OPINION - ANNA MALLIA | Sunday, 15 July 2007

Equality, my foot!

In Malta we have a commission entitled the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality whose aim is also to ensure that there is equality between the sexes, I am afraid to say that they are more focused on equality on paper than in practice.
So far we have had press releases about the chocolate bar which was being advertised for girls or boys only, about the term to be used for a female “chairperson” and programmes, etc.; all financed by the EU, which to my mind were all money down the drain. I say this because they tried to portray how fulfilling it is for a woman to work and how frustrating it is to be a full-time mum, ignoring the fact that unless you have free childcare, in Malta it does not pay to work.
So far they have expressed no concern about how equality between the sexes is being put into practice. I invite them to come to the Family Court & see for themselves how equality in the law is working in practice. There is no equality between spouses, because no spouse has access to information about the assets of the other spouse during the marriage. So much so, that no wife and no husband can make verifications with the banks, the employer, the vehicle and testing department, the phone companies, the department of social security, the accountant, the auditor, unless there is court authorization.
It is high time that the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality to realise that the female sex is worst hit by these equality measures simply because women do not have direct access to information about their husband’s income. Women have to resort to legal aid in order to be able to get information about the assets of the community of acquests, information which should be outrightly accessible to either spouse on the presentation of their marriage certificate.
Why should we continue to sponsor spouses from our taxes, when they have hundreds of thousands of liri of assets pertaining to the Community of Acquests, for the simple reason that information about the assets can only be obtained by instituting a separation case and that the separation casebe pending?
I am afraid that the Department of Social Security is using two weights and two measures in this regard: if a woman applies for social assistance (LM130 every four weeks plus bonuses and other concessions) claiming she is not being given maintenance by her husband, and the DSS decides not to verify with the husband, he is not bound to refund the amount of social assistance given to the wife. But if the DSS decides to send for the husband, the department claims a refund. This is a policy which does not make sense.
Neither can the present system – i.e, that you can register as many children as you wish as being of an unknown father be allowed to continue. I praise one of the judges in the Family Court who lately scolded a particular mother who instated a court case so that her three children would be declared children of an unknown father. The judge was lenient in telling her that he will allow one child, but not three. In effect the judge was doing a better job than the
Department of Social Security which allows you to register as many children as you want as a single parent with no questions asked.
The department should no longer allow this to happen. There is no such person as a single mother: women know the men they have slept with and it is a shame that the Minister is still tolerating this flagrant abuse of the social security system. Oddly enough, no man can register as a single father and I wonder how the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality feels about this issue.
Just as the Commission was hasty in airing its views about the chocolate and the terms used for female judges and chairpersons, it should show the same vigour in matters which are more serious and are attacking the social fabric of our society. Not only with regard to the hardships facing spouses in separation proceedings because of the inaccessibility of information without court expenses for court authorization, but also with regard to abuses in the social security system and those men and women who do not even have basic schooling.
I understand that the Commission has now undertaken a study on the elimination of discrimination from all our pieces of legislation and regulation. So far, so good. In 1993 we eliminated discrimination between husband and wife in our family law but what happened was that other laws were introduced which defeated the whole concept of non-discrimination between spouses. Of course, these subsequent laws such as data protection or bank secrecy are meant for men and women, but the victim of these laws is the spouse who has no financial means to obtain the information about the otherspouse’s assets and debts during marriage, thus making accessibility to such information more difficult and expensive.
Why should a woman rely on the information given by her husband because she has no means to verify this? Why should the court be burdened with more separation cases simply because it is only through the court that a spouse can get the information about the assets and liabilities of the husband? Why should the court be burdened with more separation cases even if the other spouse gives the release to the banks for information, because such information can only be obtained for free through the courts? Why should the spouse risk her or his money in court, simply because the system does not allow him or her to get the information outside court? Data protection and other secrecy laws are proving to be a common cause of matrimonial problems and are giving power to those people who have such data.
In conclusion, I cannot refrain from commenting on the Super One programme, ‘Cayotic’, with its provocative girls making provocative moves around a pole, shown at peak time and classified as fit for children. I am sure that the Commission has failed in not airing its views on the programme, just as much as Super One has failed in allowing children watch this programme.
I know that the Commission for the Promotion of Equality has its hands tied, in the sense that EU money that it receives have to be spent according to the EU wishes, but I am sure that the EU does not favour career women over those on the shop floor. It is high time that the Minister includes people from the shop floor in the Commission. They may not have university degrees but they surely have the know-how of what is shackling our society from putting equality into practice.