Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/709569
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 31 JULY 2016 16 "I loved my previous job, but as women we have to make sacrifices for our families sometimes," Marianne Mercieca, a working mother of four, says. For 14 years she worked as an LSA, having previously worked as an administrator at a law firm. She decided to make a career change in order to have more family- friendly hours. Sacrifice. Time. Family. Much of the first and not enough of the second for women who double up as the main caregivers in families. But the family affairs committee of the House of Representatives has proposed that assistance be given both to single parents who work outside the home, including single fathers, as well as compen- sation to stay-at-home mothers who take care of the family while being unemployed. The proposal comes at a time when the female labour participa- tion rate in Malta has risen after free childcare was introduced by the Labour government, with the highest female activity rate ever recorded in 2014, at 52.1 per cent. But Malta remains the EU coun- try with the biggest gap in the per- centage of working men and wom- en. While 81.4 per cent of men in Malta aged 20-64 are employed, a mere 53.6 per cent of women are – a difference of 27.8 per cent. Italy has the second-widest gap, with a 20 per cent difference. Despite being far behind many other EU states, Malta has made significant inroads in increasing its female workforce participation rate. In 2005 just 36.4 per cent of women aged 20 to 64 were em- ployed. Compensating mothers is a pro- posal whose origins also lie in calls from the Maltese church, back in the 1990s, when Archbishop Jo- seph Mercieca suggested mothers be paid to care for their families. At a time of low female participa- tion in the workforce, it was a pro- posal met with suspicion from his audience. It is no surprise that the issue of compensation for mums was brought up early last month by Fr Charles Attard, director of the Church's marriage preparation unit, Cana, who is in favour of stay-at-home mothers receiving compensation. To him the work that stay-at-home mothers carry out is as valuable as mothers who choose to work. "Mothers who work carry out an important job, but mothers who remain at home are sometimes treated as mothers of a 'second division'. I think this should be a priority," Attard told MPs in the family committee. In 1979, an older woman divorc- ing her husband of 39 years argued that her role as housewife was worth more than $40,000 a year. Her lawyer argued that on the re- placement cost approach – a valu- ation method determining what it would cost to perform each one of Mrs Gallagher's tasks – would be $48,698 (€43,977) in today's cur- rency. Closer to our time, back in 2014 a prominent pair of campaigners in Italy brought forward a pro- posal to pay a salary to women working in the home, saying that it would boost equality and fight domestic abuse. The Guardian, reporting the story, described Italy as "a country with an estimated five million housewives, a mori- bund jobs market and a lingering patriarchal culture." But the proposal received criti- cism by some for supposedly be- ing retrograde, unworkable and potentially counterproductive. But former centre-right MP Gi- ulia Bongiorno, said the proposal was born out of Doppia Difesa, a domestic abuse charity that noted many victims of domestic violence were not reporting their abuse to the police because of economic reasons. "We have [in Italy] many women who die inside household walls be- cause they do not have economic independence," Bongiorno had said. Mothers who work "I don't regret my decision – I wouldn't have coped with balancing my work and fam- ily responsibilities had I continued working such long hours," Mari- anne Mercieca says, whose chil- dren's age distribution was spread out and allowed her to experiment with different possibilities of child rearing. "I experienced all the possibili- ties women have in motherhood. With my first daughter, I had a lot of help from my mother and I con- tinued to work. When I had my second and third daughters, be- cause I had them so close to each other I took a four-year break from work and decided to have a career change in order to be more flexible with my working hours. With my youngest, I went back to work, but I had shorter hours with my new career. However, I did make use of nurseries when I needed to." She says families benefit more when the mother stays home, but she still has mixed feelings about compensating housewives. "If she has small children with no help when it comes to childcare, and her hours at work are not very flexible, it would be a good idea to stay home and still be able to provide financially. Compensa- tion would help the women who are entitled to it, as most families wouldn't be able to cope with one wage. "But women with older children who are able to be left alone for a few hours can cope without such assistance. So it is not necessary to put that financial burden on the country. These women have op- tions," she said, noting that people will always find a way to abuse the system. Unlike Merceica, married moth- er-of-two Alina Maria Mizzi had her children soon after tying the knot, and has not worked since. "I have no one to help me with the kids," she tells MaltaToday. "My family lives abroad and my husband's parents are quite old." Having children has required a lot of sacrifices from both her and her husband because of financial strain. "My husband works on shift-ba- sis and puts in a lot of extra hours. We couldn't cope otherwise with just one paycheck. I used to be a nurse, but because it has been so long since I worked, I lost my li- cence. And if I take up a part-time job, my husband will have to pay more tax and I would still need to pay for childcare, so I am not mo- tivated to go back to work straight away because it's not worth it for me at the moment." But when Mizzi got married she knew that the children would come first and says she preferred to give up holiday and material possessions like clothes in order to give them the best. "For me stay- ing at home with the children was important." In fact, Mizzi says she would not turn down compensation for her role as stay-at-home mother. "I would not say no, but we have survived on one salary for 10 years without being compensated for my role in the family." "It should be seriously consid- ered by the government, because it gives women a choice when con- sidering how to go about raising their children." Special report Should stay-at-home mothers be paid to bring up their children? JEANELLE MIFSUD put the question to career women and a housewife to discover a world of mixed messages RETURN OF THE STAY-AT- HOME MOTHER? "Women are receiving mixed messages. They are constantly told that they have a place in the workforce. At the same time, society greatly encourages parents' presence in their children's lives. This can leave women in a sea of guilt" Janice Bartolo