Women should not be penalised for being mothers, the Parliamentary Secretary for Public Dialogue, Chris Said stressed yesterday during a conference which sought to map out the road to gender equality.

He said gender equality was a founding principle of the EU, yet, despite several strides forward women still earned 17 per cent less than men and remained a minority in political decision-making and senior management.

"Women entrepreneurs represent only eight per cent of the female population. And only 67 per cent of women with young children in the EU are in employment, compared with 92 per cent of men."

He said more work still needed to be done to fight discrimination at work and violence at home.

"Providing shelters is not enough. We must help in reducing the hidden pain and hardship through an action plan of early detection, with specific funding, for better understanding of gender-based violence against women and its link to issues related to gender inequality."

Anna Borg, who chairs the National Confederation of Women's Organisations, said one of the biggest hurdles for equality was the Mediterranean culture that assumed that men were the breadwinners and women were "natural born carers".

She said everyone agreed that equality needed to be achieved but targets that had been set were not being met because there was no rigorous approach to ensuring more after-school facilities, more convenient school hours and more flexibility at work.

Doris Sammut, president of the Malta Association of Women in Business, said it was in the government's interest to encourage women to be entrepreneurs because of the contribution this would make to the economy. It was also in women's interest to have their own businesses as this could allow for more flexibility.

Antoinette Caruana, human resources manager at Farsons, pointed out the "guilt complex" that many women in business had to face and overcome, something that rarely featured with men because they were expected to spend long hours at work.

She said that in a very competitive market, more pressure was placed on employees and employers to streamline and innovate. But instead of reducing the number of women in employment, this should encourage businesses to invest in the female potential.

Spanish Ambassador María Isabel Vicandi, who organised the conference, said the Spanish EU presidency saw gender equality as a priority.

Spain already proposed a gender-based violence monitoring office and the adoption of the European Protection Order so that the rules dictated by the national courts for the protection of victims of violence could be extended across the entire European territory.