Just four women were directly elected to parliament but their ranks are set to swell through casual elections and the quota mechanism.

Despite aspirations of gender equality and greater female representation in parliament, only four women won seats in this election on the basis of first-count votes.

They are former minister equality Julia Farrugia Portelli, Cospicua mayor Alison Zerafa Civelli, former energy minister Miriam Dalli for the Labour Party, and Graziella Galea, for the Nationalist Party.

While all but Farrugia Portelli were first-time candidates for the national parliament, it is far from their first brush with the political sphere.

Dalli served as MEP from 2014 before being co-opted into the Maltese parliament and taking over the energy portfolio in October 2020.

Zerafa Civelli is Prime Minister Robert Abela’s sister-in-law and a mayor while Galea, the daughter of former Nationalist MP Ċensu Galea, is a former St Paul’s Bay mayor. She was co-opted to parliament in January.

Of the 139 candidates, 33 were women – 17 from PN and 16 from PL. This means that only 12 per cent of the women who contested for the major parties were successful.

This will not be the final tally of women in parliament, however. A few female candidates are likely to win a seat through causal elections, after which the new mechanism to ensure gender parity in parliament will see up to 12 new candidates winning a seat.

In 2017, eight women were elected to the House – Farrugia Portelli, Helena Dalli and Justyne Caruana for Labour, Therese Comodini Cachia, Kristy Debono, Marthese Portelli and Claudette Buttigieg for PN and Marlene Farrugia for PD. Rosianne Cutajar (PL) and Maria Deguara (PN) later won seats through casual elections.

Of the women elected in 2017, five were no longer in the running for the latest election, with Dalli currently serving as European Commissioner for Equality, Portelli resigned in 2020 and Caruana quit last December following an ethics probe by the standards commissioner.

Comodini Cachia, Debono and Farrugia did not seek re-election this time.

Cutajar, Buttigieg and Deguara failed to hold on to their seats. The first two are tipped as being likely to gain a seat either through a causal election or through the gender parity mechanism.

Difficult to make space

“Certainly, the low number of elected women does not reflect the competence of the women who contested,” Cutajar said.

“The dynamics of districts as well as the incumbency of ministers who are allowed to contest on two districts makes it difficult to make space for new candidates to get elected, especially if they’re women.”

She said the necessity for electoral reform has long been felt and the government and the opposition should do it.

“There are various things that are not just in the current system, including the fact that candidates are listed in alphabetical order on the ballot sheet, which leads to some gaining a natural advantage and ending up benefiting from inherited votes,” she said.

Cutajar said the new mechanism should have a positive effect in the next election but it needs further analysis, particularly since it has not prompted a stronger presence of female candidates during this election.

Former MEP Marlene Mizzi said that a greater turnout for women could not be expected when the number of women actually contesting elections was still low to begin with.

“The result of elected females to parliament, four, is certainly disappointing as I believe that there are many women who are capable of representing the Maltese electorate,” she said.

“However, the writing was on the wall from the start, given that only 42 women put their names forward as candidates, of whom six were incumbent MPs.

“Given the low numbers on the ballot sheet, it is to be expected that the number of those elected would also be low. This is not perception, this is statistics,” she added.

“Both parties have failed in attracting women to their ballot sheets and both should study the reasons for this failure. Awarding 12 seats to unelected women is not a solution, especially when, even so, women will still be very much under-represented in our parliament.”

Mizzi does not agree with gender quotas and feels they may serve as a hindrance to potential candidates.

“The electorate has shown that artificial methods which warp its voice are not acceptable,” she reckoned.

“I know of women who were put off from presenting themselves as candidates because they did not wish to be subjected to this mechanism.

“From the comment boards on my Facebook page, many commented that they did not bother to vote for women because ‘they will be put there anyway’. The result of this general election seems to reflect this sentiment.

“Furthermore, a psychological two-tier MP ranking has been created – the ‘superior’ tier of MPs, those whom the people wanted as their representatives and the ‘inferior’ tier of MPs.”

Expected to behave like men

Comodini Cachia also echoed this sentiment.

“It is the failure of the system of administration of the country that continues to lead to very few women being elected to parliament,” she told Times of Malta.

“While the two main political parties have both tried to attract more women candidates, there is a lack of recognition and acceptance of women leadership.

“Often, political parties expect women in politics to behave like men, otherwise their voice is not given an equal value to that of a male politician. There is lack of women in leadership roles in the parties but also in the constitutional roles of the country,” she added.

Comodini Cachia said that addressing the gender imbalance in politics must go beyond the corrective gender imbalance mechanism for parliamentary elections.

Alone, this mechanism could be perceived by the electorate as mere tokenism.

“The women elected through this mechanism will need to be entrusted with responsibilities within their party but the government should also seriously consider the message it continues to give when it persists in having an almost all-male list for constitutional officeholders,” Comodini Cachia said.

Women with a good chance of making it to the House

Six women each from the PN and the PL will be declared elected in terms of the women’s quota, based on how close they were to being directly elected.

They are expected to be Rosianne Cutajar, Alicia Bugeja Said, Rebecca Buttigieg, Cressida Galea, Katya Degiovanni and Abigail Camilleri for Labour and Janice Chetcuti, Paula Mifsud Bonnici, Julie Zahra, Bernice Bonello, Rebekah Cilia and Claudette Buttigieg for the PN.

Rosianne Cutajar is a former parliamentary secretary who was forced to resign after a probe by the Standards Commissioner but all the other Labour women are newcomers.

Among the PN women, Claudette Buttigieg and Paula Mifsud Bonnici have both served as MPs.

The allocation of seats for women will follow the casual elections, expected within two weeks. Should women be successful in those elections, the list of women eligible for election under the quota system will move up. That opens good possibilities for  Labour’s Romilda Baldachino, Amanda Spiteri Grech and Naomi Cachia and the PN’s  Eve Borg Bonello – the election’s youngest candidate at just 18 – Emma Portelli Bonnici - an openly pro-choice candidate - and Alessia Psaila Zammit, the former mayor of Siġġiewi.