Seventy years ago, women rose to the occasion and flocked to polling stations in their thousands, voting for the first time in Maltese elections.

The 1947 elections also saw the island’s first-ever woman taking a seat in Parliament – Agatha Barbara went on to become the country’s first female President 35 years later.

Yesterday’s event in Valletta, called Occupy Justice and organised in the wake of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia by a “non-partisan group of women”, brought to some people’s mind the first elections held under universal suffrage for women.

The voting took three days, and according to The Sunday Times of Malta, much like yesterday, grey skies and winds greeted the voters on the first day: October 25.

“Women who are voting for the first time in Maltese history, rose to the occasion, and in some stations, even outnumbered men, though in general men were more numerous,” the front page article on October 26, 1947, reads.

The reporter goes on to mention an “equal proportion of men and women” at Floriana, while women “voted in great numbers” in the industrial areas of Paola, Żejtun and Cottonera.

It was also estimated that at least in one polling station in Victoria, “women were more frequent than men”.

On October 28, 1947, crowds gathered outside the Floriana Government Primary School, anticipating the first counts of the first and second divisions.

On October 29, the Times of Malta reported that 72,000 votes had been counted and that during the election, male voters had exceeded women by 3,000.

The following day, the newspaper carried another front-page article announcing that Dr Paul Boffa, leader of the Labour Party, had headed the poll in the first count of the first division. In the second division, three Labour candidates were returned on the first count.

These were Domenic Mintoff, Ms Barbara and G. Attard Bezzina.

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