Malta rises in EU gender equality index

Malta still maintains its place as one of the three largest employment gaps in the EU-28 but has shown significant progress as a substantial percentage of women entered the labour market from 2005 to 2015, the Gender Equality Index 2017 report shows.

In fact, Malta showed the most significant progress out of all participating EU countries, with a point increase of +17.5.

The index is published by the European Institute of Gender Equality, an EU agency.

In the domain of work overall, Sweden, Denmark, and Netherlands remain the leaders in general equality, while the most significant improvements in the past 10 years can be noted in Malta (+10.2 points) and Luxembourg (+5.9 points).

Malta has also been quick to improve its score in the domain of money, showing a +12.1 point increase in women’s access to economic independence, second only to Slovakia which showed an increase of +12.5 points.

Seven other Member States – Germany, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, and the United Kingdom – showed marginal progress in achieving gender equality in the domain of money (progress of 3 points or less), while Greece is the only country that regressed in this regard, as its score went down by -1.2 points.

The report also noted a correlation between an increase in financial resources and progress in economic equality between the genders for all member states except for Croatia and the UK. Improvements in financial resources, which may include various types of income such as pensions and benefits, was mostly observed in Malta (20.3 points) and Slovakia (16.3).

However, while the vast majority of Member States improved their scores in the domain of power, Malta regressed (-0.4 points) in gender equality in decision-making positions across political, economic, and social spheres.  On the other hand, Italy (+29.2), France (+24.6), and Slovenia (+24.1) showed the most significant progress in the domain of power.

Locally, the political sphere is yet to catch up with the increase of women in the workforce, however, as Malta, together with Hungary and Romania, has consistently scored lowest in political representation in the EU-28, with the women’s scare of parliamentary seats standing at around 10% with no significant progress in the past 10 years.