Malta’s constitution has been amended once again. This time, parliament has enacted a law that changes the way Malta elects its representatives.

The objects and reasons of this law are to enact “temporary positive measures necessary and reasonable in a democratic society to ensure de facto equality between men and women in politics”. To achieve this “de facto equality”, a quota system will make it easier for women to enter parliament.

All this raises lots of questions and the debate has been confused at times. Are women incapable of getting into parliament? What does the quota system do exactly and is it discriminatory?

Positive discrimination: justified aim…

Gender quotas are a form of discrimination. But they’re what’s known as ‘positive discrimination’, something that EU countries, including Malta, have decided can be a good thing. Discrimination usually makes societies more unequal. Positive discrimination comes in to address an existing inequality and make societies more equal and, in theory, fairer.

The problem that the quota system addresses is the huge gender imbalance in parliament. Of the 67 members who sit in parliament, just nine are women. That means there’s seven men for every woman, which does not represent the way the Maltese population is in the least.

Not having enough women in parliament is a flaw because it means that issues impacting women will not get the attention they deserve. It inevitably means men make laws for women, without women’s input, when the experiences of men and women are different.

In this regard, the quota system is the quickest way to remedy this gap and have women at the legislative table.

Asking the right questions?

The quota system may be the quickest and the easiest way to address gender imbalance, but the good news stops there. The quickest and the easiest solution is rarely ever the best one and to criticise the gender quota mechanisms is not to doubt the principle of gender equality.

What we really need is a culture that attracts women to politics

Quotas will change our electoral system. This begs the question: was it our electoral system which discriminated against women or is it something else?

A quick regression analysis suggests being female is, on average, associated with more votes than being male. This is almost definitely because of the sheer lack of women who contest elections in the first place.

On the first district, of the 23 candidates who ran for a seat, just two were women. Unsurprisingly, the first district is now represented by five men and no women. But women do live and vote in that district, as well as the other districts represented solely by men.

Hermann Schiavone points out that the electoral system itself does not discriminate against women or against anybody really.

The reason is that the single transferable vote is a really good system compared to the rest of the world. In countries like the UK, which use first-past-the-post, politicians can be elected even if they have a minority of votes. A candidate with just 30 per cent of the district vote can represent everybody if her competitors fare worse.

The situation in Malta is completely different and much better.

Firstly, each district allows the possibility to elect at least five candidates. This alone drastically increases voters’ say in who represents them. If your preferred candidate wasn’t elected first, she has a second, a third, even a seventh chance.

Secondly, the transferable vote means that votes going to losing candidates don’t lose with the candidate. If your preferred candidate failed to make the cut, your vote can go on to help all the other candidates you select.

Your vote simply matters more in our system. The more candidates you select, the better the chance that your vote doesn’t get ‘wasted’, meaning it is unable to transfer to another candidate. In Malta, these make up a tiny percentage of the total valid votes cast.

Thirdly, we don’t vote for political parties. While seat adjustments are a means to guarantee a majority party gets to govern, practically all the seats awarded are given to candidates chosen directly by the electorate.

… justified means?

As our electoral system stands, political parties just don’t have much say in how people vote. In the UK, political parties can only field one candidate per constituency; in Israel, people choose political parties, not candidates. The Knesset’s seats are filled by the order of candidates chosen by the party.

In Malta, parties have no control over which of their candidates get elected first. People have more power to choose precisely who represents them and it also means that political parties’ parliamentary groups can show a spectrum of political opinion.

So, if there’s nothing wrong with our electoral system, why change the system to get more women in parliament?

Clearly, the issue is not that women who run fail to get elected, it’s that women don’t run. And can you blame them? To be an MP is a part-time gig, with limited resources and an unattractive package.

The Labour Party sees it fit to award MPs government jobs but this is a conflation of duties and not what MPs are elected to do.

With this new law, up to 12 more women will be elected to balance out parliament without changing the voting outcome of the election.

But what we really need is a culture that attracts women to politics. We need a more accessible legislature with family-friendly measures. We need a change in mentality to combat misogyny and hate speech towards women activists. We need to forget about machoism. On this front, the quota system doesn’t deliver.

And we need to get it out of our heads that women need quotas to get elected.

Eve Borg Bonello, Team Start PN president