Sandra Gauci’s omission fuels gender quota debate

The 950 votes Sandra Gauci won at the last election surpassed the tally of some women who entered parliament in 2022 but will not be considered for a seat under the gender corrective mechanism, highlighting a contentious aspect of a system designed to boost female representation.

The mechanism, introduced through constitutional amendments in 2021, allows parliament to add up to 12 seats when either sex falls below 40% representation. But there is a catch: only candidates from parties that have already won seats qualify.

The ADPD leader, who was eliminated in the 17th count with just over 27% of a district quota, falls outside that framework. Had Gauci contested on a Labour (PL) or Nationalist Party (PN) ticket, she could have been in the running for a corrective seat in the next legislature.

A petition calling for her to be given a seat in parliament had already amassed more than 4,800 signatures by Monday afternoon. It argues that she is being "shut out" while unelected PL and PN candidates "with far less public support" are being handed seats in parliament 

Constitutional lawyer Tonio Borg told Times of Malta that widening the gender mechanism beyond the majority and minority parties already represented in parliament would run counter to the public’s democratic choice.

“If a seat is awarded to ADPD through the gender quota, it would fundamentally disturb the electoral result,” he said.

However, he did agree that the mechanism could have been tailored to allow a third party to benefit but only if that party is elected to parliament. The PN had proposed this when the law was being discussed at the committee stage in parliament but the government shot it down.

Austin Bencini, also a constitutional lawyer, said there could be a valid conversation around allowing elected third parties to benefit from the gender mechanism. He agreed that including third parties in the gender mechanism when they have not been elected through the normal system would disrupt the balance of the elected parliament.

“Why should a party benefit from the gender corrective mechanism if it doesn’t even have an elected seat in parliament? It’s difficult to justify that,” he said.

However, he acknowledged it could be frustrating for voters to see people get elected through the gender mechanism while enjoying a small share of the district quota.

Punishing women?

Apart from disadvantaging women in third parties, the gender mechanism has been criticised for ‘punishing’ women in general as people choose to vote for male candidates, believing the women will get elected through the quota anyway.

This is how Eve Borg Bonello sees the gender mechanism, despite having been elected on a quota seat in 2022. In this election she was elected on her own steam on district nine. 

She told Times of Malta she is convinced many people see voting for a woman as a “wasted vote” because of the mechanism. There are systemic and cultural inequalities that still make it hard to succeed as a woman in politics.

“A woman MP can deliver the same speech almost verbatim or with the same tone as a male colleague and get a vastly different reaction. All those things are not and cannot ever be addressed by a simple corrective mechanism. Something as simple as childcare in parliament has been promised for years and never delivered,” Borg Bonello said.

The spirit of the mechanism is to compensate women for the social, cultural and structural obstacles that prevent women from having a fair share of political seats

Alicia Bugeja Said was also elected through the gender quota and believes the corrective mechanism has been effective at giving women the impetus to enter politics.

She pointed out that 40% of the PL’s candidate list this year comprised women and the number of women elected on first-count votes has more than doubled compared to 2022.

“I feel that people do not hesitate to vote for female candidates and the gender corrective mechanism is contributing to increased female participation in elections,” she said.

Bugeja Said acknowledged that being elected through the gender mechanism can leave a person feeling stigmatised. “You can only beat this sentiment by focusing on your work as a representative of the people and achieving results through the roles entrusted to you. Ultimately, the difference you leave in people’s lives is not marked by the manner a member of parliament is elected.”

Carmen Sammut led the committee that proposed a gender corrective mechanism to increase the share of women in parliament. She said the average share of women in parliament has hovered around 10-14% for decades and many factors explain why this number has remained so low.

She also made it clear that the low election rate for women in 2022 may not be down to the gender quota punishing women. She pointed out that many popular, incumbent women MPs did not seek re-election that year. These included Helena Dalli, Marlene Farrugia, Marthese Portelli and Justyne Caruana. At the same time, newer women candidates entered the fold but new candidates tend to contest several times before getting elected.

Sammut praised the parties for fielding more women candidates in this election, noting that high candidature rates increase the chances of women getting elected on their own steam. This time around, more incumbent women got elected, some of whom were elected through the gender mechanism in 2022.

In a nutshell

The gender corrective mechanism assigns a maximum of 12 additional seats to the sex with less than 40% representation in parliament. Those seats are then split equally between the majority and minority parties.

The unelected women in each party are then ranked according to their performance in the general election, specifically the percentage of the district quota they reached at the last count or before they were eliminated. The first candidates chosen are the ones who were left hanging in the last count.

The spirit of the mechanism is to compensate women for the social, cultural and structural obstacles that prevent women from having a fair share of political seats. Similar mechanisms exist in 11 EU member states and, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality, women’s share in their respective parliaments increased three times faster in those states than in others without affirmative measures.