An entire generation of Maltese women missed out on its full employment potential and will end up with low pensions because they were expected to skip tertiary education to take care of their family.

But while traditional expectations might have cut short the political ambitions of that particular generation of women, it is time for younger generations to bring about balance, the director of the European Institute for Gender Equality told Times of Malta.

Information about that ‘lost generation’ emerged from an Eige study on the upscaling of low-skilled women, Virginija Lambakk explained.

She was speaking to the Times of Malta during a European Parliament seminar to mark International Women’s Day, where it was noted that the glass ceiling was also present at EU institutions, with women being nearly absent from roles above middle management.

Only 36 per cent of MEPs members are women, though that is a 17 per cent increase from 40 years ago.

Finland tops the list with 77 per cent of its MEPs being women, while only one out of the six Estonian and Cypriot MEPs are female.

Malta currently shares fourth topmost place with Sweden, as half of its six MEPs are women.

A fourth female MEP, Therese Comodini Cachia, quit her seat in 2017 when she was elected in Malta's general election.

She is now one of just 10 women MPs out of Malta’s 67 MPs. That ratio places the island second-to-last in political representation by women in the EU. The share of women in national parliaments in the EU-28 is around 30 per cent.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has said that he intends to introduce gender quota legislation during this legislature.

How political representation stacks up across the EU. The green dots represent male shares, while yellow is for female ones. Graph: EIGE

Asked whether gender quotas could work in Malta, Ms Langbakk noted that there was no single answer to whether quotas were the best way to introduce balance. However, out of the nine EU member states that had introduced quotas, eight (except for Croatia) had seen an increase in the share of women in Parliament.

Nonetheless, quotas were an interim solution as they kicked off a discussion and forced decision makers and party leaders to start actively looking for alternatives, she noted.

So what would be the solution for Malta to create some balance?

Apart from party leaders and gatekeepers kicking off a discussion, the younger generations should be supporting women in politics, talking about women in politics, and participating in politics themselves, she said.