Malta has ranked 125th out of 148 countries for female workforce participation in a global competitiveness report published this week.
Nearly all the countries ranked below Malta on this particular issue were Islamic, such as Yemen, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
The report is published annually by the World Economic Forum. It assesses a broad range of factors affecting a nation’s business climate before ranking them in order of competitiveness.
Malta received a rating of 0.55 for female workforce participation.
Although this was the same rating as last year, Malta slipped two places in the rankings.
The rating was calculated using the percentage of women aged 15–64 participating in the labour force divided by the percentage of men aged 15–64 doing the same.
According to the most recent Eurostat study, Malta has the highest gap between male and female employment rates in the EU at around 32 percentage points.
The island also has the lowest percentage of working women in the EU at 46.8 per cent.
Malta’s overall place in the competitiveness report is 41, up from 47 last year (out of 144 countries).
Many of the factors were assessed using an executive opinion survey, in which Malta’s top executives were asked to rate Malta’s performance on a scale of one to seven.
41
Malta’s overall competitiveness ranking out of 144 countries
Malta ranked eighth worldwide in its quality of education system, which was assessed using the survey. In essence, this means Maltese executives have a very high opinion of the local education system.
The executives also thought highly of the island’s port infrastructure, resulting in a worldwide ranking of 13.
Using quantitative statistics, Malta ranked 36th in the percentage of internet users, 14th in the percentage of people with fixed broadband internet subscriptions and third in terms of internet bandwidth per user.
Life expectancy in Malta is the seventh highest in the world at 82 years, according to the report.
On the flip side, executives gave Malta’s roads an average rating of 3.4, giving the island an overall ranking of 94 in this category, below Mali, India and Rwanda, among others. The executives also gave the island a low average rating of 3.4 for the burden of government regulation, which equated to an overall ranking of 86.
Furthermore, they were not satisfied with the island’s hiring and firing practices, resulting in a ranking of 82 in this regard.
In a similar vein, Malta ranked poorly for the number of procedures necessary to start a business and the number of days to start a business, placing 126th and 124th respectively.
These particular rankings were determined from World Bank and International Finance Corporation data.