Government committed to reduce gender gap in business sector

Minister for the economy and small enterprises Chris Cardona today said that government will be doing its utmost to raise the level of self-employed women in Malta.

During a meeting with the President of the European Socialists Party, Zita Gurmai, Cardona said that while the gender gap in the Maltese working field was narrowing, there was still quite a large separation when it came to the business sector.

"The active participation of women in local business is a required element of the economy which government is striving for," Cardona said. "In this regard, Malta has one of the lowest levels across the European Union with only 5% of women claiming to be self-employed."

The minister said that government was committed to formulating a "serious, continuous and permanent" strategy to encourage women to enter the sector of entrepreneurship, adding that when women did enter the business sector, they tended to go in for less innovative and less risky fields.

"Although the gender gap as a whole is decreasing, we need to double our efforts to promote female participation in business roles," he said, stressing that a recent report published by Standards and Poor's -in which Malta's economy was deemed to be stable and predicted to remain so - was partly down to government initiatives directed at facilitating women's career opportunities such as the free childcare scheme.

On her part, Gurmai praised government's commitment to the cause and cited Malta's relatively low level of unemployment as a very positive factor. However, she warned that continuous work needed to be done on a European level to ensure that women's participation in the workforce and other spheres such as politics continues to be given its due importance.