Women are starting to get what they deserve

Many people were surprised that Joanna Drake was not elected a Member of the European Parliament in the first election to that institution held in Malta in 2004. She was quite widely seen as the leading candidate, along with Simon Busuttil. With good reason. What she did not know about the European Union was not worth knowing. In addition she had presence, charisma and charm by the bucketful.

It was not to be. Her foray into politics ended there, though the relationship with the Union continued. Soon enough she was deservedly appointed head of the European Commission's representative office in Malta and carried out her responsibilities with distinction.

If many were surprised five years ago, I would say that none went through the same experience when the news broke last Wednesday that Drake had beaten 126 other candidates from all over the EU to become director within the Commission's Directorate for Enterprise.

She had amply proven herself for such a high position. Yet qualifications and achievement are two separate things. The second does not come without the first, but it never does so automatically after the first, either. In this, Drake prevailed and thereby etched her name as Malta's first representative in the EU's top civil service. She blazed a trail for others to follow, doing herself and Malta proud.

The appointment adds to the growing list of achievements by women in Malta. There should be nothing to wonder about that. Women are in no way inferior to men. Still, it was not so long ago that members of the female gender in Malta, like in so many other countries, seemed destined to lag behind in the socio-economic set-up.

Coincidentally I was once again reminded of this shortly after I heard the news of Drake's appointment, while going through my current bedtime read, Isabelle Allende's Paula.

The Chilean author wrote that it was said Chile was a matriarchal society, but she did not know how the myth had been invented. Someone must have observed that Chilean women were stronger and more organised than men and frivolously concluded they were in command.

Yet, Allende went on, if women had influence, it was only - and then only sometimes - within their home. Men controlled all the political and economic power, the culture and customs; they proclaimed the laws and applied them as they wished, "and when social pressures and the legal apparatus were not sufficient to subdue the most rebellious women, the Church stepped in with its incontestable patriarchal seal".

Allende is herself a shining part of the proof that times have changed in Chile. There were broad similarities to the situation she describes here, but we too have moved on. One would like to say that happened when women acquired the right to vote.

Yet notwithstanding that right, change took a longer time in coming. Much longer in fact than after the first women, Agatha Barbara and Mabel Strickland, had made it to the Legislative Assembly, and even later than when Barbara became the first (and so far only) female President of the Republic.

But change did come and it was essentially due, I believe, to the wide spreading of education at tertiary level. If women attended the University before 1987, and quite a number of them did so with distinction, many more, absolutely and proportionately began to do so when the undergraduate population exploded after 1987 towards its current level.

The growing critical mass of female graduates is now reflected in all the professions, both the traditional as well as the more modern. One small example: I sit on four boards of companies where the financial controller is a woman. On another board the chair is filled by a woman. In yet another firm there is a female managing director.

That said, we are still quite a long way from being able to say that gender equality has been achieved. We have equality of opportunity but not, as yet, of result.

Women are very under-represented in the political class and in the top democratic institution, the House of Representatives. The situation will be remedied not by positive preferential bias, but when the female community becomes more conscious of the power its members yield at the polls.

Meanwhile, our male dominated superstructure is at least appointing more women to top positions in the public sector too, as evidenced by Cecilia Attard Pirotta, permanent secretary at the Foreign Ministry, and Pauline Abela, Clerk of the House of Representatives, as well as in the many government directorates, and the judiciary.

The process is not doing any favours to our women-folk. It is acknowledging both their right to be recognised for the qualifications and abilities they possess, as well as for the great socio-economic asset that they represent.

In the family structure, though, our women have long stood out for their true worth. Almost 50 years ago anthropologist Jeremy Boissevain concluded that Malta was a matriarchal society. He was right. Wives and mothers have long been the bedrock of the Maltese family. Long may it remain so.