Maltese Gender Equality Expert Makes Case For MP Quotas, Insists They’re Not Insulting To Women

Article here. Excerpt:

'Gender equality expert and university lecturer Anna Borg has argued that gender quotas for MPs aren’t insulting to women and that the power of political incumbency makes them necessary.

Borg wrote a status following last night’s debate on L-Erbgħa Fost il-Ġimgħa, in which family lawyer Nickie Vella de Fremeaux and Chamber of SMEs CEO Abigail Mamo warned the proposed quotas risk sending out the message that women and men aren’t equal.

“Yet nobody batted an eye lid when Joseph Muscat, Adrian Delia, Clyde Caruana, Bernard Grech , Miriam Dalli and most recently Oliver Scicluna found themselves in the national parliament without ever standing for a national election.”

Borg warned that the power of incumbency makes it extremely tough for women to get elected to Parliament, seeing the vast majority of sitting MPs are men.

“It is proven that out of every three seats up for grabs, two will be taken by the current incumbents, who are in their vast majority men,” she said. “That leaves very little space for new faces, and unless special measures are put in place for a temporary period, this pattern will simply keep repeating itself.”'