Female MPs from both major parties believe a full-time Parliament will help more women enter politics but disagree on the value of quotas for bringing about the much-needed change.
Only eight women were elected to Parliament in last week’s election, although that number could rise after the upcoming casual elections.
The last legislature included 10 women among its 69 MPs, a significant increase on previous years, but still leaving Malta at a miserable 143rd place worldwide for female representation.
Further analysis suggests, however, that the problem does not lie with the electorate: female candidates performed no worse than men. Their share of the vote – 11 per cent – was roughly equivalent to the percentage of women on the candidate list.
For newly appointed Equality Minister Helena Dalli, the reasons so few women put themselves forward for election are “obvious”.
We need to help people find this balance between work, family and public life
Dr Dalli told The Sunday Times of Malta that while the Labour government had done a lot to help women enter the workplace – such as free childcare and flexitime incentives – too little had been done so far to cater for activities beyond people’s main jobs. “We need to help people find this balance between work, family and public life,” she said.
“That’s what women are looking at before they decide to become a political candidate.”
While this need has been deeply felt for years, Dr Dalli believes enhancing current family-friendly measures and making MPs full-time could finally deliver the necessary quantitative leap – alongside government plans to institute some form of gender quota system by the next election.
Stressing that the exact form of the system would be subject to a debate among all stakeholders, Dr Dalli said one possible approach would be for a number of female ‘runner-up’ candidates to be added to Parliament after the main counting process wrapped up.
Acknowledging concerns that this could further bloat Parliament, she said the system would not deprive men of their seats, while still ensuring that the women elected were not there solely on the basis of their gender but had already run the full gamut of the campaign.
Other approaches could in-clude putting women at the top of the ballot sheet or alternating male and female candidates alphabetically, both with the goal of increasing women’s visibility.
“I think we can afford to be eclectic and choose the best practices from other countries and adapt them to our own realities,” Dr Dalli said. “Countries that put these measures in place in the 70s no longer need them. So it wouldn’t be permanent, but at some point, we have to get started.”
Nationalist MP Kristy Debono, however, feels quotas could be a “slap in the face” to women if the political structure remains unconducive to balancing the demands of a day job and family.
The PN, she said, had updated its statute to increase female representation on party committees, only to find many of the new women becoming even more discouraged when faced with the demands of frontline politics as a “24-hour job”.
“Quotas are just lip-service,” she said. “For a woman – for anyone – to be enticed to enter the political scene, we first need to offer normal hours. It is absolute madness for Parliament to continue meeting in the evening, especially when we have part-time MPs.”
Ms Debono, one of the PN’s best performers in the recent election, said that with an apparent consensus among the major parties over the benefits of a full-time Parliament, change should come before any discussion about quotas.
“We can’t just keep talking about the problem and buying more time,” she said. “It’s good to see that voters respond well to female candidates, but unless we amend the structures to make them more workable, there’s always going to be a brick wall.”