Gender equality in Maltese social policy?

The Maltese government presents itself as an equal opportunities state. Gender equality legislation has been on the statute book since the 1960s. Now, an agreement signed with the European Commission binds Government to address gender gaps, which include the enactment and enforcement of comprehensive gender equality and anti-discrimination legislation, and the promotion of family-friendly working arrangement.

Can these claims to gender equality be sustained, in the context of more traditional features of Maltese society and Malta's social policy, in particular, the male breadwinner model of the family that underpins much of social, political, and economic life in Malta?

The principal aim of my study, Gender Equality in Maltese Social Policy? Graduate Women and the Male Breadwinner Model written up as a doctoral thesis and just published in book form, is to develop a framework for analysing gender equality in Maltese social policy.

To this end, the study examines women's experiences of gender equality in terms of key elements of gender models which are paid work and income, care work, time distribution and the power of voice.

More specifically, the research explores gender equality in Maltese social policy, as experienced by 39 women graduates with young children. To them I publicly express my sincere gratitude for giving me of their time to recount their experiences of social policy in practice, in the faith that my research would make policymakers understand the contradictions women face in their daily lives. So as to improve validity of findings, I also analysed other sources of data, such as relevant legislation, published state documents and reports, national data sets and European policy literature.

Are women in Malta perceived primarily as breadwinners or as carers? How much does government assume that men and women equally need time for care and for earning? How effective are Malta's family-friendly policies in drawing men into care work? Malta appears to be moving away from a traditional gender regime towards a dual earner policy. To what extent do social policies underpin a dual-earner system? Are Malta's claims to gender equality indeed sustained?

Who cares in Malta?

Women never discuss work as an isolated problem, but always make the link between work and childcare. The ideology of exclusive mothering and culturally defined norms in care work emerged strongly in the study, and women in paid employment prefer nurturing through the grandmother "at least until the child is two". Church teachings on women's role in the family bring reassurance to some and indignation to others. All respondents, but especially those in paid work, disclose overwhelming guilt feelings imposed by the Church and the ideology of motherhood.

The graduates in the study seem to be struggling with a relatively high educational attainment and the cultural constraints pertaining to the ideology of the male breadwinner model. For example, they contend they have to choose between career and family, as it is hard for them to cope with both. Most respondents have allowed time for family life by shifting their economic activity to shorter and flexible working hours, changing career orientation to teaching, or exiting the labour market altogether.

The same cannot be said of their husbands, who make time to further their studies abroad, work a standard 40-hour week, overtime or a second job on the side. Interestingly, the respondents are resigned to men's minimal involvement in care work, and place a higher value on husbands' time than their own.

The women's reaction to a hypothetical scenario of a gender role reversal that challenges the traditional gender arrangement reflects women's deeply ingrained sense of obligations. Not one would like to have a stay-at-home husband while she participates in the labour market full-time. In the meantime, two major concerns for the women are career regression, due to interruption in employment, and exclusion from the promotion ladder, as a result of working less than standard hours.

In view of a national strategy for the inclusion of women in the labour market through the enactment of new legislation, to what extent do related childcare policies enhance gender equality in practice? The study signals that development in childcare subsidies and provision of state funded day care are slow in coming, and there is no convergence between school scheduling and adult employment hours.

The children's allowance is tied to a family-based means test which is not always to the advantage of economically inactive women, who may be excluded from the entitlement and who may also have to rely on men's benevolence, as many men in Malta control household income through an allowance system.

The study interviewees presented with a choice of a new policy scheme, existing in the Scandinavian model, voiced preference for an allowance that would help them pay for childcare while they earned full time, rather than a homecare allowance that would compensate for lost earnings while caring at home away from market work.

The right to time to care

How much do government policies assume that both men and women need time to care as well as for paid work? For example, leave schemes couched by the state as family-friendly fall disproportionately on women, while men's employment is undisturbed by their transition into fatherhood. Rather than promote gender equality, parental leave and care benefits that exclude entitlement to national insurance contributions and which offer no compensation for loss of earning, discourage men's share in time-to-care benefits, and perpetuate women's traditional role and dependence on men.

The women in the study contend that uncompensated parental leave causes hardship to those who cannot live on one salary. Rather than an equal distribution of time for paid and unpaid work between women and men, the study suggests that gender equality in Malta is conceived in terms of accommodating men with women's own time.

