As I stepped up to the podium to welcome participants at the Fidem Women’s Day Conference earlier this month, I looked out on the 200-plus audience and felt a sense of pride. The energy in that room was palpable.
We had brought all these people together, both men and women, from myriad walks of life and all ages, including sixth form students and pensioners, under one roof, all with the same eagerness to discuss, listen, suggest, hope and dream about women’s empowerment.
For as long as the world needs to celebrate International Women’s Day, we need to keep talking about women’s empowerment because it benefits everyone, not just me as a woman but all of us, the whole of society.
While improvements have been registered in matters of gender equality, it is only when men and women work together towards this common goal that meaningful change can be achieved.
As Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, put it in her keynote speech to the conference, “gender equality remains an unfinished business”. The audience packed into that hall on March 8 proved that there is a need and a desire to ensure we finish this.
Metsola singled out two key factors that women require to thrive: support and “the same spectrum of opportunities as men”.
Yes, much has been achieved already, thanks to all the other women who have come before us, all those activists and pioneers who courageously picked at that glass ceiling. But we are still not fully there yet. And many questions were raised during the conference about the unique challenges women face today.
We started by looking at education, a topic which is very close to Fidem’s heart as the foundation believes it is the key to empowerment. Access to education is a fundamental human right and Fidem encourages and enables women to never stop learning.
We were told how the Education Department is looking at a more holistic approach to career guidance for both boys and girls. Last year, the Malta Chamber had told our conference that they often found school-leavers or even graduates lacked the skills needed by industry. This year, Malta Chamber president, Christopher Vassallo Cesareo reiterated the industry’s willingness to dialogue with education. “We want to get involved from the skills side,” he said.
While society can discuss its grand plans for change, Ylenia Vella, from Jobsplus, gave us an example of how we can trigger that change ourselves at home, revealing that she is already teaching her young son that it wouldn’t be fair if mum did not have access to the same education and job opportunities as daddy. And, if a four-year-old boy can understand that simple truth, why can’t the rest of us?
Anna Borg, of the University’s Centre for Labour Studies, reminded us how women are expected to work like they don’t have children and raise children as if they do not work. As many as 83 per cent of women aged between 25 and 54 are working, a rate that exceeds the EU average. But, as Borg pointed out to me a few days before the conference, “women are in the labour market because they cannot afford to stay out”.
What are the fathers doing? How many house-husbands do you know?
This brings a whole plethora of challenges. There are 38,000 children benefitting from free childcare but the system is not without its flaws as no childcare service is available 365 days a year, summer holidays are long, school hours are short, and the burden of compromising between family and work often falls on the mother by default. Malta is still far from providing equal opportunities for both genders to be free to make their own choices.
And what are the fathers doing? How many house-husbands do you know? How many men have given up their careers to look after the family full-time so that their wife can continue with hers? If women find it “embarrassing” to say they are “just” a housewife, imagine what stigma house-husbands would carry. And that is precisely the kind of prejudice that helps no one and needs to be eradicated.
Economist Marie Briguglio, who was one of the panellists at the conference, went as far as blaming Malta’s worryingly low fertility rate (the lowest in Europe) on the lack of work-life balance. “We need to address the long working hours,” she said. “We cannot be killing ourselves working.”
But do you blame working families struggling to pay ever-increasing bills?
Natalie Briffa Farrugia, chairperson of Vassallo Group, suggested working mothers should benefit from tax credits, an idea that was immediately welcomed by mother-of-three Abigail Agius Mamo, the CEO of the Chamber of SMEs.
Flexible working solutions were also discussed and it was heartening to learn that both Bank of Valletta and APS Bank have a majority female workforce with a number of family-friendly measures including flexible work-from-home options that have proved successful in enabling women to pursue careers in banking.
However, flexible work presents special challenges for smaller enterprises, some of which are often not much bigger than a family.
We know that, sometimes, women are forced to opt for part-time work, a lower scale job or even a demotion which permits shorter working hours to balance out family commitments. And, then, even when women work the same number of hours as their male colleagues at the same job grade, they may have to contend with a smaller pay cheque for their troubles.
We talked about how we would like to see more women in leadership roles but are gender quotas the right way to go about this?
So where does all this leave us? We know the hurdles that need to be overcome but now we want solutions. We would like to face that audience on March 8 next year and tell them this is what has changed in the past 12 months. We know that the family needs adequate support in the true sense of the word, support that changes according to the ages of the children. We know that women need equal opportunities and equal pay.
How are we going to achieve this?
After listening to the academics, the industry representatives, the Malta Chamber, the Chamber of SMEs and others, we invited politicians to take the stage.
An invitation was sent to members of both sides of the House to join this important conversation that could drive their policy decisions.
Unfortunately, not all invitees could attend.
The conversation must continue beyond the conference hall. Fidem is determined to take it all the way to the policymakers because it is high time that the business of gender equality is put back on our country’s priority list.
Sabine Agius CabourdinSabine Agius Cabourdin is a lawyer and the founder of Fidem Foundation.
The Fidem Foundation Women’s Day Conference was held on March 8 with the support of APS Bank, Deloitte, Frank Salt Real Estate Ltd, Browns Pharmacy, Charles Grech & Co. Ltd, Miller Distributors, Xara Collection, Growth Gurus and co-organised by Working Town.