Of 31 countries, Malta ranks 30th with the second highest gender gap in employment rate between men and women (40 per cent), according to the results of a recently published survey.

According to the 2005 edition of the Fourth European Working Conditions Survey, Turkey came last with a 47 per cent employment gender pay gap, closely followed by Malta.

The survey provides information about approximately 30,000 workers in 31 countries on a wide range of issues including work organisation, working time, equal opportunities, training, health and safety and job satisfaction.

It aims to provide an analysis of working conditions in the EU27, candidate countries (Turkey and Croatia) and Switzerland and Norway.

In total, nearly 30,000 individual workers were personally interviewed in their own homes in the period September-November 2005.

Sweden and Finland had the lowest employment gap, with 3.2 per cent and 3.9 per cent respectively.

Turkey’s male employment rate was 73.5 per cent – very similar to Malta’s results (74.3 per cent).

However, Malta fared slightly better than Turkey regarding the female employment rate, with 33 per cent of Maltese women working, but only 26.5 per cent of Turkish.

In Sweden, 73.1 per cent of men were working along with 69.9 per cent of women, according to the report.

In the EU27, 78 per cent of employees said they hold an indefinite term contract. However, substantial differences exist between countries: respondents from Cyprus (46 per cent) and Malta (50 per cent) said they hold indefinite term contracts as opposed to twice as many respondents in Luxembourg (90 per cent) and Belgium (89 per cent).

In general, workers with a higher level of education are more likely to hold an indefinite employment contract: 83 per cent of those with third-level education hold an indefinite term contract, compared to 66 per cent of those with only primary level education. Slightly more men (79 per cent) than women (76 per cent) hold an indefinite-term contract.

Lower-than-average percentages of unskilled workers and skilled agricultural workers hold indefinite-term contracts (65 per cent and 58 per cent respectively).

Cyprus has the highest proportion with no employment contract (42 per cent), closely followed by Malta (39 per cent), the UK (15 per cent) and Slovenia (10 per cent).

Malta, along with Turkey (27 per cent), Spain (39 per cent), Italy (40 per cent) and Greece (38 per cent), is one of the five countries where the proportion of women in the workforce is less than 40 per cent.

In the EU27, according to the report, more men than women are in paid employment (55 per cent compared to 44 per cent). However, in three countries – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – the proportion of women in the workforce is almost equal to that of men (49 per cent).

The incidence of sexual harassment is reported by fewer than two per cent of respondents overall but affects three times as many female workers as male.

Ironically, less than one per cent of respondents from Malta, along with other southern European countries, reported sexual harassment at the workplace. Women in the Czech Republic (10 per cent), Norway (seven per cent), Turkey and Croatia, (six per cent), Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania and the UK (five per cent) are the most affected.