All-male Electoral Commission to be gender-balanced in the future

Legislators want to increase the Electoral Commission members to 10 and ensure a more gender-balanced set-up for the future

12 January 2021, 11:02am
by Kurt Sansone

1 min read

Malta's all-male Electoral Commission: A photo of the Electoral Commission from a couple of years back caused a commotion because of its all-male set-up at a time when the country was discussing the need for more female representation in decision-making bodies

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Changes are in the pipeline so that Malta’s all-male Electoral Commission will be more gender balanced in the future.

As things stand today, the Electoral Commission is composed of eight members and a chairperson. All current members are men.

However, changes to the law that form part of the Gender Corrective Mechanism Bill being discussed in parliament will increase the number of members to 10, apart from the chairperson, and introduce a legal requirement for a gender balanced set up.

The proposed change makes it mandatory that at a minimum, four members should be women and four should be male.

The Bill also includes changes to the Constitution that will make it possible to award a maximum of 12 extra seats in parliament to the under-represented gender after the election outcome is known.

Although the Bill refers to the under-represented gender, historically women have always been under-represented in parliament. In 70 years, there has been little if no progress at all in the number of women MPs.

Legislators hope to jumpstart the system by ensuring that the under-represented gender makes up at least 40% of MPs after the next general election.

The mechanism also has a sunset clause, which means that after 20 years it will automatically cease to function unless parliament makes other provisions.

Kurt Sansone is Executive Editor of MaltaToday. He was formerly deputy editor of MaltaTod...