A 40 per cent artificial quota for women in non-executive positions in major companies, a proposal by Social Dialogue Minister Helena Dalli to MEPs, is yet another encroachment by feminism into the private and public administration of this country’s affairs. The Minister also flagged the importance of seriously addressing domestic violence against women if one was to aim towards equality.

‘Domestic violence’ is now a vast industry, funded through numerous interlocking government programmes and by private foundations and transnational or-ganisations. Yet there is little indication of any serious problem other than what is caused by divorce and custody. “There is not an epidemic of domestic violence,” Judge Milton Raphaelson has stated in a speech at Becker College in February 2000, but “an epidemic of hysteria about domestic violence”.

It is also a misconception that domestic violence is a crime perpetrated exclusively by men against women and children. Nancy Updike, writing in Mother Jones, states that “women report using violence in their relationships more than men”. Betty Friedan adds that “women are doing the battering as much or more than men” and that “money and ideology are at the heart of the problem”.

As shown by the Intimate Partner Violence Report by the US Department of Justice (May 2000), most domestic violence cases occur during ‘custody battles’, and the vast majority occur among divorced and separated couples with children, which divorces – as reported by journalist Melanie Phillips in The UK’s Sunday Times of July 4, 1999 – are for the most part initiated by women.