Presentation of Book
Anthony M. Abela. 2000. Values of Women and Men in the Maltese Islands:
A Comparative European Perspective. Valletta: Commission for the Advancement
of Women, Ministry for Social Policy. 328 pp.
Values of Women and Men in the Maltese Islands: A Comparative European
Perspective published by the Commission for the Advancement of Women
within the Ministry for Social Policy, is the outcome of creative networking.
It forms part of my on-going research on European Values in collaboration
with national and international institutions. This volume compares and
contrasts the values of women and men in Malta and ten other European countries
over a period of fifteen years. It draws on four waves of the European
Values Studies (EVS) carried out in Malta and comparable data from the
most recent surveys in ten other European countries that were available
at the beginning of my sociological analysis for this book.
As early as 1998, in my capacity as local EVS principal investigator,
I invited Dr Alfred Sant, then prime minister, for the Government of Malta
to sponsor the repeat EVS survey. This offer was taken up by the new administration
of Dr Fenech Adami, a few weeks after his return to office. The Office
of the Prime Minister (OPM) commissioned Misco International to carry out
the fieldwork. My first comparative report was presented during a meeting
of the Cabinet of Ministers on September 13, 1999, later published in five
articles of The Sunday Times.
This book undertakes a comparative analysis of values from a
gender perspective. It develops theoretical considerations from the international
literature and tests hypotheses scientifically in a comparative European
perspective. In many respects, this study complements my earlier work Women
and Men in the Maltese Islands: Statistics from the Census of Population
and Housing (Abela 1998). It examines similarities and differences
between women and men on the values of leisure, religion, the family, the
work ethic, voluntary work, solidarity, politics, parenting, morality and
contemporary social issues. It takes into consideration specific groups
of women and men in diverse social conditions and settings: single, home-makers,
married mothers and fathers with dependent children, working mothers, widows,
separated, women and men of different educational levels, social class,
age and other social variables. Where appropriate, it reports results from
statistical analyses through cross-tabulations, tests of significance,
correlations and factor analyses.
The investigation makes use of comparable data from ten other
European countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France,
Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Russia and Spain. Together they represent
member and non-member countries of the European Union, as well as applicant
and non-applicant countries from Southern and Eastern Europe. Results for
Malta are compared with the average for all eleven countries taken together
and where appropriate by a breakdown for each separate country. As the
resultant European average is not restricted to the values of the European
Union, but includes those of northern, western, eastern and southern European
countries, it is more representative than the one obtained in earlier studies.
In all participant countries a random sample of over 1000 respondents
was drawn from the total adult population, 18 years and older. For the
eleven countries under consideration an overall sample of 16,290 was obtained
from a population of over 373,000,000 inhabitants. In the Maltese islands,
respondents were randomly selected from the complete list of registered
voters and interviewed in their homes.
Main findings
1. Gender differences over values, far from being given by nature, are
social and cultural constructs. Most significantly, higher-educated women
and mothers of growing-up children and teenagers depart from the expected
pattern requiring women to conform to the local tradition and men to experiment
with global post-traditional values.
2. As in other European countries, a shift is observed between generations
and genders away from the authoritarian towards the negotiating family.
The transitional generation, women parents in particular, are bridging
the gap to modernity in the values for the upbringing of future generations.
Themselves, having been brought up in an authoritarian style, these parents
want to impart tolerance and responsibility, preparing the new generation
to negotiate new ways of being and doing. In the emerging negotiating family
the new generation of children and teenagers, living as they are at the
intersection between global and local cultures, are re-educating their
older parents.
3. Differences on work and leisure are more a matter of gendered cultures
within and between countries than the sex of respondents. Gender participation
in paid work and non-paid activities, the sex ratio of chief wage-earners,
gender equality in employment and voluntary activities and the corresponding
work and leisure ethic significantly depend on respondents’ level of education,
age and marital status. A shift can be observed from a predominant masculine
work ethic towards an increasingly feminine, expressive, leisure and non-materialist
work ethic.
4. In Malta, the relatively low level of secularisation and the observed
gender differences in religiosity and church attendance for economically
active women and men posit a predominantly masculine culture. In the present
conditions, women’s role and values maintain in part their special religiosity,
and men continue to declare themselves religious, even if they leave most
of the practising to their women. Gender differences over religion, however,
are less significant for higher-educated younger respondents. Equal access
to higher education and work opportunities are expected to decrease the
gender gap in religiosity and secularisation.
5. In the eleven European countries under consideration, there is an
apparent gender gap on most political and social issues, materialist and
postmaterialist value orientations, in particular. On the one hand, all
over Europe, in the present social conditions, men have a greater interest
and are more active in politics than women in general. On the other hand,
women are more likely to support collective social policies than men in
general.
6. Just like their men counterparts, women are inclined towards feminine-postmaterialism
in virtue of their younger age, higher education, employment in the labour
market and engagement in unpaid voluntary work and not because of their
gender. Materialism and postmaterialism and their respective masculine
and feminine components are not gender specific. Irrespective of gender,
higher-educated working women and men are equally inclined to shift their
concerns from predominant masculine-materialist objectives towards feminine-postmaterialist
political value orientations for the society of the future.
7. In the present social conditions, however, dominant social structures
of the labour market, organised religion, the traditional family and the
welfare state, amongst other, do not cease to reproduce gendered value
orientations and the ensuing disparities between women and men in society.
To redress the balance there is need for a concerted effort by individual
citizens, policy makers, leaders and educators working in schools, churches,
government departments, social movements and a multiplicity of non-governmental
organisations in society.
8. Understanding what women and men want is central to determine how
the current priorities of the Government are able to affect people and
meet their needs. The study of changing values, as differentiated by gender
and other social groupings, allows policy makers to identify trends in
Maltese society in comparison to other countries. It contributes to the
development of gender-attuned social policies that have as an objective
the inclusion of all women and men in society. Similar on-going research
is an indispensable exercise for new directions in social policy.
February 21, 2001.
Professor Anthony M Abela
sociologist