A takeaway shop owner looking to employ someone to prepare food and serve clients posted an online advert specifying that the applicant must be female “as cooking and cleaning is required”.

This is not a matter of being male or female, but about ability

Another online vacancy asked for a “female cleaner” to work in a snack bar and another asked for a “female bartender” to work in a Paceville bar.

These are just a few examples of the illegally worded adverts posted on various local online advertising websites, including Malta Park and Career Jet.

According to gender equality law, vacancy adverts cannot discriminate according to gender, unless in very specific cases when it can be proven that the job can only be performed by a person of a specific sex.

Renee Laiviera, from the Malta Confederation of Women’s Organisations, said the problem was that online advertising was not monitored enough for these transgressions.

“The jobs where women are specifically asked for tend to be the ones where women are placed in their traditional roles… The truth is that this is not a matter of being male or female, but about ability,” she said.

Two weeks ago an advert for a salesgirl at a Sliema confectionery, specifying that applicants had to be women over 20 and not a single mother on social benefits, was posted on Facebook, where it became the subject of debate.

The National Commission for the Promotion of Equality said adverts should be gender-inclusive and advertisers cannot discriminate on the basis of age.

The commission said in such cases it intervened by first sending a formal notification to the advertiser explaining the reason why it was illegal to publish such adverts. The NCPE first suggested that the advert is re-worded and, if this did not happen, it took further action that could lead the advertiser to court over the contravention.

It seems the commission has a lot to do. A search through online vacancy sites revealed many other examples.

Several specified that applicants must be women. These included jobs that could essentially be carried out by both sexes such as cashiers, massage therapists and private investigators.

Some adverts narrowed down the options by imposing an age bracket such as two massage salons, in Birkirkara and St Julian’s, that looked for a massage therapist between the ages of 18 and 40.

Another job vacancy looked for a woman over 21 to work as a cashier in a fried chicken establishment and a furniture showroom looked for a part-time salesgirl who “must be over 30”.

In some cases the specifications were even more restricted with one salon looking for a “foreign woman” to carry out “full body massages”.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.