Obstacles to women

I refer to Caroline Galea's response to my article Women In The Economy. While I understand Ms Galea's urge to defend the Nationalist Party's record, I expect her to be more objective in her assessment of the obstacles that are still keeping women from achieving a more assertive role in the economy when compared to their counterparts in other EU states.

Ms Galea prefers to skim over the realities that are keeping women from being more influential in our economy. Rather than engage in some soul searching to find the roots of the problem, she prefers to sing the litany of successes, perceived and real, of the Nationalist government.

In an ideal world I would not have felt the need to write an article about the disadvantages that women face in the economic world. Contrary to what Ms Galea claims, I do not take "a paternalistic attitude towards women in the economy". I emphasised the fact that according to Eurostat, and after more than 20 years of Nationalist Party rule in Malta, only 37 per cent of Maltese women are in the workforce, as compared to the 58.3 per cent in other EU states. I also tried to identify the reasons behind this anomaly so that solutions can be found to enable more women to work, if they decide to do so.

Ms Galea betrays the same dangerous attitude of the Nationalist government that seems not to care much about those who are falling behind in our society, in this case women who for some reason are not, or cannot, join the workforce. Of course, we too are proud of the several thousand of Maltese women who succeed to establish themselves in all fields in society.

But the Labour Party will not be complacent and stop there. We want all the other women who for whatever reason are falling behind in achieving success in their working lives to be empowered to remedy this by concrete political action tailor made for their particular requirements.

This is why we challenge ourselves and others to face the hard facts that are an obstacle to women achieving more success.