Only 30 per cent of the 264 decision-markers in the civil service are women, Equality Minister Helena Dalli said.

She was replying to a parliamentary question by MP Claudette Buttigieg.

Malta’s performance with regards to female participation has long been in the spotlight. Last November, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had said that the government would like to introduce quotas to increase the number of women in national decision-making posts.

Read: Public consultation on quotas to benefit women planned

The picture is not any more encouraging in the House of Representatives. The 2013-2017 legislature included nine women among its 69 parliamentarians, leaving Malta a miserable 143rd in an Inter-Parliamentary Union ranking of countries' share of women MPs. The current legislature has eight female MPs.

Separate PQs delved into some of the measures being taken to support women at work. One revealed that 2,666 women benefit from work-life balance measures such as flexitime (380), teleworking (1,051) and reduced hours (1,235) - compared with only 533 men.

 

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.