Malta’s Consultative Council for Women’s Rights (CCWR) has called for an awareness-raising campaign using female leaders like Prof. Charmaine Gauci to highlight that women are effective leaders and decision-makers as shown in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The council, which consists of representatives from women’s rights NGOs, praised Superintendent of Public Health Charmaine Gauci’s work tackling the virus calling her a “role model to women and men”.

“The pandemic helped to demonstrate to the Maltese that women are quite capable of being good decision-makers. The authorities need to come up with effective measures to ensure more women are given the chance to participate at decision and policy-making levels,” CCWR wrote.

They urged the government to ensure that a proportionate amount of women are present at the decision-making table linked to the crisis task force and response teams to COVID-19. Additionally, entities in the public and private sphere must also work to promote diversity for sustainable decisions, to ensure women’s ideas are not left behind.

Charmaine Gauci has been nominated for the Ġieħ ir-Republikka for her work in the last three months tackling the outbreak of COVID-19 in Malta. Malta was called a “model country” by the WHO for its handling of the health crisis.

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