Malta has registered the highest growth rate in female employment within the EU of the past four years, according to new data published in Brussels yesterday.

Though still with the highest percentage of stay-home females in the EU, the rate of female participation in the workforce has increased steadily by an average of one per cent every year between 2005 and 2009. If this level of growth is maintained, Malta may be able to catch up with the EU in a few years’ time.

According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics arm, the number of women aged 15 to 64 with a job increased by four per cent, from 36.9 to 40.8 per cent, over the four year period. The only other member state which has done as well as Malta is Austria, with the same percentage rise. Malta’s increase was twice as high as the EU average of 1.9 per cent.

“It is a fact that Malta is still far behind the EU when it comes to female participation in employment, however we can observe a rapid surge which is indicative of the years to come,” an EU official told The Times yesterday.

According to EU officials, there may be many reasons for the increase in Malta but the prime factors are the need for more income for families as a result of superior lifestyles and better education. Nowadays, the number of female graduates from the University of Malta by far outnumbers males.

Malta, however, cannot rest on its laurels and still has a long way to go, as shown by the data. Its female inactivity rate remains by far the highest in the EU. Last year only 35.7 per cent of women in the 15-64 age brackets were without a job in the EU. In Malta the rate stood at 59.2 per cent.

Family reasons seem to be the most quoted motive by Maltese women who are without a paid job. According to Eurostat, “family responsibilities” was quoted by 40 per cent of inactive Maltese women when asked for a reason they were not looking for a job.

Across the EU, the inactivity rate for women aged between 15 and 64 has fallen steadily, from 39.9 per cent in 2000 to 35.7 per cent in 2009, meaning that five million more women have entered the labour market. In contrast, the inactivity rate for men aged 15 to 64 has fallen only slightly, from 22.8 per cent in 2000 to 22.2 per cent in 2009.

Last year, the inactivity rate of women aged between 25 and 54 years was 22.1 per cent, compared with 8.2 per cent for men.

Among the member states, the lowest inactivity rates for women aged 25-54 were found in Slovenia (12.1 per cent), Sweden (12.9 per cent) and Denmark (13 per cent), while Malta (51.1 per cent), Italy (35.5 per cent), Romania (29.4 per cent) and Greece (29 per cent) had the highest.