During the 2004-2009 EP legislature Malta and Cyprus were the only two out of 27 Member States without any women MEPs. Does this reflect a male-dominated Mediterranean mentality or will the trend be broken in the upcoming June elections?

More than half of voters across Europe are female but women are still under-represented throughout the EU. After the first European Elections of 1979, 16.3 per cent of MEPs were women. This percentage rose to 26.1 per cent in 1994, 30.19 per cent in 1999 and 30.3 per cent in 2004.

In 2009, out of 785 MEPs less than 250 are women.

In the run-up to the 2004 elections, MEPs called on political parties to put more women candidates on their lists. The European Parliament has called for quotas more recently in September 2008, following the practice used by some countries of ensuring more women are elected since this is required by law.

Through this system, countries like Estonia and Luxembourg have reached parity when it comes to the percentage of female MEPs. France, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden have almost reached parity.

Can any female Maltese candidate make it to the EP this time?

Technically, the chances that Malta will have at least one female MEP have increased since more than one fifth of the candidates running for the 2009 June European Elections are women. The political parties' policy to field more women this time round contrasts with the 2004 elections when there were just two women out of 27 candidates. The result will, of course, depend on voters.

A Eurobarometer survey carried out at the beginning of 2009 concluded that when voting, European women put campaign issues first and tend to pay more attention than men to candidates' personalities.