|
The Commission on Gender Equality ought to know by now that women are not after chocolate. Women are after equality and equal opportunities and for a stop to abuses in our legal system - abuses which continue to inflict inhuman and degrading treatment upon women. Women are after a stop to domestic violence. Women are after an EU constitution that is not sexist.
Women want to be treated as equal citizens. Women want the Commission to turn lip service into deeds.
About three months ago the Government set up the Commission on Gender Equality – a commission composed of men and women who so far have only made a noise on chocolate and on nothing else. They have, to date, failed to identify issues that need to be addressed so that equality between men and women is put into practice. This is hardly surprising as most of these members have other appointments in other government bodies and they are more concerned about how to stay afloat rather than how to champion the causes for inequality in this country.
I had, on the occasion of Women’s Day, highlighted the hardship that many married women have to endure whilst they are in a process of separation. I have also conducted a series of radio programmes on the subject on Campus FM and a copy of the series was presented to Minister Cristina so that action is taken to stop the humiliation that women have to go through to get to know, by right, the wealth and debts accumulated by their husband during marriage. But it seems that all this has fallen on deaf ears.
However, I am not going to stop there and hereunder I am going to illustrate in simple terms the torture that women have to go through to get the information which they have access to only on paper:
a) A woman wanting to know the assets of her husband needs to institute a court case. Without a court case she cannot know what the assets of her husband are.
b) She needs to humiliate herself and ask permission from the Court for the banks, the director of vehicle registration, investors, stock exchange, employers, companies etc to be exempted from professional secrecy and provide her with the information;
c) Once this authorisation is given, she has to summon them as witnesses;
d) If they do not turn up, she has to summon them again;
e) If, when they provide the information, it results that the husband has transferred any assets to X, then the women has to make an application to the Court to allow her to summon X as a witness and to exempt him from professional secrecy;
f) If, when X is summoned, he testifies that the monies or investments are in the name of her husband and of a third party, the woman has to go back to the judge and ask for permission to summon the third party and exempt him from professional secrecy;
g) She now has to issue another summons, and pray to God that the third party is located by the court marshals and he appears during the sitting.
h) If the husband has shares in a company, she has to go back to the judge to exempt the accountant of the company from professional secrecy.
i) If she discovers that the company is extinct and the business is being carried out by another company, she has to go through the whole procedure again and humble herself before the judge, whom I can say understands these hardships but has his hands tied up by the wording of the law.
And yet all these musical chairs, this waste of money and time for women and the courts (Minister of Justice please note) can be avoided if Parliament becomes sensible to women’s issues and amends the Professional Secrecy Act so that no secrecy is applicable with regards to information relating to the community of acquests.
In this way, the judge will no longer be inundated with hundreds of applications and court cases, and women will be able to get the information without having to resort to the Court.
But, for the Commission on Gender Equality, women are more concerned about not being allowed to eat a certain brand of chocolate than for not being allowed to have access to the common basket which we all refer to as the community of acquests.
I invite the members of the Commission and the Chief Executive or any of them to come and spend two hours in the morning at the family court and there they will have a taste of what women are after. I also invite them to come to a sitting in the magistrate’s court when maintenance and domestic violence issues are treated. There they will have first hand experience of gender inequality in practice.
But these people are not sensitive enough to what women have to go through. Had it been so, I would have seen them or their representative during the silent march organised lately against domestic violence. In fact I expected them to issue a statement urging the government to introduce the law on domestic violence. But no, nothing of the sort…instead they slap us in the face by issuing a statement on chocolate. If only they know how much they have offended us women by doing that!
I do not think that the Commission is familiar with the EU Treaty as otherwise it would have presented a report to the Government so that the principle of equality is firmly enshrined in the Treaty. The European Women’s Lobby Group in Brussels, of which the National Council of Women is a member, is lobbying hard for the new title 116 which enshrines the principle of equality between men and women as a fundamental principle of the Union. The group argues that the treaty includes titles on youth and the environment, so why not on equality? The European women also wish the treaty provision on equality to cover education, vocational training, career advancement, pay, conditions of employment and social security. They are also campaigning for specific treaty provisions to allow for positive action measures in favour of women where inequalities persist.
Neither is the Commission on Gender Equality familiar with the text of the draft of the EU Constitution which continues to insist, in Article I-2, that equality between men and women is a value and not a right as otherwise it would have insisted with the Government and with Fr Peter that this is not acceptable as gender equality is a right and not a value.
This would in turn imply that equality between men and women would become an explicit criterion for the eligibility for Union membership (as stated in the draft Constitutional Treaty under Title IX: Union Membership) and its violation may, under the conditions of Title IX, lead to a suspension of Union membership rights.
It may not be amiss to point out to the Commission that within the EU member states, there are a growing number of member states’ Constitutions guaranteeing gender equality. So what is keeping them from proposing this also for Malta?
Women can do away with chocolate - but they cannot do away with their bread and butter. Women are not after chocolate but are after their bread and butter which is theirs by right. It is so unfortunate that no Commission and no politician and no women’s groups has had the courage to take women’s rights seriously! And it is more unfortunate that so far only eating chocolates has been identified as an issue concerning equality between men and women.
No wonder that only chocolate girls make the headlines nowadays!
|
