Evaluating female participation in politics in Malta and Finland

Abstract

Having the same percentage of women participation in politics as men, will stimulate gender equality and challenge the current structures of politics (power) and sociological ideals that will shift towards the needs of women’s and their interest towards the policymaking. The inclusion of both genders in the decision making will affect in better the democracy itself and the economy will also benefit as women will also be an active actor of the economic development. Economic development will improve since it will encourage more women to enter the labour market and as a direct effect of more women working, there will be an economic growth. This research paper will discuss the gender representation in national parliament. The researcher chose Malta and Finland for this study in order to analyse if the countries have reached the gender balance representation. Furthermore, this research will discuss past studies done and will be discussing feminism, gender representation and also Gender Corrective Mechanism. The Gender Corrective Mechanism was used for the first time in the Maltese General Election of 2022. Additional 12 seats were provided, 6 for the Malta Labour Party and 6 for the Nationalist Party. This mechanism provides even chairs to the two main parties in order to maintain the balance in parliament but also reaching the 30% of women representation.