March 8 again and, as usual, we will hear a lot about the advancement of women today. Many women, struggling with their daily problems, will not even notice that it is women's day.

"We must regulate childminding," the Prime Minister told us two weeks ago at a meeting in Birkirkara. Hello? The Prime Minister has landed it seems. In the budget speech of three years ago, the government had taken working parents for a ride when it announced the allocation of funds to subsidise the nursery fees of under-three-year-olds attending licensed childcare centres. Since there are no regulated nurseries, nobody could claim the subsidy. And now the Prime Minister remembers, and mentions the need to regulate this sector...

Eight years ago, a Labour government worked on regulations for childminding. Supposedly "final" regulations were drafted over a year ago but still no sign of them. So, while money is being spent on media campaigns to encourage women to enter and stay in the job market, work on supporting structures to help them do this moves at a snail's pace and, in certain areas, is only paid lip-service.

One of the reasons for this lack of coordination is that there isn't a critical mass of women at the decision-making levels of the administration to put the need for practical solutions to these problems high up on the national agenda. To change this situation, we have to seriously consider quotas for women at these levels including in Parliament. To arrive at a balanced representation it will take us many, many years, if no special measures are taken to address this problem.

Now that the Nationalist Party has accepted the fact that quotas are necessary in order to increase the number of women at decision-making levels, the government should take effective action in this direction. This can be done by adopting the EU recommendation of 40 per cent representation of both sexes.

On a national level, we ought to be discussing similar measures in the political process that will affect gender representation in Parliament.

Comparative studies show that, when carefully designed, gender quotas improve efficiently women's presence at this level of decision-making. They also show that quota debates give an insight into the ways in which gender issues are put on the agenda or silenced. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 80 countries have quota systems for women's representation in place for local and national elections. Here, only the Labour Party seems to be debating the issue.

Should we be surprised? Not quite. Not when we see that even in matters of life and death, our government lingers. Take for instance breast cancer. We know that we have a very high incidence of this disease, yet we still do not have a screening programme for women at high risk. All we had was talk and more talk.

Even when things do finally get done, and, for instance, eight years after a Labour government launched the White Paper on domestic violence legislation, we now have the law, they are done in half measures. We now have a situation where a victim can ask the judge to stay proceedings, and thus can be sweet-talked, coerced, threatened or bullied by her partner into doing so. This is what used to happen before at an earlier stage; now, after the new law, it can happen at a later phase, thus the creation of more possibilities for women to be abused.

The government agrees that domestic violence is a crime against society. How is the aggressor going to answer to society for his behaviour if the onus to proceed still remains on the victim?

But it seems the government is more concerned with what we wear than with what we have to endure. The White Paper on justice - Towards A Better And More Expeditious Administration Of Justice - is proposing that the police book those passing by in Gzira or Marsa - "where it is well-known that activities connected with prostitution occur" - wearing "indecent" clothing. Who will decide what is decent or indecent, and how? Will male police officers have to undertake this enviable task too?

Women going for a hair-cut at a salon in Testaferrata Street have to be extra careful as to what they wear, lest they be booked for loitering... This only shows how, in spite of its rhetoric on Europe, in practice, this government is cut off from what is going on out there.

The debate there is on the positive results Sweden has attained in this sphere, when, in 1999, the government passed legislation that criminalises the buying of sex and decriminalises the selling of sex. The bottom line is an economic one: supply and demand. If the demand is diminished, so will the supply.

In just six years Sweden has drastically reduced the number of women in prostitution: in Stockholm it has been decreased by two-thirds. In other major Swedish cities, street prostitution has diminished radically. There are also fewer brothels and the number of foreign women trafficked into Sweden is negligible.

The rationale for this legislation is declared in the government's White Paper on the law: "In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem... gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them".

Surely, all this has to be seen within the broader picture of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. A phenomenon which is not alien to us here.

When Sweden passed this legislation on prostitution in 1999, its Parliament was composed of nearly 50 per cent women.

Which brings me back to the subject of quotas.

Sweden introduced women's quotas for Parliament in the 1970s. Now they have reached the stage where they don't need quotas anymore; they have served their purpose.

The United Nations' theme for International Women's Day 2006 is Women In Decision-Making: Meeting Challenges, Creating Change. Sweden is an example of what changes can be undertaken in a society where decision-making is shared equally between women and men.

In his message for women's day this year, the UN secretary-general states thus: "The increase in the number of women in decision-making does not happen by itself. Rather, it is often the result of institutional and electoral initiatives, such as the adoption of goals and quotas, political party commitment and sustained mobilisation. It is also the result of targeted and concerted measures to improve the balance between life and work".

If we walk that road, it has been proven that issues of serious concern to women will find a better place on the national agenda.

Ms Dalli is Labour shadow minister for public function and women's rights.