Gender mainstreaming in Malta

Abstract

Gender equality is not enshrined in the Maltese Constitution and the discourse surrounding gender mainstreaming is relatively new. The first reference to the term in official documentation is the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) Circular No. 24/2000 ‘Gender Mainstreaming’ (issued in 2000). Previous documentation focuses on equality of the sexes and gender equality, but gender mainstreaming is now defined as the ‘process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action and integrating them within the dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the policies and programmes in all political, economic and social spheres’. An EU report included Malta in the group of countries that ‘… are in the first phase of gender mainstreaming implementation. They have started to implement gender mainstreaming in strict relation to EU equal treatment directives and have little infrastructure for the implementation of gender mainstreaming. The integration of gender equality issues within national policies is mainly associated with membership in the EU’. Malta itself ‘reported that they have plans neither for gender equality policy nor for gender mainstreaming’ and its use of gender mainstreaming tools has declined since 2012. Malta has also asked for EU funding to implement and evaluate the current gender mainstreaming propositions, going so far as to suggest stricter supervision by the European Commission. Despite this, Malta has a toolkit for training purposes, it uses gender impact assessment and has tried gender budgeting. Although ‘there were specific resources in form of money or personnel for implementing gender mainstreaming’, it is generally viewed as a human resources issue within the country. It appears, for instance, that the (limited) statistical data produced by different entities could bene􀀚t from greater coordination, a task that could be managed by the newly established Gender Mainstreaming Unit. An inter-ministerial committee that is to be launched could play a similar coordination role.