Thursday 28 March 2024

Renee Laviera at Lo Spezzo,Valletta

Equal rights and gender issues – Renee Laviera has been at the forefront of both of these topics ever since I can remember.

Today, although officially “retired”, she is like many people who don’t know how to kick back and do nothing, and is probably busier than ever. In fact, she is so busy she completely lost track of time and rushes in breathless for our appointment.

Our lunch is taking place at Lo Spezzo, that elegant Valletta restaurant which once used to be known as “Ic-Civil”, located near the Palace. The original architecture has been retained and the chic, minimalist décor blends in perfectly . We are served by a very pleasant man named Neville Baldacchino who makes sure we have everything we need.

We haven’t met in a while, but she has not changed one bit – when she tells me her age (63), I find it hard to believe.   She is much softer in person than she often comes across on TV, but I suppose her bluntness when speaking in public is inevitable.  After all, she has been drumming on about the same topics  for decades now, and progress only seems to take place at a snail’s pace.

As we try to remember how long we have known each other, we laughingly manage to trace it back to what seems like a lifetime ago.  In the late 1970s, somehow, we both ended up on the same netball team appropriately called “All Ages”, which was part of the national league.  Since then our paths have crossed countless times because of our mutual interest in women’s rights.

It was her own mother who planted the first seeds of rebellion.

“Up the age of 8 or 9, there was no gender difference between myself and my brother, who is only 15 months older than me.  We both helped my mother out and did the shopping. Then when he entered the Lyceum, something triggered off  in my mother and she decided that she should treat us differently. What that meant was that I was being downgraded, and I didn’t like it at all! I always rebelled against it.”

When she and her husband Victor went to live in England because of his studies, her marital status was never an issue.  She worked at Merrill Lynch’s research department – a completely new world which taught her a lot. When they returned to Malta in 1976, however, she was in for a nasty shock.

“I became a second class citizen; I couldn’t sign a contract, nothing.  I had left my post as a teacher on marriage, as was the rule back then, so I could only work as a part-time teacher but I resigned after three weeks because I felt so humiliated. Here I was a fully qualified teacher but because I had a ring on my finger I couldn’t work at the same level as other teachers. It wasn’t just the laws, however, which used to get to me, it was the mentality.  One time Victor was still at work and asked if I could simply collect the contract for our new house myself, but the person from whom we bought it, who was illiterate, would not give me the contract because I was a woman. I remember thinking, ‘these things cannot keep happening!’”

She found work as an information officer at the regional oil centre at Manoel Island and after her son Nestor was born, and the law had changed, she went back to teaching.   This meant starting over at the very bottom, as if she had just graduated – all her years of work experience counted for nothing. After the obligatory 7 years of teaching she applied for and was appointed to Assistant Head of school. Shortly afterwards, however, with a Labour government at the helm, she left teaching to be an advisor on women’s rights within the new administration.

“I juggled everything by delegating a lot of housework so that I could spend whatever time I could with my son, and I also had support from my husband. It was a very hectic life but if you have good time management you can make it.”

I ask her whether she could ever have been a stay at home mother, and she shakes her head firmly.

“I did try being a housewife when we came back from London, like the rest of my friends were doing, but it only lasted six months. I cried every day, until finally Victor told me, ‘look, if you’re so unhappy go back to work’.  What worries about women is that they don’t negotiate with their partners, they accept the situation. You’re always changing within a marriage, but you have to talk. We used to argue of course, but we always found ways to get round it. Although my life was very busy, I was happy and once you’re happy at home, everyone is happy around you. Victor knew the kind of woman he married – I would not have coped at home, I would have unraveled.”

Renee also found solace by making friends with likeminded women and together they formed Il-Moviment ghall-Emancipazzjoni tal-Mara. She reels off some familiar names: Marie Brigulio, Marie Benoit, Gillian Bartolo.

From then on it was a constant and tireless involvement on Renee’s part with other groups such as Minn-Naha tan-Nisa and Moviment Mara Maltija.  The issues which these groups took up in the 70s and 80s sound all too familiar: family planning, family clinics, childcare centres, maternity leave, domestic violence as well as divorce.  They also fought hard to bring about changes in the family law and the Constitution, so that women would be considered to be on an equal footing with men.

“The reaction to us at the time, especially by the Church, was one of alarm. Lehen is-Sewwa once referred to us as “nisa mxajtna” (she-devils). We were considered to be a corrupting element in society. If a woman even considered putting her child into a childcare centre, she would be described as a neglectful, heartless mother who was simply dumping her kids.”

 

In 1983/4 there was the first White Paper to change the family law, however the proposals were deemed to be much too avant-garde, and it was shelved.  When another White Paper Shab indaqs fi-zwieg was published in 1991, it took another two years before it was enacted into law.

