Has it just dawned on us that women are still almost invisible in top posts?

Why suddenly all this pomp and circumstance about women’s quotas?

And more importantly, why are we still resisting them?

Whilst quotas might not be the ideal solution, most of the developed world, including Malta, has already ‘tried’ everything else.

We went from tax incentives and self-regulation, to creating family-friendly environments.

We went from encouraging women to further their studies, to getting them to marry later on in life.

We went from advising women to be financially independent, to producing an endless quantity of really annoying, side-splitting ads about sharing work-life responsibilities.

All these so called efforts didn’t work because in reality, all of them boiled down to a clump of glorified lip-service.

Of course, everybody and their brother acknowledges that women have a different societal role to men, and in principle everyone agrees that women shouldn’t be discriminated against just because they happen to have a uterus, but when it comes to altering employment conditions to accommodate this difference, even parliament has to date resisted changing its ways.

From long working hours to meetings at 8pm; from double-glazed glass ceilings, to buddy systems strengthened over pints of beers…. you name it, and women in the workforce have had to put up with it.

It’s been like this from time immemorial, and though things have changed, they’ve changed at a snail’s pace.

Unfortunately, although there are qualified and able women to fill any post, the first women to benefit from quotas will have it harder than ever….no pun intended.

Eventually however, we'll even forget that we ever had quotas, and in a few years’ time we'll be arguing that it's only natural to have women in high places just like men.

The history of quotas will unfold a bit like that of the nuclear family – today, we all think that the family which is made up of a mother, a father and 2.1 children, is what nature intended, but the truth is that the nuclear family is nothing but a consequence of the industrial revolution which forced people out of their sub-urban extended families and into 2 up 2 down households in urban cities.

So whilst our politicians contemplate some more, whilst they figure out that they can’t delay quotas for much longer and until they debate the obvious and conclude the ridiculous, I invite you to treat yourself to a theatrical performance that highlights women’s plights in another context.

Nine Parts of Desire written by Heather Raffo and directed by Toni Attard, starts this weekend at St. James Cavalier. I had the pleasure of watching a rehearsal of the play last night, and because the situations portrayed by the female characters put the issue of quotas into ridiculous perspective, I almost ditched the subject of this blog entirely.

The play opens a window on to the extraordinary strength of ordinary Iraqi women. Whilst the characters delve into the many conflicting aspects of being a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq, the audience is treated as a trusted Western friend.

I left feeling enthralled but guilty, because whilst we were fighting for more women in parliament and more women on company boards, women in Iraq were being hung upside down throughout their menstrual cycle, their babies were being thrown in sacks with starving cats, and their husbands, brothers and sons were being bombed.

And yet, most Iraqi women would never consider leaving Iraq, and those who left would give their right arm to return because as one of the characters eloquently puts it, wherever you go in the world, “if you love like you cannot breathe, you’re never free.”