Two hundred years ago it was taken for granted that the phrase "all men are equal before God" included women. Its author did not feel the necessity to say all men and women were equal before God. Today, such political incorrectness would not do at all. The campaign for gender equality has become too important to allow loose talk on the subject.
A report for the European Union's Committee of the Regions by the deputy mayor of Qrendi, Claudette Baldacchino, compiled with the help of Godfrey Pirotta, was accepted earlier this month by that committee. It was a response to consultation by the European Commission on its "road map for equality between men and women 2006 - 2010".
This focused on such areas as economic independence, equal representation in decision-making, the eradication of gender-based violence and the promotion of equality in external and development policies. While one cannot disagree with the thrust of gender equality, the devil, as always, is in the detail. One cannot, for example, eradicate what is termed as gender-based violence any more than one can eradicate violence. All violence is evil and it can only be overcome by the promotion of good. The law against violence exists regardless of the gender of the person who commits violence. Gender equality will not render that law superfluous and, tragically, some men will beat up women or rape them not for want of the law but for want of goodness. What is needed more is a far greater intolerance of the law towards violence, the intolerance that was shown recently by the court in a case of road rage.
Gender equality per se (however you define it) will not make a difference to sex-related violence; only a sense of respect can make the difference. That has to be nurtured, creatively and imaginatively, in the home and in the school room. Family break-ups, tragic as they are, do not help.
But violence need not be merely a physical manifestation. Violence can mean, but the Commission's road map seems to ignore this, a child being born out of wedlock and the father disclaiming all responsibility, moral, social and financial, for it, leaving the woman and the state to tidy things up. The state should not tolerate that, either. Yet, it sometimes appears that the state does, using the easier child benefit option rather than the employment of vigorous means to track down the father and make him pay for the child's upkeep and education.
None of that is to mean that gender equality should not be promoted, encouraged and in certain areas such as equal pay for the same work, legislated. In her report, Ms Baldacchino deplored the fact, as well she should, that across the EU women earn an average of 15 per cent less than men - and this, despite equal pay legislation.
Equal representation in decision-making is not easy to fathom. It is safer to work on the under-representation of women in areas where decisions are taken, encouraging women to become more representative, facilitating their efforts to represent, to take decisions. One must think deeply before laying down by diktat that political parties, or board rooms for that matter, must have so much female representation. They must do everything to facilitate such representation by using merit as the guideline.
Having said that, Ms Baldacchino is to be congratulated for striving in favour of gender equality for no less reason than that all men and women are equal in the eyes of God.