A Eurobarometer survey on women’s views ahead of the European Parliament elections has found that Maltese women give less importance to the personality of election candidates than women in other EU member states.

The survey found that 39 percent of Maltese women decide on the basis of issues raised in electoral campaigns, as against 37 percent in the rest of the EU. 30% of Maltese women always vote for the same party, just one percent more than than the EU average.

While 62% of European female voters give a lot of importance to the EU experience of EP election candidates, in Malta, experience is said to weigh on the perception of 74 percent of female voters. Most women in Malta, like in the rest of the EU, feel that the proportion of women in the European Parliament should be raised through encouragement. Only six percent of women in Malta and 10 percent in the EU feel that mandadory quotas should be introduced.

Maltese women were found to credit the European Parliament with more importance than their other European counterparts in the areas of education, health and the family but only 37 percent believed that the EU had contributed to an improvement in women’s rights, compared to 44% in other EU countries.