A series of workshops were organised last week in Malta as part of a European Commission project to help private sector companies and in particular small businesses (SMEs) break gender stereotyping.

Gender stereotypes have a significant impact on the labour market and the business sector thus the aim of the project is to better understand the benefits of combating gender stereotypes thus improving their competitiveness. Stereotypes related to what is more appropriate for men and women often act as barriers even though companies cannot afford to waste talents.

According to local statistics, although Malta shows a higher percentage of females obtaining post secondary school education, (56.3 per cent) this does not reflect in the overall participation in the local economic activity, which stands at 37.5 per cent.

Across Europe, 59 per cent of new university graduates and about 80 per cent of students in business administration are women. The same gender is in charge of over 70 per cent of purchasing decisions. Besides this, actions in support of gender equality have a positive impact on employees’ motivation, creativity and productivity while firms with the best record of promoting women to high positions are between 18 and 69 per cent more profitable than the median fortune 500 firms in their sector.

Speaking at the workshop on Thursday, National Commission for the Promotion of Equality Director, Sina Bugeja said: “Different approaches should be taken in order to give people choices they are entitled to.” She posed questions to parents on how they were bringing up their children, what toys they were given at a young age and advice on career choice later on in life. She also urged career guidance teachers in school to “stop stereotyping and change their vision,” in order to let people choose what is truly suitable for them and their abilities.

“Gender roles and sterotypes should be eliminated in order for equality within the career sphere,” she said.

To address these issues, the project includes a series of workshops in 14 European countries besides Malta. Such workshops target staff of chambers of commerce, business and professional associations, training bodies, business people, SMEs managers, human resource managers, and all those who work to improve the competitiveness of SMEs.

Workshops are also intended to provide an ad-hoc training “toolkit” for better and full use of individual talents within a company.