The Ernst & Young conference on October 8 gave light to a few interesting topics.
The results of the survey about Malta’s investment attractiveness showed a few worrying shifts to respondents preferring to tick the ‘don’t know’ box instead of the yes box when asked about how attractive they see Malta as an investment destination.
The keynote speak, Alastair Campbell, former strategist of the Blair administration in the UK, brought forward the idea to #BrandMalta and how this should be a strong consistent brand. According to Campbell, Malta should be investing in creating a clear and strong image which will help the country be more aggressive in attracting investment.
This led to a few disagreements between Economy Minister Chris Cardona and Malta Enterprise chairman Mario Vella, and later between the Economy Minister and Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis. Whilst Dr Cardona believes in one unified message for Malta, Dr Zammit Lewis would prefer to market Malta differently to different audiences. This is definitely one area where there needs to be further discussion. The important of having a strong brand for Malta was never put into question.
However, one thing which was of real interest in the conference is Mr Campbell’s comments about women, be it in the audience or on the panels. The main panel discussion “Challenges of attracting FDI in a small island” had eight speakers; PN deputy leader Mario Demarco, Mr Campbell, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Dr Vella, Piotr Piela, Leon Heliyang, and Joseph Khoury.
All have one thing in common. They are all males.
It was Alastair Campbell himself who commented on this, shall we call it, fluke. Campbell also went on to comment about the low female turnout in the audience and after his speech, he didn’t rest until a question was posed to him by a female member.
This was not the first time something like this happened. Back in February, The Economist organised a mini conference called “Roundtable meeting with the Government of Malta.” Out of the 56 confirmed speakers only one was female and she wasn’t even a Maltese resident. Maybe Vivienne Reading was right to, back in 2012, establish aggressive targets for women on public companies’ boards.
It seems that even though we have a higher female percentage attending University very few of them are being given the opportunity to make it into decision making positions. Yes Malta has the second lowest gender pay gap in Europe standing at a 6.1 per cent gap. So whilst we are at the forefront of equality when it comes to pay, it seem we are lacking behind in professional females climbing to the top of companies and government positions.
The last MEP election should have been an eye opener. Malta is ready to have women in top positions, in fact, Malta elected four women, out of six, to represent the county as MEPs. The current administration too is giving opportunities to professional women to get to the top; Airmalta's Maria Micallef and ARMS' Carmen Ciantar are a great example of this. But more needs to be done and it is entirely up to us to make this happen. Maybe Malta should have also sent a female commissioner instead of Karmenu Vella to reinforce this, especially since even Jean Claude Junker had asked for more females in the new EC.
When I asked Alastair Campbell about what his thoughts were on the lack of women at the conference he said: “I noted that when I made the point about there being no women on the eight strong panel a lot of men applauded and in the Q&A one said he also felt that more effort should be made to have women involved at all levels of public life.”
Clearly the will is there. Let’s just hope that next time a high level conference is organised more effort will be done to get women on panels and as speakers.