“Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, she doesn't have what it takes. They will say, women don't have what it takes. I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”

Born in 1903  in New York, Clare Boothe Luce was the first American woman appointed to a major ambassadorial post abroad. A versatile author, she is best known for her 1936 hit play The Women, which had an all-female cast.  She succumbed to brain cancer in 1987, the same year I graduated as a  penniless dentist from the University of Malta,  so physically, there was no time  or possibility for our paths to cross

But since thoughts are made of stuff that becomes eternal if one manages to externalise them and record them, our paths did cross albeit in a different way, for I feel exactly the same way as Claire did almost a century ago.

So last Friday, there was another conference organised by the extremely well-meaning and competent Frank Psaila and Andrew Azzopardi. The panel was mixed though predominantly female, but those who opted to participate , notwithstanding the fact that the issue under the spotlight was far from an exclusively gender issue, were predominantly women, mostly accomplished girls, all successful in their own right against all odds.

The subject was Women Leadership or more broadly the role of women in strategic, executive roles and unlike any similar conference I had attended before, the atmosphere was unusually frank and informal. So much so, that before the  discussion was  even half way through, most panel speakers and  a good  number of participants  present were  closely engaged in  a healthy debate  made more entertaining  and colourful by references to personal experience . 

All those  present were  abruptly brought back to the stark reality of the situation as it really is and certainly not as we wish it to be, when one of the very few men present,  calmly stated that unless what we were all agreeing on as being a common gender experience was quantified and scientifically proven by the relevant official statistics, lobbying for change was practically useless.

And whether we like it or not, he was right. It is shocking but true that today's political decisions are based on surveys and statistics and financial cost or return, or both. 

As Baroness Scotland, a British Minister in Blair's  time  was explaining to those present at the Gibraltar Conference the week before, even  domestic violence, the most devastating emotional, painful, humiliating experience that compromises or actually costs the lives and performance of entire generations of people, had to be turned into a tangible financial statement before it could command enough attention from the rest of her cabinet to get the effective attention  it warranted.

The fact that it was an obvious scourge on society, a sure killer, the root cause of much criminal behaviour and a blot on the past present and future of the nation, although self-evident , was not enough to convince policy makers to act.

It had to be reduced to a money matter for it to get the attention.

Now, if for one moment, we humbly accept the fact that only money makes political heads turn round, and we agree to play the economy game to the exclusion of everything else, there remains one big hitch. In the case of Baroness Scotland, she had the executive power and will to make it happen, or rather she was at the right place at the right time and had the balls to push her pet project to a reasonable conclusion.

In the Maltese Islands,  many  important issues mistakenly labelled as gender issues, even if still at the preliminary stage of just commissioning the necessary studies for the collection of scientific data that would fuel faster change, are either left  on the backburner, addressed in half measures or tackled on paper but not  adequately backed  by the right build up of competent institutions to provide the expected results in terms of quality of life of individuals and the families or communities they comprise.

Needless to say, our  extremely scanty  female representation  in the country's executive , where policy is finalised and decisions  that matter are taken,   does not bode well for the evolution of our politics into a holistic, practical, emotionally intelligent and environment friendly, endeavour.

For the situation to be corrected more women must come forward to participate actively in the political scene both  on a local as well as national level,  the electorate has to learn to appreciate the benefits of  a synergistic gender balance in administration and vote accordingly, while the predominantly masculine powers that be have to engage in positive action now,  to spare the entire female sex  on these islands , the humiliation that having to resort to positive discrimination( like quotas), would inflict.