Female Participation In Work And Politics In Malta Is On The Rise… But More Still Needs To Be Done
With gender quotas hot on the government’s agenda, the NSO has released statistics showing how female representation in the workforce has steadily increased, jumping up by 20% over a five-year period.
Political involvement, however, remains worryingly low. Although the percentage of women holding a seat has increased, it appears to have plateaued since 2012, unlike the steadily-increasing EU average.
In fact, Malta held the second lowest representation rate in the entire EU, only beating out Hungary.
Under-representation on the local council level is also evident, with females accounting for 21.9% of all local council representation, with only 13 of the 69 mayors being women.
It should be noted that Malta actually has equal gender representation at the European level, leading to questions as to why there is such a clear discrepancy when it comes to local elections.
Out of the 220,000-strong employed population, 88,000 were women, who mostly work as service and sales roles (22,000), professionals (17,000) and clerical support (14,100).
A clear distinction between the male and female workforce emerges when looking at the level of education of the employees. When it comes to men, the workforce is mostly composed of low-level educated men (44.1%), while only 24.7% held a higher education.
In contrast, 34.5% of employed women held a higher education, while only 27% held a low level of education.
While both sexes are equally represented in the professional sphere, there is a distinct discrepancy when it comes to management roles, with men (8,206) accounting for more than double the number of women (4,064).
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