I am worried about the number of women who should be in politics but are not.And so it is that we have 67 MPs to represent us in Parliament in this legislature. Out of those 67, 57 are men. Which, of course, means only 10 are women, which means that Members of Parliament are not really representing a snapshot of society.
Malta has a population of 415,196 which, gender wise, is more or less split in half: 208,380 women and 206,816 men. If the democratic process had to be a true reflection of society, then our parliamentary group would be made up of 34 women and 33 men. I think at this rate we’ll get there round about 2099. If in this legislature we’ll see the much-promised introduction of zebra quotas, then maybe, just maybe, the process will be sped up by a couple of decades.
I am saddened that several valid women did not make it to Parliament. But I am equally worried about the number of women who should be in politics but are not.
Imagine having women MPs like Claudine Cassar, Amy Camilleri Zahra, Marianne Lauri, Marie Briguglio, Caroline Muscat, Roberta Lepre, Francesca Fenech Conti, Anna Borg, Joan Abela and so many other brilliant women that I’ve come across throughout my life. If only they could, one day, be tempted to take to the political public platform.
Imagine all these women and others, joining the current ones on those green chairs to make up a total of 34 from both sides of the House; imagine a parliament buzzing with an equal number of men and women.
At the very least, it would bring about a leap in debate manners in the House and outside. I was watching TV5 Monde the other day, and there was a panel of people on a news programme debating President Emmanuel Macron’s success at the polls, and although the discussion was very animated there were no shouting matches, no interruptions, no screaming ‘Chicken!’.
What is certain is that we cannot hang around waiting for elections to come along every five years (or four, or two, depending on who’s in government) to hope that more women will be elected so as to make a difference in policy making. While we’re waiting there’s something we can do: be more vocal.
We are vocal about nothing – not even on issues that directly affect us
At the moment we are not vocal at all. There are only one or two lone voices in a wilderness of Mediterranean machoism. We are vocal about nothing – not even on issues that directly affect us. Some election billboards clearly showed that we are a far cry from equality.
Woman leaders are still considered a joke; the Maltese word for ‘gay’ is still bandied about in derogatory manner by people who are meant to be very open to civil liberties; and the general idea on the street is that ‘a real man’, you know, would only work with other ‘real men’. Strong women are labelled ‘men emasculators’; the rest ‘niggustawhom’.
I don’t know how many times during the election I eavesdropped on conversations with the topic of: “In-nisa tagħna isbaħ minn tagħkom ħi”, followed by a lengthy comparison between say, Claudette Buttigieg and Helena Dalli or Miriam Dalli and Roberta Metsola. I was also amazed at how many people actually come up to tell you “M’hu ħa tagħmel xej ħi” unless you put on more make-up and show some cleavage. Does anyone ever tell a man in politics – apart from Vladimir Putin maybe – to show his abs?
We all have to come together and speak out more. The outgoing director of the NGO Victim Support Malta, Roberta Lepre, told Times of Malta last week: “We had a complete revolution within the LGBTIQ sector because there was the political will and drive. Why can’t we employ the same drive towards the most vulnerable, where change has been a long time coming?”
She said how in the last 10 years she took part in various working groups, and sat on different commissions and committees to tackle, among others, domestic violence, “but we are still talking about the same issues”. She went on to say how the problem is the budget, and how you cannot train a whole police force, or create protocols, without money.
Public pressure would ensure that money is truly allocated for the issues that are eating at the core of society. We cannot sit at home and wait for NGOs or for some women council or other to speak up – we need to be guerrillas, write letters in the papers, flood social media with our disgust, create memes, write Talking Points, push to get interviewed. Be heard.
We need, most importantly, to keep stressing the importance of women being financially independent. I’ve seen too many women who dedicate their lives to their husbands, only for their husband to run off with someone else, and then make life financially hell for them.
We must get out of the mindset that gender issues are to be highlighted only on March 8 (International Women’s Day) – we need to do it all year round. We need to start the women revolution now.
Meanwhile, here’s hoping that Marthese Portelli, Claudette Buttigieg, Kristy Debono, Marlene Farrugia, Maria Deguara, Therese Commodini Cachia, Justyne Caruana, Helena Dalli, Julia Farrugia Portelli and Rosianne Cutajar will make as much noise as 34 women in the House. Let’s do it.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti