This is very, very common.

Their particular appeal is to women at this point in time when women are getting really fed up of seeing men fill up every position of authority.

2. This is a comment about how few women are standing for election. They are not standing for election because women have a much harder time in public life in Malta than men do. You are exchanging views right now with a prominent case in point.

3. Women see what is done to me and say “Well, then, I’d rather not.” So they opt for the high heels, heavy make-up and eye-lash-batting approach to public life instead, allowing men to think that the ideas are all theirs. Does that promote perceptions of equality? No, it plays into chauvinism.

4. Canvassers, not convessors – the noun comes from the verb ‘to canvass (for votes)’.

5. You are right in that people should not be divided into ‘male’ and ‘female’ for the purposes of politics, but into ‘competent’ and ‘incompetent’. The argument as to why there are not more women (both competent and incompetent) in parliament, and so many incompetent men, is a separate one.

I’d say that Marthese Portelli, Claudette Pace and Kirsty Debono were elected by women, too.

It’s just a gut instinct – they strike me as having that kind of appeal, and I listen to the way women talk about them. Claudette Pace, especially, has massive appeal to women.

What you say was certainly true in the past – women were misogynists too in Malta, because they thought it was a way of winning approval from men and tearing down the ‘competition’ – but that is clearly changing. Maltese women are really fed up of being constantly bossed around and told what to do and having decisions made for them by men.

If only it were just that. It’s usually other people’s marriages (how bad they are, unlike theirs), other people’s husbands (ditto), other women (lousy housekeepers, bad with children & c), things they are cooking that day, where you can get the latest school-related stuff, private lessons, Maltese lessons, teachers at the school (their shortcomings), what they have just bought for the house, what they will buy for the house, where they are going on holiday, where everybody else is going on holiday, what X and Y sold their house for, what X and Y bought their house for, how their husband is buying a new car, their husband’s promotion/new partnership, religious doctrine classes and what a pain they are…I hear it hasn’t changed much since I last had to cope with that wrist-slitting state of affairs around 25 years ago.

The answer to the last question would probably be : “Discussing my and other people’s children”.

Italy? Italy is an exemplar. The women there take a leading role in industry, in production and in the country’s many family businesses.

There’s none of this ‘pass the reins to the sons’ rubbish.

On my sporadic visits to producers there (for the magazine), I sometimes get the distinct impression that sisters/daughters/wives are more pivotal in running the show than brothers/sons/husbands.

Practically all women work there, too – not to do so is considered lazy and wasteful rather than privileged.

This has been the situation for many years. I have a clear memory of a supper party here in Malta, more than 20 years ago, hosted by one of Malta’s most well-to-do business operators in honour of the scion of a famous Italian industrialist.

The latter’s wife asked the former’s what she did, and received the astonished reaction “But I don’t work, of course”. To which the Italian industrialist’s wife replied, with a quizzical expression, “but how do you spend your time?”