Every year, I ignore Women’s Day. From where I stand, a day on which women are congratulated by men (and other women) for being female is patronising. And doing so serves merely to highlight the disparities that still exist between the sexes. My belief that we are, even now, miles away from gender equality is reinforced and no amount of ‘international days’ will change the status quo.
2022 was no different. Again, I refused point blank to acknowledge the ‘inpouring’ of messages received and was surprised that the occasion was even being flagged, in our brave new era of gender neutrality. We live, it seems, in times when everything, from clothing to public toilets, is called into question and the word ‘woman’ sits uneasy in the vocabulary of political correctness.
Yet, in March, I resolved to write a piece about Maltese women (including those in politics), deciding only at the 11th hour to abandon the idea and not compete with the general election. If I have learned anything about writing in Malta, it’s that people are twitchy at election time and that it’s better to keep shtum. I’m not entirely sure Easter Sunday is the right time either but it will have to do.
Women are generally underrepresented in Malta. Where are the public statues in their honour? Where indeed? I am aware of only a handful, most of which are prehistoric, headless, fast asleep or obese. Statues of Our Lady, of course, are the great exception. There’s also the 1989 statue celebrating the 25th anniversary of Malta’s Independence depicting a woman with the national flag marching to freedom. But that is pure allegory.
Real-life inspiring women who achieved great things and left their mark just aren’t there in significant numbers. Leaving Queen Victoria in Valletta out of it, the only statues I can think of are the monument to former President Agatha Barbara in Żabbar, the statue of Karmni Grima outside Ta’ Pinu in Gozo, Markiża Anna Bugeja in St Paul’s Bay and the delightful sculpture of actress Ġemma Portelli sitting down to tea in Bisazza Street, Sliema (which she shares with two men).
Yes, there’s a staggering discrepancy between the number of male and female statues in our country. This may be down to all our prime ministers and presidents (bar two) having been men; but the world over, monuments to such masculine figures have always loomed large in squares and streets and Malta is no exception.
I find it interesting, for instance, that former prime minister Lord Gerald Strickland has a bronze statue in Valletta’s Upper Barrakka gardens but I don’t believe there’s a single public monument to his daughter, Mabel. She may not have been a prime minister but if a country’s history is written in its monuments and statues then Mabel Strickland, who fought for a free and independent press and co-founded Malta’s oldest newspaper, definitely deserves one.
In our zeal to promote equality and political correctness, we ourselves are being politically incorrect- Michela Spiteri
But let’s put bronze and marble aside and look instead at today’s gender quotas. These are an attempt to remedy the female deficit in Malta and encourage more women to enter parliament. The law in question, enacted just a year ago, seeks to rebalance the number of females in our bipartite system. In real terms, and as far as I can understand, this means that if Malta elects 65 MPs to parliament and 26 of those elected are not women, the mechanism is triggered, and an additional 12 seats are automatically given to women (six on each side).
In 2017, seven of the 38 female candidates who contested the election on Labour and Nationalist Party tickets were elected directly to parliament. This time, only four of the 33 women who contested were elected on the strength of first-count votes and a further six made it through by casual election.
Given that the 40-per-cent quota had not been reached, there will soon be a further 12 women elected. Now, while it is true that prominent female candidates on both sides were missing from this most recent election (like Justyne Caruana, Helena Dalli, Kristy Debono, Marlene Farrugia and Marthese Portelli), I cannot help feeling that we might be encouraging political complacency and in more ways than one.
We have here a situation in which female candidates, some of whom perhaps put little time and effort into their campaigns, could be elected while fully committed male candidates still won’t make it to parliament, despite faring better at the polls and campaigning tirelessly, often at great personal and financial cost to their private and professional lives.
Neither is it fair on those female candidates who gained thousands of first-count votes. That’s because they will now ‘share’ a parliamentary seat with candidates who barely managed a few hundred. Miriam Dalli is a case in point, having obtained over 4,000 first-count votes. Admittedly, she was originally co-opted to parliament (another leg-up I find totally abhorrent). In all fairness, however, she gave up a far more prestigious and better paid seat in the European Parliament, so I can definitely live with that co-option. In fact, you could argue that she is the one being short-changed here.
And while I can understand the rationale behind such corrective measures, I still find that they do more harm than good in the long run. History has shown that women are perfectly capable of being elected to parliament on their own merits, both here and in Europe generally. Perhaps, in our zeal to promote equality and political correctness, we ourselves are being politically incorrect, and, ultimately, unfair. And not just on the candidates themselves but on the electorate, the parties and politics in general.
How, for instance, are we expected to show our disapproval of certain politicians and ensure that they are not re-elected when they can still make it to parliament through the back door? By all means, give women the empowerment and education they need to be successful fairly and squarely. Only not like this.
Editorial note: The article was written before 12 women entered parliament through the gender corrective mechanism.