Women’s council deplores government opposition to quotas

The National Council of Women has dubbed as "shocking" news that the Maltese government will join a diplomatic push spearheaded by the United Kingdom, to oppose a law that will introduce mandatory quotas for women on public companies and private companies on the stock exchange.

The law, pushed by the EU's justice commissioner Viviane Reding, seeks to have 40% of all boards of directors for companies listed on the stock exchange made up of women, by 2020.

Justice minister Chris Said told MaltaToday yesterday the Maltese government believes the EU should stay out of such legislation and instead allow national governments to pursue their own equality measures.

"The Government's decision to oppose the boardroom gender quotas comes as shocking news to the National Council of Women," executive member Roselyn Borg said. "We urge the government to rethink its position and support the quota system. Gender balance is long overdue and opposing it is surely unacceptable.

"Currently only 13.7 per cent of board positions in listed European companies are held by women. Hence the proposal by the Commissioner Vice-President, Viviane Redding, proposal should be welcomed and supported not opposed. It is high time that the Maltese government supports women and aims to reach targets which benefit all - men and women."

According to the European Commission's database of gender quotas, Malta's 19 largest quoted companies trading on the Malta Stock Exchange are all chaired by men, with the company boards having just three women, while the rest of the directors, 97, are men.

The currently dismal representation of just 3% of women on company boards will mean a radical shake-up of Malta's largest companies' decision-making boards, affecting companies like Bank of Valletta, as well as other plcs like HSBC Malta, GO plc, International Hotel Investments, Fimbank, Lombard Bank, Farsons, Middlesea Insurance, Island Groups, and even Maltapost.

"Having gender balance in the boardroom is about having effective representation, which means a balanced representation of the Maltese population which is equally made up of males and females," the NCW's Roselyn Borg said.

"Malta is ready. Having a gender balance would contribute to better informed and better thought-through decisions. A company's clients are both male and female, so would it not be beneficial for the company to have a gender balanced representation on its board which would lead to products and services which are satisfactory to both sexes?"

Borg said that if a number of effective family-friendly measures had been in place then quotas would have not been necessary.

Borg said gender quotas, which she qualified should be temporary, help women break the glass ceiling and aim for top positions that were formerly mostly held by men. "By this affirmative action we are only providing equal opportunity to previously disadvantaged sex."

The quotas would affect companies like Bank of Valletta, in which government retains a 25% shareholding and the right to appoint the chairperson of the board of directors: BOV's nine-man board has no women, the last female director having been Marlene Mizzi, the former chairperson of defunct national shipping line Sea Malta. No woman has ever been appointed to chair the bank's board of directors.

In the case of state-owned companies trading on the stock exchange, gender quotas will come into force by 2018.

Justice minister Chris Said yesterday confirmed that Malta is part of a diplomatic push spearheaded by the UK to send a joint letter to the Commission president Joe Manuel Barroso to oppose the mandatory quotas. "Malta will continue to reiterate that any targeted measures in this area should be devised and implemented at national level," Said told MaltaToday.

Said said Malta recognised the importance of having more women actively engaged in power-sharing and in the decision-making process. However, he said quick solutions like the EU's quota law was not the best way to bring about such gender equality.

"It would be counterproductive for the EU to work towards developing legislative measures in terms of legally-binding quotas, given the very different situations and starting points in member states making it very difficult to foresee how a 'one-size-fits-all' solution can be implemented effectively across the EU."