Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/794736
14 THERE has, up to a point, always been a correlation between beach- wear (or the lack thereof) and pub- lic morality in Malta. Until the late 1990s, beaches used to be littered with signs warning tourists (in multiple languages) that topless sunbathing could get you arrested and possibly fined. Skinny dipping remains a pun- ishable offence, and it was only a few years ago that a group of Scandinavian language students got arrested for it. Yet it has been a long time since issues such as these were considered remotely controversial... let alone the sub- ject of fierce and heated debate. For that, you will have to do what the producers of 'Burning Bikinis' did, and delve into the situation that prevailed in Malta in the 1960s. Shown at St James Cavalier last Friday, the 53-min- ute documentary takes its cue from a rumour that a number of bikinis were once burnt in a public conflagration, at a time when Archbishop Mikiel Gonzi was spearheading a cultural war against indecency. In their efforts to verify this claim, researchers shed consid- erable light on what was (to me, at any rate) a relatively unknown episode of recent history: charac- terised by an often very staunch resistance to the influence of 'for- eign' ideas and 'values' in Malta... with a special emphasis on ideas and values that concerned the role of women in society. Carla Camilleri was one of those researchers; and (like my- self watching the film this week) much of what eventually unfolded on the screen came as news to her as it was being pieced together. But how much of it was a sur- prise? And how much of it is still relevant today? "At the time when we were first discussing the project back in 2015, a number of events hap- pened in Malta focusing on two particular situations involving women. There was one situation where a Kazakh woman was ar- rested and fined for dancing in a bikini during the Stella Maris festa. It could have been slightly culturally insensitive for her to do that... but we thought it was a bit of an exaggeration. In the same month, there was also a Muslim woman who wanted to swim in a burkini at a private sports ground, and was denied the right on the grounds of hygiene, etc..." These incidents triggered an interest to explore the issue of fe- male emancipation in Malta from its earliest inception. "We started carrying out re- search, and were made aware, through a MaltaToday article, of the fact that Archbishop Mikiel Gonzi had sent a letter to Prime Minister Borg Olivier, asking him to institute a 'morality po- lice' based on a number of is- sues. One of them being the im- morality he was seeing on public beaches: namely, bikinis. So in the 'Swinging Sixties', we were dis- cussing women in bikinis... and in 2014/15, we were still discuss- ing what women should wear. We wanted to know where the reac- tion was – Was there even a re- action? Should there have been a reaction? – and also where we are at the moment..." One of the things that emerges from 'Burning Bikinis' is that Mal- tese feminism – though it started late, compared to other countries – has actually experienced a fast and energetic evolution. At the time when Gonzi was pressuring the Maltese government over bi- kinis, there seem to have been no 'feminist movements' to speak of at all. (Historian Dominic Fenech even argues that the entire con- cept of 'women's rights' was all- but completely alien). Yet in the two decades that followed, a num- ber of organisations arose that fought, with considerable success, for a number of pivotal women's issues... among them, family plan- ning clinics in the 1970s. The film features interviews with several of the pioneers; and in so doing it also indirectly raises the question of what is happening on this front today. Recent experi- ence (in particular, the morning- after pill debate) suggests that similar organisations are actu- ally fewer in number than in the 1970s, and arguably less vocal... "In fact, our initial idea was to focus on the 1960s, and compare it to the present. Then we real- ised that the movements in the 1970s and 1980s should not be ignored, as they were the real pro- tagonists of the history of Maltese female movements. Of course, we have to look at it in the context of what was going on in Europe in the 1970s as well. It is part of that whole global movement. But when we were researching, we also questioned what happened in the 1990s and early 2000s. There seems to have been a lull, which is picking up again now. Howev- er, when you see what they were discussing in the 1970s and what we're discussing today, they are very similar. Divorce, for instance, only came in five years ago. In the 1970s we were talking about fam- ily planning clinics; today, again, we're talking about birth control. It makes you take a step back and ask, OK, so what have we done in these past 40 years?" But 'Burning Bikinis' also makes one realise the extent to which society has changed over the same period. Even the fact that awareness set in so rapidly after the 1960s – resulting in several movements that would have been considered unthinkable a decade before – suggests that the forces against change were infinitely stronger back then. The pres- ence of Archbishop Gonzi comes across as formidable, for instance. If he can be taken as an embodi- ment of the 'patriarchal society' alluded to throughout the film: could it be argued that this at- titude was simply too strong in the 1960s, and that change could only come about once the politi- cal powerhouses of the time (in this case, Gonzi) had retired from the scene? "The patriarchy was very strong at the time; but I think in the 1960s there was a general shift in mentality between old and young. The 'Swinging Sixties' might not have been very vocal, but girls in those days did wear bikinis... maybe in secret. There was a kind of revolution, but a very quiet one. Woman started going out to work; smoking in public, driving cars. I'm not sure whether it has anything to do with Gonzi him- self as a figurehead; or with what was happening in the rest of the world. But in the 1970s there was also a very big social shift as well: under Mintoff, a lot of the legal structures changed..." Nonetheless, it may be signifi- cant that the 'patriarchy' persisted even as these changes were being effected. Mintoff may have been considerably more progressive than Gonzi, but in his own way he was also a patriarchical figure. Ed- die Fenech Adami too. Through- out Maltese political history, we generally find strong-minded men shaping things for everyone else. Could it be part of the rea- son why there has traditionally been so much resistance to female emancipation? Is it that we have – for decades, if not centuries – always associated 'power' with 'men'? And if so, how does one break a perception like that? "It's difficult to break because the changes are relatively recent. The breakthrough was CEDAW [The Convention on the Elimina- tion of All Forms of Discrimina- tion against Women], which we only ratified in 1993. But when you look at the figures: the rate of full-time employment of women is one of the lowest in Europe; only 16% of candidates in the last election were women – to me, that's a bit shocking. There's only one female Cabinet minister out of 14; nine members of par- liament out of 71... so there is a definite imbalance. Where does it stem from? I think part of it stems from the old patriarchal system that doesn't see women as being, maybe, strong enough..." At the same time, however, there is a paradox in those figures. The number of female candidates in every election might be low, but proportionally, the percent- age of those who get elected is much higher than it is for men. This suggests that the Maltese electorate has no issue with vot- ing for women... but that there aren't many to actually vote for. "True: although the number of candidates is relatively low, the success rate of electing women candidates is quite high. However I am not sure whether there is an active movement within the big- ger parties to recruit female can- didates. This might be part of the issue..." Could it also be that women themselves aren't stepping for- ward as candidates on their own initiative? Interview By Raphael Vassallo maltatoday, SUNDAY, 5 MARCH 2017 I don't want to generalise, but women tend to be given the 'soft' ministries: social policy, civil liberties... why shouldn't there be a woman prime minister, foreign minister or finance minister? Or police commissioner? EQUALITY There's only one female Cabinet minister out of 14; nine members of parliament out of 71... so there is a definite imbalance. Where does it stem from? I think part of it stems from the old patriarchal system that doesn't see women as being, maybe, strong enough..." IMBALANCE Women are always