Over 62,000 women entered or rejoined workforce since 2013

A total of 62,752 women newly entered or rejoined the workforce since 2013, figures tabled in Parliament show.

The number represents the number of women who started working for the first time or re-entered the working world after an absence of five years or more.

The information, which was supplied by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo to a question by Labour MP Byron Camilleri in Parliament on Monday, shows that, since 2013, the number of women in the workforce has grown each year.

Last year saw 12,100 women enter the workforce, the highest number in the last five years.

The government has prioritised increasing the rate of female workforce participation, which has historically been low compared to other EU countries.

It has moreover often highlighted how measures such as free childcare and in-work benefits were encouraging women to work.

New equality laws current being discussed in Parliament have amongst their aims ensuring that nobody is discriminated against on the basis of gender when it comes to employment.

Furthermore, in an address during EY’s Attractiveness Summit in October, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that encouraging more women to work, together with improving education and attracting foreign talent, were the key to solving Malta’s skills shortage.

Muscat had been reacting to the results of EY’s Attractiveness Survey, which found that an increasing labour shortage problem is one of the biggest issues facing Maltese foreign direct investors, with only 27% of foreign businesses saying they were managing to source people with the required skills.

The below is the information tabled in Parliament by minister Bartolo: