L-issue tat-tunnel hija Gonzian dream come true.

X’jambuha t-tunnel meta hemm xoghol f’Ghawdex ghall-Ghawdxin?

L-issue tat-tunnel tfarrak il-weghda ta’ Muscat f’elf bicca.

So? The issue is that her speech, at least as reported in the Times of Malta, comes across as the ‘look at me I deserve respect’ sort.

The sentence ‘I will be your role model’ particularly reflects this and the use of ‘glass ceiling’ is in the same vein.

Yes, a PhD is hard but it is for others to applaud the achievement not for you to blow your own trumpet on a public forum.

Well you can at least bump into 7 of them and this is in the Engineering Faculty only – and most in the metallurgy and materials and Systems and Control Departments.

You do not know how wrong you are. If you look at the list of science graduands, you will see that there are very many women, in some cases more than men.

More women are now obtaining doctorates than men are. There are more men than women in academic posts, yes, but there are differences depending on the generation too.

Aha! You must be the concierge at the University of Malta.

The problem is that both major political parties pander to the Gozitan base. If there is one message that should be instilled in all people who live on Gozo, it’s ‘If you don’t like it, move to the mainland.’

I have had it up to here with all the whining about how bad Gozitans have it. If you live on a minuscule island, you cannot expect to have the same job opportunities, establishments and public services that you would have in a more populace place.

Nor can you expect transport to be as simple as getting from Valletta to Sliema. Some remote islands in far bigger countries only get a ferry service once a week. Once you’re there, you’re stuck there for at least a week, unless you have a helicopter.

Because it’s patronising to women.

The reason that there aren’t more women engineers is because engineering does not appeal to women and not because women don’t have the skills or ability. If women didn’t have the skills or ability to become engineers, then they wouldn’t become architects, doctors, research biologists or chemists, either.

Women don’t go into engineering for roughly the same reason they don’t go into software development. It appeals largely to the ‘male’ brain, which is not the same thing as saying that only the male brain can cope.

She’s also not the first woman to obtain a doctorate in an engineering field. I’m not sure how many of those are Gozitans, but why should that matter?

Why would a Gozo born graduate be more newsorthy than one born in Malta? I believe this sort of thinking actually demeans ‘Gozitans.’