Does the slow pace of change frustrate her?

“A few years ago they did a study in the UK to see how long it will take at this rate to achieve complete equality. They concluded that it would take 300 years. So can you imagine here? When you look at women’s abilities, it is astounding. We have 60% of our university graduates who are women, so give them a chance in the labour market! That is why I believe we should have quotas.”

But, I point out, sometimes it is women themselves who don’t take up positions of authority because of their biological clocks and the decision to have children, which usually coincides with the opportunity for possible career advancement.

“Yes, granted, there will be women who make the choice to leave their job to raise their children, but there are others who wish to keep on working but cannot. Today they can’t keep saying that there aren’t enough capable women for certain roles. The argument against quotas is that they would end up appointing incompetent women just because they’re women – skuzi, what guarantee do we have that the men being appointed are competent? And yet they still accept the post. Someone told me recently of the sheer amount of time which is wasted in certain committees because no one says anything, they just come to be present and for the status. I love brainstorming because you can really come up with great ideas and push things forward, but to have meetings just to sit there and rubberstamp what the chairperson says, well, you might as well just send an email.”

Renee claims she has never suffered from gender discrimination or male antagonism at the workplace herself, probably because of her style of leadership.

“I’m very much a team player, so I never let anyone feel threatened. Maybe it’s because I do not like any type of geriarchy and I have never given ‘orders’ as such; I ask ‘please’ and say ‘thank you’.  I used to have a colleague who used to insist on people knowing what his title was and that he was in charge, and to me it simply showed that he was insecure.”

In the late 90s, Renee was appointed director of the Department for Women in Society within the Ministry for Social Policy. This department was the driving force within the public service to make sure all goals for EU accession in the field of gender equality were achieved. Once Malta became a member of the EU, however, the department was closed down, and Renee, as a civil servant, found herself transferred to the National Library.

“It was a shock,” she recalls. “One minute I had a very busy and responsible post and then I suddenly found myself without real work to do. Basically, I had to create my own work and that lasted for a year and a half. Thank God I had a lot of support from the staff, but it was a very difficult period for me. My age was against me as well, so it was not just a matter of resigning from the civil service and going into the private sector. I then applied to go to the Finance and administration section of the Government Property Department where I had a lot of work to do, and I learnt a lot.”

When two years ago she faced the prospect of retirement, Renee could not deal with it, “My only preparation for it was that I panicked!” she laughs. “But then work started coming in. I always keep myself visible by attending conferences and being active with different NGO’s.”

I often meet young women who say that equality has been achieved and that they do not feel discriminated against.

“They do not feel it before they have children,” Renee points out. “That is when their lives will change, that is when they will find their choices have become more and more limited.  What we have to address is, where is the father in all this? I don’t understand why men don’t protest more. You know what we tell fathers: you have two days when the baby is born, and that’s it, that’s the extent of your importance. That is why increasing paternity leave is so important.”

As for how young men of today feel about gender equality, Renee says it does depend on their upbringing. “However, those who have had working mothers sometimes tell you they don’t want their wife to work because they don’t want to have to wash the floors.  Now,  I understand that there are women who are perfectly happy being at home and taking care of the children, which is great as long as it is their choice. But they also need to realize the consequences of this decision should something happen.  Once you leave your job you have lost control over your financial independence and to some extent control over your own life – what if your spouse falls ill or passes away? Or if the marriage breaks down or there is domestic violence?  Of course, there are decent men who still treat their wives well even though they are dependent on them, but I meet so many cases where the man is in complete control.”

It worries her that she still hears cases of young men of 19 who are very controlling of their younger girlfriends, not “letting” them go out alone and dictating the way they dress.

“When a man continuously erodes your confidence and self-esteem through psychological abuse it is just as bad as a physical beating. A recent study in the UK said that a woman has to endure 32 experiences of violence before she files a report, because she keeps forgiving the man. Each time you forgive violence it is sending a powerful message to the man that it’s OK. Unfortunately even on the radio I still hear women blaming other women for some men’s bad behaviour – if only she had cooked for him! If only she had given in to him! Men cannot help being unfaithful because they are weak! It’s other women’s fault for going after married men!”

Renee becomes agitated as she describes how some of these female radio callers reason.  Understandably, she is exasperated that, after all these years, we still haven’t learned our lesson.

“These are the kind of excuses which keep men from accepting responsibility for their actions. After all, either men are the strong, decisive ones or they aren’t – you can’t go around pretending that you’re weak, helpless and easily manipulative only when it suits you. And by excusing their behaviour, these women are allowing them to get away with it.”

WHAT WE HAD FOR LUNCH

Various appetizers 

Homemade tagliolini with a sea urchin sauce

 

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