Women working reduced hours in the public sector suggest that the policy often serves as a subtle exclusionary measure from career advancement, and while earnings fall to pro-rata, the workload remains the same. Moreover, the link of care benefits to the labour market excludes a number of women in the workforce, including those working below the 20-hour threshold, the self-employed and the economically inactive. The study signals that a gap in national insurance contributions, during parental leave or labour market intermittence, affects future pension security, and may be a source of poverty for women in case of marital breakdown and widowhood.

Another striking theme emerging in the voices of the study respondents is the exclusionary measure in Malta's family-friendly policies. The link of public sector employment to time-to-care policies is strong. It excludes private industry, the self-employed, teachers in church schools and full-time housewives, to the extent that some women remain more equal than others and gender equality goals are undermined. Moreover, this argument posits a clear division between public and private sector employees and the creation of a socially excluded group of workers deserving of these polices.

While it appears certain that generous work-family programmes are consistent with high levels of fertility, there is no clear evidence that the marked fertility decline in Malta is a result of higher market participation among Maltese women. The women in the study provide no persuasive evidence that they are choosing employment over childbearing.

Voice inequality

To what extent can women push their interests onto Malta's political stage, where new policies could be created that influence Maltese social policy? An emergent theme in the study shows respondents' indifference towards political discourse on gender equality legislation, and few care to acknowledge effort made by women's units or know of their existence.

There is also clear evidence of voice inequality in marriage in men's control over who earns and who cares. Women's accounts suggest they were "encouraged" by husbands, whose earning commitment takes priority over theirs, to reduce their full time hours of work or leave the workforce to look after the children instead.

The study's main contribution to knowledge is that Malta is tied to a variant of the extreme male breadwinner model that assumes men are for earning and women are for caring. An inescapable implication for Maltese social policy is that the state's key source of failure in achieving gender equality is resistance to address cultural and structural disadvantages for women.

Malta has a deeply ingrained set of cultural assumptions, structures, and obligations within the family, which influence workplace expectations that in turn spill over into relationships within the bureaucracy, such that government policies are blunted in their effects.

Rethinking men's position

The male breadwinner culture that draws its influence from the Catholic Church has done little to promote the involvement of fathers in the care of their children despite evidence that the lack of involvement at home is the prime cause of family breakdown. Indeed, a critical pre-requisite for gender equality in Malta would be rethinking men's position in the family and in society.

Malta's long-hours culture that is guarded jealously by social partners place men in a position where they are hardly able to share family obligations. On the other hand, gender equality will not be achieved if family-friendly measures reconcile the demands of private care work and public wage work only for women. Policy designs that encourage men's take-up of parental leave, rights and benefits must include high wage replacement rates, the inclusion of non-transferable "use or lose" entitlements for fathers, and public educational campaigns that address cultural resistance to engagement in care giving and leave taking by fathers.

Malta needs forceful equal opportunities machinery and women's units to campaign and give a voice to women by monitoring existing state commitments, debating at governmental level, highlighting shortfalls and weaknesses, influencing media and public opinion, and accelerating the pace of change. Moreover, an independent women's movement needs to effectively highlight outdated and outmoded policy approaches, and ensure that tax and benefit policies must include women in households who take main responsibility for full time family care.

Which way to gender equality?

A fundamental question flows from these considerations. Is it necessary for Malta's social policy to pull away from a strong male breadwinner model and redesign its welfare regime? The thrust of my argument is that for the sake of gender equality it is! Because the male breadwinner model is a social construct, it is clearly open not only to change but to total overthrow. Malta's social policy dominated by a tradition of policies built around the male breadwinner, where women's citizenship derives through men, is outdated.

While gender equality in a male breadwinner model is a contradiction in terms, all is not lost. Malta is currently poised for a period of economic growth and dynamic and flexible policy making, with an improving social base within an enlarged Europe, where gender equality and the reconciliation of work and family are fundamental principles of EU activity. This research study is complete and the stage is set. It is now up to policy makers to take a cue and act towards a progressive and equitable social policy in Malta.

Dr Camilleri-Cassar is a social scientist with special research interest in welfare states and gender regimes and the implications of EU expansion for social policy and the labour market. The article draws on the findings of her doctoral thesis just published in book form by'Agenda' entitled Gender Equality in Maltese Social Policy? Graduate Women and the Male Breadwinner Mode (ISBN 99932-672-3-6). E-mail: frances.camilleri-cassar@um.edu.mt