PN MEPs abstain on ‘empowering girls through education’ report

The Nationalist MEPs have abstained on a report entitled ‘Empowering girls through education’, which includes a call for compulsory sex education in schools.

The non-legislative report explored challenges and opportunities for the empowerment of women through education, as gender stereotyping and sexism remain the greatest obstacles to achievement of gender equality.

In a statement, the Labour’s women section praised the PL MEPs who supported the Rodrigues report while expressing disappointment at the PN’s position.

Nisa Laburisti chair Claudette Abela Baldacchino said it was important to ensure that children receive an adequate education as they are constantly bombarded with sexual messages through different media.

“It is also important that as a country we overcome gender stereotypes and ensure that boys and girls are not influenced to choose a career based on their gender,” she said.

Abela Baldacchino added that sex education was one way of addressing teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

“We must stop looking at our society as living in its own bubble, cut off from the rest of the world.”

PN MEP Therese Comodini Cachia has argued that Malta was already addressing such issues at schools and the EU was “not empowered” to determine national curricula.

“We are not at all opposed to sex education at primary school level but this document would force us to go further than we have, as a society, decided so far,” she told The Times.