Malta might have woken up to some good news after Moody’s affirmed Malta’s A3 rating with a healthy outlook but another piece of news which is as serious and very damning should have been more of a discussion point online.
All government MPs took to Twitter to share Moody’s amazing news, yet none of them said anything about this huge slip in gender equality. In the latest Global Gender Gap report Malta slipped 15 places and now stands in the 99th position out of 142 countries. Analysing the report further also shows Malta is last out of all the EU countries which puts this report in a better perspective. This is Malta’s lowest rank in the report since 2006 when the World Economic Forum (WEF) started this league table.
Whilst Moody’s rating is something that needs to be celebrated, I find it appalling that neither the government nor the opposition took a stand on this report. For all the talk about equality, it seems like our politicians only practise civil rights and gender equality when it suits them. Whilst many of them are happy to chase niche votes such as the Armier boathouses voters and hunters they completely forget about half the population of Malta.
The report has four categories; economy, education, health and politics. Malta excels in Educational Attainment but the other categories leave a lot to be desired. In fact political empowerment is the lowest it has ever been and the same can be said for Economic Participations and Opportunity and Health and Survival. This means that even though Malta is number one in education, the other three categories dragged us down to the bottom.
Digging deeper into the figures provided by the WEF one worrying thing emerges. Even though Malta has a ratio of 1.32 for enrolment in tertiary education - meaning that more females attend tertiary eduction - it slips down to 0.37 and 0.69 when it comes to legislators, senior official and managers, and professional and technical workers respectively. So what are many of the educated females doing with their University degrees?
If a woman completes her tertiary education but then fails to find a job and make an impact on society then somewhere there is a problem, and it’s not a small one. Why are many Maltese women lacking the ambition to join the workforce even though they spent so much effort in attaining an education?
The situation is even more dire when looking at the political situation where Malta has a ratio of 0.17. The fact that there aren’t enough women in parliament of course affects policies and laws. If we do not have women in decision making positions we will never be any closer to achieving a more gender equal society. Political empowerment is also at its lowest since the league table started in 2006. This is especially sad because the current government, prior to the election, did promise Malta would have an increased number of women participating in politics.
The government needs to do a lot more to foster women’s ambition to join the workforce. Whilst things such as free childcare help, this is not the only thing needed to get women to become an active part of society. As we saw in the latest MEP elections, the Maltese electorate is ready for this, the government just needs to follow up.
Apart from that, we also need reactions from both the government and the opposition with regards to this report. If everyone stays quiet, there is no way to change the current situation.