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8 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 DECEMBER 2022 NEWS Christmas Specials • Women A woman's life-threatening miscarriage threw Malta in an intense debate on reproductive rights and access to abortion. Women working at Transport Malta and the Malta Philhar- monic Orchestra took their aggressors to court for sexual harassment in the workplace. MaltaToday looks back at the moments when women – their talents, their health, and their bodies – entered the spotlight this year. Breaking the political ceiling Women smashed through the glass ceiling in politics this year, with many women going on to attain high positions of power in Malta and abroad. Most notable was Roberta Met- sola's election to President of the European Parliament. The Mal- tese Nationalist MEP became the first woman since 1999 to occu- py the role after obtaining the support of an absolute majority of MEPs on the first round. In- deed, she received 74% of valid votes cast in the hemicycle in Strasbourg. She was also the first Maltese person to occupy one of the highest institutional posts in the EU. She received praise from across the political spectrum in Malta, with the Prime Minister, Opposition leader, and President all congratulating her on the ac- complishment. Locally, 2022 was the first year that the gender mechanism was used in a general election. The corrective mechanism was passed in 2021 to ensure gender parity in parliament. If the un- der-represented sex comprises less than 40% of all seats after the election outcome is known, the mechanism will kick in to elect a maximum of 12 additional MPs – six on either side of the House. Initially, only three women MPs were elected on the Labour Party ticket. These were Miriam Dalli, Julia Farrugia Portelli, and Alison Zerafa Civelli. The Na- tionalist Party only managed to elect one woman MP, which was Graziella Galea. After the casual elections, the Labour Party man- aged to bring another four wom- en into the parliamentary group: Rosianne Cutajar, Romilda Zarb Baldacchino, Rebecca Buttigieg and Katya De Giovanni. The Na- tionalist Party managed to elect two more women through casual elections, namely Rebekah Borg and Graziella Attard Previ. After the gender mechanism kicked in, the PL and PN parlia- mentary groups had 13 and nine women respectively. With 22 women from a parliament of 79 MPs, only 28% of MPs are wom- en. This is the highest ever ratio of women in the House of Repre- sentatives. Women's poor performance in the election, with only four wom- en elected before the casual elec- tions and gender mechanism, led many to question whether the gender quota punished women candidates. University of Malta pro-rector Prof Carmen Sam- mut, who was part of the team that drafted the gender quotas law, pointed out that many es- tablished women on both sides did not run, which could have been a contributing factor. Mir- iam Dalli had also pointed out that the women on the PL tick- et obtained almost 20,000 first- count votes. In 2017 they had received 14,000. But the end result is still a par- l i a m e n t with a high women-to-men ratio, which could allow women politicians to gain from exposure and build confidence in Malta's political landscape. Femicide issue rises to the fore But gender equality does not trickle down from the parlia- ment to the streets. The new year was ushered in with the news that a woman was found dead in Ġnien Indipendenza in Sliema. Her body was found at 6:30am on the slope leading from the promenade to the park. Police later identified her as Paulina Dembska, a 29-year-old Polish woman who was studying in Malta. The story of her death rocked Malta as details started to unravel throughout that week. Dembska was living in a Sliema hostel, and was a frequent visitor to the gardens where she fed the cat colony. She went to feed the cats at around 5am on 2 January when Abner Aquilina, the man accused of murdering her, beat her, raped her, and killed her. There was a massive laceration on Dembska's neck, and a clump of her hair was found on the nearby railing. Her death prompted a wide-ranging discussion on gen- der equality, even later prompt- ing government to introduce femicide as an aggravated of- fence in the Criminal Code. Mal- ta's equality commission said the murder had been an extreme form of power and control in a patriarchal society. Doctors for Choice questioned whether a man would have been raped and killed in broad daylight had he been feeding the cats in the same g a r d e n that day, high- lighting the lack of safety of women in Maltese streets. The Malta Police Force did not help when they addressed a crime conference and refused to link Demsbka's murder with her gender. They said the murder was random, and nothing linked the crimes to her gender – despite her be- ing raped vaginally, anally and orally. Many were outraged and confused by the comments. Dembska's murder, and the gender equality debate that ensued, paved the way for the Femicide Bill. The Bill did not make femicide its own crime, instead introducing the concept as an aggravating offence. This allows the Maltese court to de- liver higher penalties when a homicide is deemed to be of a femicidal nature, motivated by gender. The Bill was not passed before Rita Ellul was murdered by her partner less than two months from Dembska's murder. Ellul, a 49-year-old woman from Iklin, was found dead inside her home on Triq Dun Franġisk Mizzi in Għajnsielem, Gozo. Her partner, 30-year-old Lawrence Abna from Ghana, pleaded not guilty to homicide. She had reported her partner to the police over domestic vio- lence in the past, with the cases ongoing at the time of her death. Her cause of death is believed to have been asphyxiation, with Ellul's partner suspect- ed of having suffacted her using a bed duvet. Her daughters, Georgina and Jessica, did not mince their words when they spoke at a vigil in honour of their mother. They told the crowd that they want- ed to see their mother's killed "spend the rest of his life behind bars". Pending court cases and a his- tory of domestic violence from her partner – her story is not too different to that of Bernice Cas- sar. Cassar was murdered in broad daylight by her estranged hus- band as she was on her way to work. She had just dropped her two kids at school and made her way to her work- place in the Corradino Industri- al Estate when Roderick Cassar blocked her path with his car, started flagging traffic, and even- The year women rose to the fore Women took centre stage this year: there are more women now than there have ever been in parliament; Roberta Metsola became the first woman since 1999 to be elected President of the European Parliament. But these political achievements for women came in a year that was bookended by two femicides, punctuated by another femicide around three months in NICOLE MEILAQ