The Commission on Gender-Based Violence and Domestic Violence has accused government consultant Robert Musumeci of "misogyny" and demanded an apology for his comments on new gender-equality measures in Parliament.
The government body took issue with Musumeci's call for the Labour Party to identify "likeable and unpretentious women" ("tfajliet jew nisa simpatiċi u bla ħafna pretenzjonijiet") to stand as MPs.
“Misogyny rears its head once again. A privileged man who obviously assumes that he himself is ‘sympathetic and unpretentious’ describes the qualities a woman must have in order to be valid in politics,” the Commission said on Facebook.
“The essential qualities are far more substantial than these frivolities you are mentioning. There are many women who are capable, intelligent, responsible, have integrity and all the necessary gifts, apart from ‘likeable’.”
The Commission expressed disappointment in his statement, insisting that such "oppressive" speech should not be tolerated and demanding that Musumeci apologise to all women.
"This is violence too – the violence of patriarchal and colonial discourse that infiltrates people’s attitude towards the woman and what she is able to do," it said.
Musumeci's comments were made in the context of a new gender-balancing mechanism currently being debated by MPs, which would see seats added to Parliament to ensure gender balance. The mechanisms would be applied if one gender obtains fewer than 40 per cent of seats and would allow up to 12 additional seats to be added to re-balance the House.
Critics of the Bill, among them ADPD, have argued that the proposal is “degrading and discriminatory” and should be replaced with a requirement for parties to have gender-balanced candidate lists.
Stepping into the debate on Saturday, Musumeci said critics had misunderstood the proposal and that the Prime Minister "need only identify likeable, unpretentious, popular women and encourage them to contest".
“If they don’t get elected with the first five candidates, there’s a chance that they will be elected nonetheless if they miss the mark by a hair. That’s all. No man will lose his seat and no woman will be ‘pimped’," he said.
He has since written several further posts clarifying his position, questioning when "likeable and unpretentious" had become a sexist term.
He conceded that the Commission had a point and that women had other qualities but stood his ground, insisting that being likeable and affable does not detract from those attributes.
Opposition leader Bernard Grech also condemned the remarks, which he said were offensive to women and showed that the Labour Party did not "value a person's true qualities".
He pledged to continue working to remove obstacles hindering women from fulfilling their professional aspirations.
Meanwhile, Nationalist Party MEP and EPP Group vice-president Roberta Metsola said every woman had faced misogynistic comments in their personal and professional life and urged young women considering politics to "keep smashing the ceiling and obstacles others place in your way".
"Misogynists' time has long been up," she said.