In her welcome address, NCW President Doreen Micallef, traced the initiatives of the NCW over the past 42 years and its work at European and International level and the changes brought about in Malta as a result of the Council’s recommendations and resolutions.

Mr Reno Camilleri NSO Acting Director, spoke about the role of NSO in producing statistics regarding gender equality not only because it is a core concept of NSO but also as a national institution to contribute to Malta’s achievement of the Lisbon goals.

Hon. Minister Louis Galea, Minister for Education, Youth and Employment highlighted the importance of ensuring that there are opportunities for women in decision-making posts at all levels. Minister Galea also stated that Government is committed to strengthening policies to achieve these objectives.

Ms Maureen O'Neill BA (Hons), EESC Expert and Researcher, gave her reactions and recommendations, emphasizing the importance of education, starting with the family, not only to change stereotyping but also as concrete measures to encourage gender equality behaviour at the earliest stages of life. Ms Maureen also gave examples of good practices in the UK, in particular in enterprises where the concepts of flexibility and diversity were introduced and which gave marked results in company profit.

Dr Joanna Drake, Head of the EU Commission Representation Malta, spoke about the need to find practical and effective solutions that deliver results. She stated that structural deficits need to be addressed across the board. She encouraged NCW not to lose sight of its goals in its strategies to bring about changes in government policies, trade unions, political parties and other institutions to ensure that opportunities for women in decision-making are a reality. Dr Drake also spoke about the EU policy that is treating gender equality as a global issue. She also encouraged the participants to make use of EU funds to address the issue of women in decision-making and other issues

Mr Etienne Caruana, National Statistics Office Manager, presented the results of the survey. Preliminary results clearly reveal that many women are not coming forward for top posts because of the difficulties in reconciling long hours of work and family responsibilities. The study also reveals that both women and men fail to see the relationship between a woman's life pattern and her gender and the negative impact on her career path choices.

In her concluding remarks, NCW President Doreen Micallef highlighted a number of observations of the findings. To women job satisfaction seems to play a more important role to them than it does to men. Does this mean that women will make better and more devoted workers at higher positions? Married women seem to perceive that their chances of attaining a promotion is much lower than if they were single. Is this their own perception or is it employer related? Child care/partner support are very important factors in determining whether women can move forward in their career. However gender does not seem to have a high level of importance in keeping them back from getting a promotion.

The findings revealed a great difference between women and men in participation in political parties, trade unions and NGOs. There seems to be a greater interest by women to join an NGO in the future than in political parties and trade unions. Women show that they would like females to be present in our political system both in parliament and in local councils as it is our right and because we are capable of doing it. So why is it that we actually do lack participation? Also gender is not an issue when voting for a person and this shows that if political parties were to present good female candidates, their probabilities of succeeding could be quite high.

Women without children: high percentage of them (70%) who don’t work. Child care can’t be the problem here. So is it partner support/family support very important to working women as attested by the support given by grandparents in child-care.Clearly the findings reveal that perceptions and actual facts are very different

Consequently, it is the perception of both men and women that needs to be addressed together with changes in current societal structures. NCW believes that gender equality in decision-making is a societal issue. Policies based on the concept of diversity of human resources (in this case, women) enrich society and therefore should not be underestimated.

NCW is convinced that this study is a timely opportunity to encourage an objective debate and to propose concrete measures, to address the issue and to pave the way for young women.