Stop insulting women... and men!

The polls that were published last weekend reveal a reality that must have been clear to campaigners all along: the result hangs on a majority of undecided women. Women are now subject to several below-the-belt blows employed by the No campaign.

Many of us felt these tactics were gravely insulting when they were first employed and although some of us did draw attention that these could backfire, some people behind the campaign stubbornly rammed their way forward. The plan is to appeal to women’s perceived vulnerability.

Families are interdependent and whenever one of the spouses drops out, the one who is left to raise kids on his/her own suffers. It has been like that since time immemorial and it will remain so. Whenever men emigrated on their own, died or abandoned ship, women led a life of hardship that was exacerbated by the fact that most women had little education, few opportunities and limited access to the Labour market, especially if they had children.

For many years, Malta’s female participation rate in the labour market remained low. It is in fact the lowest in Europe. Feminist activists have been drawing attention to this problem for decades but in post-independence Malta, there was initially very little action. Malta was then deemed to have higher priorities.

There were political economic reasons for this; with more women seeking employment, the state would have needed to create twice the amount of jobs. Job creation was one of the biggest challenges as Malta drastically restructured its economy.

So for years, lip service to greater female participation was not backed by adequate structures to enable both spouses to work, unless they chose gender-friendly careers like teaching, where working hours coincided with children’s school hours.

But there are also cultural factors. For decades, the main cultural force, the Catholic Church, advocated traditional domestic roles for women. Pressures culminated in the annual Santa Maria pastoral letters, which clearly reminded women they had to put domestic roles before academic or career advancement.

There was a positive development in the early days of Archbishop Cremona in 2007; then he acknowledged women’s public role and even advocated gender-friendly measures from the state. Given this backdrop it is not surprising that many women put family before career or financial considerations for the love of their children. They either took long career breaks or stopped working altogether, even when more obtained even higher educational credentials than their husbands.

Nevertheless, throughout the years, widowed and separated women struggled hard to earn a living. Those in unsteady relations never left the formal or informal job market. Some separated women chose to work even if they had a right to alimony. They preferred to work than dependence on a man, who had the right to remote control their personal lives.

It is paradoxical how No campaigners are putting the names of their female members to a very sexist and misleading campaign. Take the letters that were endorsed by two strong independent women; ironically they aim to reinforce stereotyped images of weak, helpless and dependent women! Those letters are an insult to those of us who wish to achieve parity in our relationships. They hurt all of those who would never stay in an unhappy or unloving relationship out of dependency on a spouse or partner. Their suggestion is not merely insulting, it is also morally wrong.

It is true that we have the lowest female participation rate in the whole of Europe. But the situation is also changing. With the Europeanization of Malta, we now have targets on gender mainstreaming and gender parity. Our political class is more open to gender-balanced policies. The economic realities of families and of the country necessitate gender parity at a domestic level and at a national level. The tax payer is investing heavily in an educational system where 60% of all university graduates are now female. More men are happily playing a greater domestic role.

And this is another reason why this campaign is insulting to men too.

When you listen to No speakers, they tend to portray men as deceivers, defectors or overwhelmed by middle-age crisis. Yet, we all know men who make huge personal sacrifice to support children from their former marriages. Moreover, most responsible men and women stop producing kids they cannot afford to raise even when they form new relationships.

This malicious scaremongering is intended to appeal to our deepest fears. They know that campaigns succeed if they manage to touch people’s hearts and pockets. But this tactic would only have worked if they did not offend modern-day intelligent individuals

 On Saturday people are voting on a matter of principle. We will vote to indicate to Parliament whether we support a divorce bill that seals the end to a marriage four years after a separation. If people support this, it is up to our honourable legislators to fine-tune the law and to ensure it is watertight so that the rights of women, children and men are safeguarded.

If people agree to legalize divorce as a matter of principle, it is then the duty of parliamentarians to work together to refine it through the various stages of the debate. So let us please put aside misleading legalistic jargon on alimonies and let us stop confusing the men and scaring the women in the street in vain.