In the 2022 election, the PL and PN endorsed the gender-corrective mechanism with the aim of bringing the share of women in parliament to 40%. With this mechanism, members from the under-represented gender are added rather than replacing members of the over-represented gender.

One can argue whether, instead of such a mechanism, it would have been better to mandate gender-balanced candidate lists and penalise parties that fail to comply.

Statistically speaking, in Malta, there has never been a better time to be a woman in politics and enhance one's chances of becoming a parliamentarian than now. But simply counting the number of women in political office does not provide a full picture of women's political power. In fact, this approach distorts perceptions of progress and reinforces the flawed assumption that merely increasing the number of women in the House of Representatives is a panacea for women's political empowerment.

For one thing, gender equality in parliament cannot be addressed separately from other axes of social and political exclusion. The driver of inequality may not only be patriarchal dynamics but also the intersection of gender with other vectors of social inequality and political exclusion.

Instead of assuming that the advancement of some women will naturally pave the way for others, it makes more sense to ask which women are politically empowered in a given political context and why. Doing so can help policymakers and advocates uncover more nuanced explanations for women's continued political disempowerment. I seriously question whether being in a place of power is sufficient on its own to empower and achieve meaningful equality.

Four years after the PN and Labour Party endorsed a gender-corrective mechanism to lift women's representation in Parliament, gender equality in political power has barely budged, and the 2026 candidate list suggests little will change.

Of the 162 candidates contesting the 2026 general election, just 28% were women, the same share that sat throughout the last legislature, brought through in 2022 after the gender corrective mechanism kicked in. There was not a single district in which a woman won the most first-count votes.

As Sandra Gauci rightly pointed out, what we have is not a gender quota but a gender top-up.

Malta is ranked 16th in the EU for gender equality, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) acknowledges that there is a commendable level of equality in terms of knowledge and health. However, it also highlights significant challenges related to financial and political power.

Now that we have started another male-dominated legislature, it's worth asking: have reforms made any difference?

I genuinely want to believe that gender quotas are a beneficial initiative. Women, especially those who are mothers, have historically missed out on career opportunities in the political and legislative spheres. If there is a solution to this issue, I am supportive of it. However, I remain uncertain about the effectiveness of gender quotas.

                                                             A jeopardised Maltese media

It was no surprise that a lack of transparency in media ownership and increased commercial pressure on editorial independence have caused Malta to be rated as high-risk by the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom.

The media industry is currently in a state of crisis, a situation exacerbated by the internet's disruption of traditional media since the 1990s and the proliferation of misinformation and biased content on social media. Fake news is cheap to produce, and genuine journalism is expensive.

The rise of digital media has empowered people locally and elsewhere but also enabled the spread of disinformation and demagoguery and undermined the funding of professional journalism as we know it. The move from a media environment defined by established broadcasting stations and leading newspapers to a digital, mobile, and platform-dominated environment is the most fundamental change in how we communicate since the development of the printing press, and we are only thirty years into a period we can trace back to Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web in 1989. Finding replacements for dwindling traditional subscription and advertising income presents a major hurdle.

The existing forms of funding for professional journalism will decline as we continue to move to a more digital media environment where online platforms capture most of the advertising, leading to further job cuts in newsrooms. The risk here is not simply retrenchment and reduced coverage of many important issues, with a risk of declining readership, but also a less robust journalism business, more vulnerable to media capture by the state or politically motivated owners and to pressure from advertisers.

The problem is exacerbated by the increasing political animosity directed at independent media. In the absence of independent media reporting providing accurate information, analysis, and interpretation, the public will increasingly rely on self-interested sources and rumours circulating online and offline, a shift that will hurt the political process, civil society, and private enterprise.

During a September Times of Malta Business Breakfast, Prime Minister Abela remarked that the current media environment is defined by difficulties, including scepticism towards facts, the swift dissemination of misinformation, and the economic and digital strains on journalism.

A functioning democracy needs an informed public. A pluralistic and free media remains the most accessible and, hopefully, the most trustworthy source for obtaining factual information.

The disappearance of such high-quality media would pose a significant threat to us all.