Women were less like to move to Malta for work, a study among expats has found, with the country dropping from third to ninth place in a year.

Issued annually to mark Women’s Day being celebrated worldwide on Friday, a ranking by expats’ organisation InterNations showed that while last year Malta was among the top three countries women chose for work-related reasons, this year it seems the island has lost some of this appeal.

As a result, in this year’s list, obtained through research conducted in 2018, Malta has slipped down to the ninth spot.

According to the organisations, just over half of the expats in Malta claimed they were satisfied with their career prospects on the island.

Slips down to the ninth spot

The rate is slightly higher than that for their male counterparts, it emerged, as only 48% of men living here were happy with their career prospects.

Still, male expats claimed they were more likely to enjoy a good work-life balance when working in Malta, with 81% saying they were happy with this. InterNations found this dropped to 70% in the case of women working here.

On job security, women were found to be only slightly more confident that they would enjoy job stability in Malta, with about two-thirds (66%) reporting they believed their job to be safe. Sixty-five per cent of men said they were satisfied with job security on the island.

Read: Expats rank Malta high for good work-life balance

The report by InterNations comes just weeks after Malta was dubbed “the biggest loser” in a quality of life index by another expats’ group, The Expat Insider.

In that report, the country fell from 19th best for quality of life to 38th. According to the researchers, living in Malta was deemed as being “not as peaceful as it seems”.

One UK expat even reported that “corruption seems endemic at all levels of society” and an Irish respondent noted that “the horrendous corruption in every aspect of governance is appalling”.