Malta

Interesting article on Malta

Times of Malta - Valletta,Malta

When I touch on the issue of working mothers, I like to remember an event which I witnessed and which left me both mesmerised and amused. It happened quite a few years ago, while I was interviewing a priest on the topic of poverty in Malta.

He was honing in on the issue of families, women, their children and the phenomenon of working women. He had barely finished voicing the start of a sentence: "Ever since women started working...", than a nun who happened to be in the same room filing papers, swirled round to face us, walked abruptly up to his desk and with pointed intensity said: "Father... women have always worked."

She left him agape and point made, she demurely walked back to her papers and filing. She might have been a nun with chaste habit and all, but she sure was a feminist.

A lot has changed since women walked to their husband's, father's, brother's fields and worked there from dawn till dusk. Those were the times when the suckling babes were carried about in swaddling, the ones old enough to help did, while the ones in between stayed at home helping out grandmothers, spinster aunts and older sisters care for the home, elderly and ill, cook, wash, bathe and feed the chickens.

Young children could run about in the fields and play all day long. It was a different lifestyle. The working mother usually had somebody back home to help out, in some way or another, and the extended family was not only there to share Sunday dinner but to help in a factual way, every moment of the day.

Today many wish to remain hooked on to this romanticised version of a family, as if wearing blinkers. We are living a different reality and to keep a family and make ends meet, one must only do a simple physical exercise - share life with one medium-sized family of moderate means and try dealing with shopping, bills, school requirements, doctor's fees, etc, etc, for just one month. One month will be long enough to discover that it is imperative in this day and age for most women to contribute financially to the family.

Fine. But what does one do with children before they are old enough to go to school and in between schooling periods? How can a woman work outside the home with peace of mind? Children need to be cared for by their parents or other persons and carers who are suitably qualified to do so.

Given a choice, most mothers will opt to stay at home with their babies for as long as it takes, and if they desire to proceed with a career, they would want to reassure themselves that the care given to their children will not be in any way ransacking their own right of motherhood.

But there is no simplistic solution to all this and since I'm writing about mothers and their children, I will only later on be writing about the father's role in the whole set-up.

If grandma is still working herself, too old to care for grandchildren or simply disinterested, how is the young mother to regain her place of work? She has to seek child care, even if she is working on a part-time arrangement or at least on those days when nobody else from within the family can 'replace' her.

In a bid to address gender sensitive issues, the Employment and Training Corporation (ETC) took specific action last year through an EU-funded project which aims to train and give the necessary qualifications to prospective and existing child carers to work in this field and to offer employers the possibility of incorporating child care facilities on their premises through a number of incentives.

This year Government has specifally allocated Lm130,000 to support 45 existing child centres to upgrade their standard in order to comply with the new regulations.

Anna Borg, senior ETC executive in charge of the Gender Issues Research and Development Division, explains: "We want to tangibly help increase female participation through the provision of child care services at the workplace."

ETC offered courses to women interested in taking up child care as a career. Training involved 300 hours of intensive tuition, and 500 placement hours in various child care centres catering for children aged up to five.

"With one course ready, and another ten still ongoing, we are planning to have a strong workforce of fully trained child carers to fill the need to man child care centres according to the standards set last summer by the Department of Social Welfare Standards."

This is especially important in a country where up until a short time ago, child care centres were not regularised and mothers could not be blamed for being apprehensive about leaving their children in care.

The course attracted a healthy number of applicants - 700 women who applied for the child care training programme, even though ETC could only take around 200. But what about the other side of the coin - the employers?

Initially there was a relatively high response with 60 potential employers enquiring about the system. They were interested in being offered a scheme of incentives, namely providing full-trained child carers and grants to facilitate the initial transitory process. Since last year, however, interest dwindled due to a series of problems.

"Some employers found they simply did not have the physical space on their premises to set up a child care centre. Another set of employers found that, following site inspections, their premises, while being large enough, did not have the suitable requirements in terms of safety - no apertures, no space at ground floor level, or free space only within the basement quarters."

The end result is that only a few valiant employers have held on to their initial resolve to man a child care centre in-house and these are presently in the process of carrying out the necessary alterations to accommodate their employees' children.

After due clearance from the Department of Social Welfare Standards, permits from MEPA and physical time to carry out works, it is hoped these companies will be able to offer their employees full child care facilities with the assistance of the ETC.

In view of the limited number of employers who will actually have a child care centre on their premises, Ms Borg said: "We would have wished for bigger numbers and better results, but at least these employers have taken on an act of courage and it is a start. We live in a rather macho society which is hard to change quickly. We shall be applying for the next funding period which stretches from 2007-2013 and we are looking forward to wider opportunities and hopefully more openings for in-house child care centres."

ETC employees have been among the first to enjoy the serenity of having an in-house child care centre which is open daily during working hours offering year round care, including an after-school and holiday-care service.

"Our employees are now dropping off their children in the morning, popping in to nurse or play with them during their lunch break and picking them up after work to head home together.

This peace of mind allows parents to continue with their work reassured, also because our child carers are top notch and that is what we have attempted to do during this past year - raise standards, raise awareness, inform parents that child care is not just about minding but also about educating. Hopefully more companies will follow suit."