Malta is a leader in LGBTIQ+ rights. We have made tremendous progress since 2013. No stone was left unturned.
The challenges were many. Resistance to change was fierce.
But successive Labour administrations, since 2013, were determined to shake up, radically, the status quo. Pride Week, happening in Malta in a few days, is a manifestation of Malta’s revolution in this field.
Same-sex couples can today have their own family. It was an anathema, pre-2013, when the conservative forces suppressed LGBTIQ+ rights. Labour broke barriers in this regard. In 2013, Helena Dalli, then minister of social dialogue, consumer affairs and civil liberties, set up the LGBTIQ+ consultative council. Today, Dalli is the European commissioner for equality.
It is no coincidence that a Maltese EU citizen was trusted with the all-important equality portfolio.
In 2014, the civil union law was enacted to provide for same-sex couples who wanted to formalise their relationship but were not allowed to get married back then. In 2017, marriage laws were changed so that same-sex couples could also get married.
Malta has consistently ranked at the top of the ILGA Europe Rainbow Index for the past years.
Only recently, a legal amendment that would allow a pregnancy to be terminated if a woman’s life or health is in danger was introduced. It was met with fierce resistance by the usual conservative forces – led by the staunchly conservative Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech (he was at the forefront of the anti-divorce brigade) who made it their mission to maintain the status quo.
The Labour government could have comfortably chosen to stay put and allow a situation whereby women and medical practitioners can be hauled to court and imprisoned for saving a mother’s life whose life or health is in danger. It did not.
Today, the new legal amendment puts women and doctors’ minds at rest.
Reproductive rights too are on the country’s agenda. This is another all-important subject that the country cannot and shouldn’t avoid. Civil society, and experts, not politicians, should be at the forefront of this discussion. Burying our heads in the sand, while those with ample financial means seek refuge outside our shores, won’t address the matter. Since then, discussion on reproductive rights has been suppressed.
It’s time to find a sensible way forward on reproductive rights too
Divorce, same-sex marriage, the legalisation of cannabis, the legal amendment that would allow a pregnancy to be terminated if a woman’s life or health is in danger, these were taboo subjects that, for decades, no one dared to address until Labour administrations took the bull by its horns.
It’s time to find a sensible way forward on reproductive rights too.
Certainly, equality is not only about LGBTIQ+ rights and reproductive rights. All people, whatever their gender, identity, ethnicity, age, religion and sexuality must be treated equally. Significant achievements, along the years, have been made, in Malta, with regard to gender equality.
There was a time when women, in Malta, had to fight for their right to vote. It was a Labour government which granted them that right. Fast forward to today. We have the highest number of female workforce participation ever – enhanced, no doubt, by the Labour government’s decision to make free childcare available to everyone.
The in-work benefit scheme too has been pivotal in encouraging stronger female participation in terms of full-time employment. This scheme is aimed at assisting couples and single parents who are in a gainful occupation and have children under the age of 23, who are still dependent and living with them.
And more females than males are graduating from tertiary-level education in Malta, with Gozitan women almost twice as likely to graduate at undergraduate level as their Maltese counterparts, according to new data published by NSO this July. Malta’s female labour participation rate is growing faster than the EU’s. In 2022, Malta had a female labour participation rate of 74% compared to the EU’s 69%, Jobsplus annual report shows.
When Malta joined the EU in 2004, it had a female participation rate of just 34.5%. The rate grew to 47% in 2013 and jumped to 64% by 2018. In 2020, it surpassed the EU average when it reached 67%. It has now climbed up to 74%.
Despite these positive achievements, more needs to be done in this respect, especially with regard to the gender pay gap. Eurostat data published last year shows that for every €100 a Maltese man earns a woman earns €90. The gap is even wider in other European countries. Sexual discrimination, though illegal, is usually to blame for this divide. ‘Equal pay for equal work’ is a sacrosanct principle but, sadly, it is often breached and ignored. There are other reasons too. Data shows that less women than men, in Malta, graduate in maths, science, technology and engineering. Usually, as one progresses in these careers, salaries tend to increase drastically.
Also, women are more likely to take a career break at some point in their lives, most likely to raise children. This results in a break in their career progression.
Education is most likely the key to ensure further progress in female labour participation and to ensure more women in decision-making roles. That needs to be coupled with further financial and family friendly incentives, flexible working arrangements and remote working.
Malta is a leader in LGBTIQ+ rights. There is no reason why the same cannot happen in female labour participation.
Marija Sara Vella GafàMarija Sara Vella Gafà is a Labour Party candidate for the European Parliament elections.