On the occasion of Women’s Day, my Faculty issued this position:

The Faculty for Social Wellbeing welcomes the general consensus there is in this Country that gender issues should be sitting at the top of our social agenda. 

There are indeed some very important indicators in this realm that need to be pointed out. Malta’s primary strength in gender equality lies in the health domain. It gains the top score amongst all Member States in this area (95.6), which reflects a good balance in access to health services and overall health status for both women and men.  Women’s level of full-time employment has also increased and access to financial resources has improved for both women and men. Malta’s score in the domain of knowledge saw a steady improvement, mainly due to the increased proportion of university graduates, with almost hardly any gap between women and men[i].

Nonetheless, we would like to take the opportunity, as we ‘celebrate’ Women’s Day, to express our concerns on a number of gender related matters that call for immediate action because in our opinion, gender equality is far from a resolved issue!

In fact, evidence seems to suggest that the picture is worsening on a number of levels.

For example, according to the World Economic Forum, the Global Gender Gap Index reveals that all countries can do more to close the gender gap (Malta included) - in 2013 Malta ranked 84 out of 135 countries; in 2014 Malta ranked 99 out of 142; in 2015 - Malta ranked 104 out of 145 countries; in 2016 Malta ranked 108 out of 144 countries. Malta has been constantly falling in its ranking since 2006 – when it stood at 71 out of 115 countries.

Another indicator that shows us that we need to work harder in this sector is the ‘Gender Equality Index’ developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). EIGE’s ‘Gender Equality Index’ measures equality between women and men in six core domains: work, money, knowledge, time, power and health. It then assigns a score to each Member State (1 for total inequality and 100 for complete equality). This indicator shows that Malta is approaching the halfway mark towards equality between women and men. Malta scored 46.8 out of 100 on EIGE’s most recent update of the Index (2015), giving it a rank of 16, when compared to the other 28 EU Member States – still a long way to go.

Significant challenges also lie in the domain of power. Malta score 28.3 out of 100, which is not the lowest score in Europe, but there is evidently room for improvement. Women are seriously lacking in decision-making positions in the political sphere, and even more so in the economic one. 

Another serious challenge is in the unequal division of time women and men spend on care, domestic tasks and social activities[ii]. Women spend increasingly more time on care activities and little on leisure, sporting or voluntary activities. This has major consequences on the work–life balance of women.

It is also good to point out a number of areas that we feel need to be addressed promptly, namely; violence and safety; science and technology; and the media.

Violence and safety: According to the FRA survey (2015) 22% of women in Malta experienced physical and/or sexual violence from the age of 15[iii]. CrimeMalta states that domestic violence reports have increased tenfold between 2007 and 2014[iv].Within this context, waiting for the new law on gender based violence is uncalled for!

Science and Technology: According to Eurostat (2015), 48% of employees in scientific and technology fields are females compared to 52% in 2006. The number of women employed in STEM related fields declined in the last 10 years.  On the other hand, the number of men employed in this area has increased (48% in 2006 compared to 52% in 2015).

Media: From the first Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP 1995) to the Fifth GMMP 2015 it had been revealed that in the world what is reported mainly in the news is mostly male. In the twenty years since the first GMMP, the challenges of news media sexism, gender stereotyping and gender bias are proving to be intractable across time, space and content delivery platforms.

Finally, the UN WOMEN’s Planet 50-50 by 2030 needs emergency intervention if that goal is to be achieved. Recent updates encourage governments to make and take national initiatives to address the challenges that are holding women and girls back from reaching their full potential[v].

The Faculty, mainly through its Department of Gender Studies and the myriad initiatives that academics and students take wants to echo HE the President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca’s words: ‘we need women’s day every day’. If the collective ‘we’ really wish to bring about change, to reach 50:50 by 2030, then the attention ‘we’ give to gender equality on the 8th March needs to be kept firmly in centre focus, and on top of the national agenda, for the other 364 days of the year - otherwise it is not going to happen.