Women in Malta need to be given more space and opportunities to be able to contribute to society, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday.
"We still have work left to do in this sector," he said adding that women's participation had however increased over the past couple of years.
In the light of Women's Day, being marked today, he quoted recent Eurostat figures which showed that, between 2005 and 2009, the EU average of women's participation in employment had increased by 2.2 per cent - from 56.5 to 58.7 per cent.
In the case of Malta, however, the increase was of 4.2 per cent: from 33.7 per cent in 2005 to 37.9 last year.
While the figures place Malta last in terms of women's actual employment, Malta ranks fifth in terms of the rate of improvement.
Speaking during a Nationalist Party meeting at the Santa Venera PN club, Dr Gonzi added that this increase was "not a coincidence" but resulted from a series of government incentives.
Over the past two years, about 3,200 women had benefited from tax incentives aimed at encouraging mothers to return to work, he said. Despite the improvement, he recognised that more needed to be done.
Meanwhile, the Malta Confederation of Women's Organisations has urged the government to implement resolutions that would enable more mothers to have as many children as they wished, without having to surrender employment.
In fact the confederation urged politicians, but especially the government, to do more to ensure a fairer representation of women in society, pointing out that Malta still ranked 89th out of 134 countries on the Equality Index issued by the World Economic Forum last year.
Malta's low ranking was mainly because of the low economic participation of women in the labour market and the dismally low number of women in politics, the confederation pointed out.
At the same PN activity, Education and Employment Minister Dolores Cristina stressed the importance of family-friendly measures that helped women access the job market.
While the public sector had implemented various measures, including reduced hours, the private sector was being creative in allowing job sharing and tele-working.
Dr Gonzi, Ms Cristina and Nationalist MP Ċensu Galea skimmed through the work carried out by the government in these two years in office.
Dr Gonzi said that, despite the global economic crisis, Malta had managed to sail through due to "a mosaic of factors" that included the capability and flexibility of workers.
However, he said, there were three pillars to thank for Malta's success which were: EU accession, the adoption of the euro and the series of planned reforms that included the reforms in education, public transport, local councils and the shipyards among others.