Helping women prosper
Joseph Muscat and his policies have transformed opportunities for women in our country. They range from the significance of having a female President to better opportunities in the workplace and the boost that came from the introduction of universal free childcare.
I even played a part in promoting the advance of women on the global stage, helping to organise the first ever Women’s Forum at the Commonwealth Summit held in Malta in 2015.
In the past four years, the number of women working full-time has increased by 15,000, that is more than the rise in the previous twelve years taken together.
Under this administration, the employment rate of women aged under 40 has risen to 63%. This increase of 7% occurred at a time when, in the rest of Europe, there was a 1% rise. From being the country with the lowest female employment, we are now in a situation where just six EU countries have higher female employment rates.
Free childcare was, of course, the main reason why employment improved so much, enabling women to pursue job opportunities while still providing the best care possible for their children.
There have been other measures that have helped women work. The tapering of benefits to single parents, for instance, has eliminated the poverty trap that was making thousands of women reluctant to seek work. In fact, today the employment rate of single parents is nearly double that of 2012.
During this legislature we started to enforce the obligation that employers provide employment opportunities for people with disabilities. This was a law that successive administrations never enforced. We changed this, and today the number of disabled persons working is up by a thousand, and the number of disabled on the unemployment register has halved.
In the next legislature, we will do the same with legislation on equal pay for equal work. We will fight the gender pay gap with the same tenacity. We must improve legislation and, more importantly, enforce it.
We are committed to improve further our free childcare programme. We will spread the service to more localities, particularly in areas with a concentration of commercial activity. We will adjust the times of the service so that it can serve the needs of all workers, including those who work during the night. We will refine the system so that it does not penalise parents in genuine cases when they cannot take their children to childcare. We will also extend the service to cover very difficult situations, such as terminal illness cases within families.
For those who opt for private child care, we will provide an income tax deduction up to €4,000. We will also offer employers who provide childcare facilities to their workers an income tax deduction of €50,000. This deduction will be applicable also on administrative costs or wages of child carers, and not just on capital expenditures. In this way we will help create a culture where the private sector cooperates with the public sector to provide childcare for all workers.
After the childcare revolution, it is now time for the teleworking and flexible time revolution. This will be another leap forward, particularly for women. Whereas today these family-friendly measures are primarily found in the public sector, we want to create a culture where they spread to the private sector. So, we are going to offer an income tax deduction of up to €30,000 to employers that incur costs to introduce teleworking and flexible hours systems.
The final component of our employment proposals concerns maternity and paternity leave and sick leave. After having reduced the impact of maternity leave through the introduction of the maternity leave fund, we will reform maternity and paternity leave so it becomes shared family leave. This will not only continue to provide more opportunities for women, but also give fathers the chance to take a more active part in the most crucial moments in family life.
From 2018 parents will be able to use their sick leave to care for sick children. Combined with the public holidays we will be giving back, this will make a real difference to families.
On the 3rd June we should vote for Joseph Muscat’s proposals to continue giving women the best chance to prosper.