Insignificant presence in politics

The March local council elections are now a distant memory for many. Yet, these past days have seen the media and an army of political pundits having a field day analysing, dissecting and reconstituting the various aspects of the results that were recorded on March 10. I suppose that what’s left for the political parties to do now is to touch base in an attempt to interpret the messages ultimately transmitted by an ever-increasingly shifty electorate.

… much more has to be done to involve women on a local and national level- Caroline Galea

I was intrigued to have a look at the results from a particular perspective with a special focus on the performance of female candidates who participated in these local council elections.

In this round, 419 candidates from across the political spectrum were called to fill in the 239 posts for mayors and councillors in 27 councils in Malta and eight in Gozo. Unlike the previous 11 rounds of these elections, this time the polls touched practically half of Malta’s electorate. One other significant aspect was the abysmally low turnout compared to what is normally expected.

From the very start I must express some reservation regarding women’s absolute performance in these elections.

Statistics show that the Nationalist Party fielded 198 candidates, of whom 48 were women (25 per cent). The Labour Party presented 200 candidates including 37 female nominees. Clearly, this was a significantly lower percentage of women overall (17 per cent). Furthermore, Alternattiva Demokratika had two women candidates and there was one independent female candidate.

At the final count, the PN managed to elect 19 female candidates, that is, much less than half those who contested (39 per cent).

The PL had a much better result in this regard, electing 25 out of the 37 contestants. This returns an average 67 per cent of female Labour candidates being elected councillors.

In the case of the rest of the lists no women were elected.

These figures should highlight a number of issues relating to female participation in politics and their eventual performance.

Firstly, it remains clear that the rate of participation on the whole remains weak because only a fifth of the entire lists were women. In a sense, the PN had a much more respectable presence but have had a much smaller return of successful women candidates. Clearly, PL candidates were almost twice as successful as their PN colleagues.

Interestingly, women candidates had a more successful rate in Gozo compared to those in Malta, especially for the PN.

This result may have multiple interpretations.

I concede that the weak presence of female candidates will always impact on the number of those elected. There is absolutely no doubt about this. Yet, I still feel the electorate are somewhat reluctant to entrust women with executive roles. The number of successful female mayors is a clear indication in this respect.

Evidently, the situation in Gozo continues to confirm the national trend where the PL has twice the number of female members of Parliament compared to the PN. In fact, in the 2008 election, Gozo returned two female parliamentarians from a single district while in Malta only four female parliamentarians were successful in the remaining 12 districts!

This dearth of female participation in the active life of Maltese politics remains a continuing stumbling block for more successful female politicians. It is abundantly clear that women still have a long way to go to reach some form of parity in this field. The real reason for this continues to escape me.

I would hate to believe that women remain cynical about the whole political process but acknowledge that women have to work significantly harder to gain and maintain the trust that is due to any hard-working politician regardless of gender.

I remain confident that this situation is not being brought about by the political parties themselves. At least, from my active experience within my party, I have seldom detected any resistance or antipathy towards female participation. On the contrary, I feel women are encouraged to come forward at the highest levels when the case arises.

Evidently, this debate will continue into the future and especially so when we approach the next general election and parties start choosing their candidates. The results of the latest council elections confirm that much more has to be done to involve women on a local and national level.

The role of the Maltese woman in society has dramatically changed over the last 60 years shedding much of the idiosyncratic and, hence, moving forward in many different professional and technical fields. It still remains a real irony that with women having achieved their right to vote way back in 1947 we still remain relatively insignificant players in the bigger political picture.

info@carolinegalea.com

The author is a Nationalist Party candidate for the general election.