Greater participation of women in politics requires a cultural paradigm shift not the tinkering inbuilt into the government’s proposed mechanism of quotas designed to install more women in Parliament.
In the press conference announcing the launch of the ‘public consultation’, Parliamentary Secretary Julia Farrugia, who is piloting the initiative, sought to inspire by offering herself up as an example of a mother and an MP who broke through the cultural barriers. She also wrote in an article in the Times of Malta, in which she opened the piece “as a politician, career woman and mother”, that “Parliament must include [sic] childcare facilities and family rooms”.
What kind of women MPs are being envisaged under the quota system if Parliament has to have “childcare facilities and family rooms”? Would these be mothers of children of absent fathers? Presumably children have fathers. Is it too much to expect fathers to take care of the child or children when ‘mother’ MPs are at work, and that way the two parents can balance parenting and career roles by sharing parenting responsibilities? Isn’t that what modern families do?
That fathers are being kept out of the equation in the discourse is an indictment of the state of parenthood and feminism in Malta. It demonstrates that women are still seen as mothers primarily, men as breadwinners and career status holders.
Another oddity is that women on the threshold of high office feel compelled to point out that they are “mothers” as if that’s a credential. You don’t similarly hear men pointing out that they are fathers to make a point about their worth or achievements. Yet for women, having the status of a mother makes them seem consummate in life mission and more worthy – that’s how much motherhood is sanctified in Malta.
And that’s exactly why a cultural paradigm shift is needed. At present women’s contribution to society is seen primarily as child-rearing, a sensibility ingrained among most women themselves. A few high-achieving women manage to break through the cultural shackles through a mixture of circumstance and ambition – Farrugia acknowledges this, writing that “I have directly experienced some of the cultural and structural obstacles that often frustrate women from taking the plunge into a political career” – but that percentage shall remain small without wider cultural change.
One only has to go through the family court to appreciate the inexorability of the institutional and cultural sensibility that sees women as child bearers. The family court assigns children to mothers upon separation, and fathers who seek to remain roundly involved in raising children are perceived as somehow deviant or devious.
I am one of those fathers who have spent years in financially and emotionally exhaustive battles in the family court in a bid to remain an involved parent. I often felt treated with a mixture of bemusement and irritation. It’s almost as if I sought to overturn the natural order of things.
Is it too much to expect fathers to take care of the child or children when ‘mother’ MPs are at work?
It was a struggle to convince the family court that I was as capable in parenting as the mother; I was subjected to scrutiny and judgement and prejudice. That prejudice is mirrored in wider society: the assumption is that mothers are natural parents, fathers the clumsy parents.
This order is much evident in society. I have been to my daughter’s class or school activities, for example, where I would be the only male parent in attendance.
Of course, it could be argued that quotas in Parliament are precisely designed to precipitate this wider cultural change. That would be valid reasoning if the mechanism had to be workable. It is not. The idea seems to be predicated on facilitating women to be mothers and MPs. But that leaves cultural and practical barriers in place.
Practically speaking, being the main parent and simultaneously holding a demanding job is hard, and most primary parents feel compelled to make choices. Once again, I am talking through experience. I have become a primary parent in a twist of fate and I have chosen to work part-time to do immersive parenting. I wrote a first draft of this article, for example, as I waited in the car for my daughter to attend a private lesson.
No amount of tweakings in times of parliamentary sittings – or installation of childcare facilities – is going to sufficiently change these fundamentals to tip the balance.
And culturally, women candidates are unlikely to be the natural choice for voters for as long as women’s role remains culturally entrenched in motherhood. Evidence of this can be seen in the election of 2017. The PN fielded the greater proportion of women candidates. A quarter of its 110 candidates were women but only five women were elected.
If we grapple with the figures in another way, as a percentage of PN MPs elected from either gender, then the number of males elected as a proportion of the number who stood for election is double the proportion for women (less than 20 per cent of women candidates were elected as opposed to around 36 per cent of male candidates elected). The numbers were even more dismal for the PL when it came to electing women MPs in 2017.
These disparities demonstrate that voters prefer to vote for males. And that propensity is unlikely to change much on the basis of preponderance alone – it cannot be assumed that a greater proportion of women candidates will lead to commensurably greater numbers of women MPs. Yet the mechanism unveiled makes that assumption because it would provide funds to political parties to nurture women candidates.
In the current context, the quota system that the government has devised is not only likely to fail, it is a misplaced effort. It’s equivalent to putting money on the wrong horse.
A holistic effort is needed instead of this quota system. Plenty of laws can be changed, and policies adopted. I will limit myself to mentioning just two laws that encourage women’s entrenchment in motherhood.
One, case law in the family court, which can only be changed by legal amendments to usher more equal parenting after marital separation, something that science shows is good for children. From my experience and research, I know that many fathers would prefer to play a larger parenting role but they settle to a restricted arrangement out of resignation.
Second, the law on NI contributions allows self-employed mothers who work part-time to pay NI as a percentage of their earnings, but fathers who work part-time to take care of children – as I do, for example – have to pay the full amount.
Perhaps the greater loss of the misguided quota system is that it would divert attention from the other things that the government can do to foster the paradigm cultural shift that would get more women in high places.
For the only effective and durable solution is to have a society in which each parent puts in equal parenting time or involvement so that each can simultaneously pursue a career, especially high-profile work.
That would get us over the cultural barrier: equality in parenting, equality in public life.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece