Malta has the thickest glass ceiling in the EU, making it the hardest country for women to move up the professional ladder, according to a new study.
Maltese female professionals had to fight the hardest battles to be on a par with their male colleagues when compared to their EU counterparts, according to statistics released by the European Commission in a report entitled She Figures 2009. The study gave each country a glass ceiling index and Malta ranked the highest by far in 2004 (the island is one of four countries without data for 2007) indicating the difficulty women faced to move up the hierarchical ladder compared to men.
The term glass ceiling is used to describe the invisible barriers keeping women back from top ranking positions.
Malta's glass ceiling was rated 11.7, followed by Cyprus at 3.7, and Lithuania, 3.2. Ireland has the best index with 1.1.
The island also fared miserably when it came to having women researchers in top research positions - the figure of two per cent remained unchanged between 2002 and 2007.
Women researchers remained a minority in all EU states, accounting for 30 per cent in 2006. Throughout the EU, between 2002 and 2006, there was an increase of 7.3 per cent in the number of women graduating at PhD level in sciences compared to 3.8 per cent for men.
Female researchers were better represented in social sciences, agricultural and medical sciences and humanities than in engineering and technology, according to the figures.
In 2006, the EU average of women PhD graduates rose to 45 per cent from 42 per cent. However, Malta still ranked the lowest with just 25 per cent female PhD graduates.
Another report published by the European Commission, The Gender Challenge in Research Funding, highlighted the poor representation of Maltese women in research, especially in the areas of science and technology.
Malta, together with other countries such as the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Italy and Israel, had a wide gender gap and a less than average proportion of women in higher education, the report said.
Malta was also listed among the countries that were "inactive" in taking any initiative to promote gender policies for women in research.
In 2006, 13.8 per cent of the projects were submitted by women, of which none was funded.
The report also factored in the fact that the Malta Council for Science and Technology was the only organisation that provided research grants in Malta and had only recently received research budgets.
Malta had the lowest EU proportion of female researchers in the government sector and in higher secondary. In fact, just under a quarter of Maltese researchers in higher education, 24.2 per cent, were women in 2003 - 155 compared to 484 men. In the government sector, only 22 per cent were women.
The majority of Maltese female researchers were specialised in social sciences (42.3 per cent), followed by medical sciences (37.4 per cent), humanities (28.3 per cent), natural sciences (15.8 per cent) and engineering and technology (10 per cent).
The report said the number of female researchers in natural sciences and engineering and technology was "very low by EU standards".
However, it did call for caution in interpreting the limited data especially because of Malta's small size and because funding programmes had only just been introduced.