‘Women In Public Life’ Seminar Questions Use Of Gender Quotas In Maltese Politics

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The University of Malta’s Department of Gender and Sexualities hosted a seminar on the theme of women in public life, with a particular focus on women in Maltese politics. As a follow up to the previous session “Situating Feminism”, Wednesday’s event took on a more specific concern, not to mention timely, given the upcoming elections, and the event’s hosts also pointed out that it will be interesting to see how women in politics are portrayed by the media.

Why women are needed in politics

Similar to the previous event, three students presented their studies. Ingrid Vella Scerri presented Gender Parity in Politics: Are Gender Quotas the Way Forward? Lessons Learnt from European Island States, Charity Njeri Kamau followed up with Chama As Tool for Women’s Empowerment in Kenya, and Theresa Kuymizakis presented Women at the Top: The Facilitating Factors That Contribute to Women’s Career Advancement in Organisations.

Without discounting the efforts of Kamau and Kuymizakis, it’s difficult to keep politics out of any discussion in a local context, and the issue of women in politics is something that the world, not just Malta, is in dire need of. The first thing we need to do, as Vella Scerri explained, is to understand why more women are needed in politics, and it’s intrinsically linked to proper democracy.

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Women simply being allowed to vote does not mean they are equally represented; the glaring lack of women in positions of power in politics and corporate roles is evidence of this. It’s essentially a democratic deficit meaning that women’s needs and requirements are missed out. The UN lists six arguments as to why more women need to be included in the decision-making process: the justice argument, the experience argument, the interest argument, the critical mass argument, the symbolic argument (establishing more role models to inspire more women to participate in a certain field) and the democracy argument.

Once the democracy argument is settled though, then more female representation will automatically filter into the other categories. Put simply, if we want to see more policies that positively address women’s issues, then it’s women who need to enact that. And if we don’t get more women involved in politics, the younger generation of today will have fewer role models to look up to in the future. The subsequent question is “how do we get more women involved in politics?”

Quotas are not the way

Plenty of countries realised that by not including women in politics, they were missing out on roughly 50% of the population’s wants, needs and ideas. There are different ways of going about getting more women into politics, with one being gender quotas. Malta’s move to allocate up to 12 additional parliamentary seats to “the under-represented sex” if they do not reach 40% of the proportion of MPs might look good at face value, but even giving it a second thought shows how flawed that thinking is.

Proof that female politicians need acceptance, not quotas

The additional parliamentary seats for women are added to the current incumbents, mainly men. Vella Scerri explained that given the way politics are done in Malta, the job of MP is almost one of a lifetime. Essentially, one could say that this quota system was designed in a way that “ticks off” increasing female participation in politics without disturbing the male dominance already in place. So, was the problem actually solved?

As one event guest put it, it’s the worst tokenisation of the issue. Other parties are excluded which means that the two big parties stand to benefit the most, so it’s conflicting at best and discriminatory at worst. The need for systematic change has been emphasised by the lack of women running for this year’s election. The cosmetic number is there in parliament, but it’s the same names, the same people, but will more women be elected with more ones on the ballot sheet?

The quota, it can be argued, simply solidified the position of current incumbents. If the party machines don’t truly allow women the space they need and deserve, then women simply won’t be attracted into politics which makes Malta a weaker, poorer country for it. We have more women who are participating in politics by affiliating their names and faces to current or past candidates, which is a clear sign that the balance of power is still very much one-sided.

How did other countries do it?

Vella Scerri’s research saw her compare Malta’s situation to three other islands; Ireland, Iceland and Cyprus. The reasons these countries were chosen are because they’ve all got colonial history and depend on larger political alliances to address vulnerabilities. So, what do Vella Scerri’s findings point to?

Achieving parity is easier in countries that have embraced democracy for longer. Culture plays a huge role; in countries dominated by religions that follow a patriarchal structure, it’s always more difficult to get women more involved in politics. That’s due to hundreds of years of indoctrination leading to the notion that women are mostly caregivers, and their roles are mainly birthing children and taking care of the chores at home. That then extends into socio-economic aspects as well as education.

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Added to that is Malta’s incessant polarisation of views; it’s either black or white in most cases with little time for the grey areas in between, and this lack of unity drives people apart. What Iceland did in the early 2000s was to embrace women in politics, and not by implementing quotas, though some parties do require a minimum number of candidates to be women. Offering the same parental leave to both men and women, the first law on equal pay for men and women dates back to 1961.

Here’s what Malta needs to do…

So, should we scrap the quota strategy and bury it? Maybe not right now. As shown by Iceland, it was a change in culture that was needed, especially since one of the determining factors was that Iceland has embraced democracy and independence for far longer than Malta. The issue of religion and a thus far predominantly patriarchal society contribute to the view that women should not be seeking a life of public service, so if it’s through quotas that we can have more women in decision-making positions, then we’ll make do with that for now, but that will wear off quickly.

Maltese political parties will be paid by the state to recruit and train  women candidates | International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics
Image: iknowpolitics.org

The real change needs to be a societal one. We need to embrace the idea that giving men and women equal opportunities can only work to the benefit of the island. Cosmetic change quickly loses its effect, which is why the quota system needs to be substituted soon. One way of doing this would be to introduce limits on how long one can remain a member of parliament, which would result in a structural change across the political sphere in Malta.

Who knows, it might even help the smaller parties get elected and help current political discussions mature, as more common grounds are sought, rather than witness the current duopoly sink further into petty arguments. And there’s little doubt that more female participation will help lead to this, Iceland’s model proves that, and it’s what we should be aspiring for.

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