At a seminar I attended last week organised by Foundazzjoni Ideat on the theme of Women and Poverty, one of the speakers, Dr Angela Abela (Director of Family Studies) made a perhaps obvious,  but still significant, observation:  “let’s not beat around the bush about what poverty means. Poverty is not spiritual poverty or poverty of values…poverty is when you simply don’t have enough money for your basic needs.”

The point needed to be made because there are those who still pooh pooh the notion that Malta has a sector of people who are just barely holding things together.  On the surface they might see a country replete with iPhones and four wheel drives and flashy nail art and certain restaurants filled to the brim with customers, and attribute  the poverty label to just the “usual left-wing whining”.

“What poverty?” they demand to know, “we’ve never had it so good!”

The seminar was packed and the panel of speakers  did not disappoint. Experts in their field, they all described  a Malta most of us have absolutely no clue about. I think one of the most revealing facts from their findings is that there are pockets of poverty scattered throughout the island, and they are no longer limited to your stereotypical “in-naha t’isfel” or the down and out areas of Valletta.

Just around the corner from the well-to-do villas in Qawra, Leonid McKay (Caritas Malta) told us,  there is a whole stretch of road which houses (mostly) single mothers in rented flats.  Even though the rent here is markedly lower than in other areas, a few of these women sometimes have to pool their resources  and share one flat between them in order to afford the rent.  Separated or single women with children, as Dr Abela repeatedly stressed, make up the one sector of society which is at the most risk of poverty and the reason is obvious – they cannot afford child care in order to go to work.  And the work they can manage to get because of their lack of skills is usually poorly paid anyway. It is the proverbial vicious circle.

Dr Josanne Cutajar, with her dry Gozitan humour which cuts through all the pretence and gets to the heart of the matter, was equally eloquent.  Now that she lives in Bormla, she is highly conscious of the stigma which people in the south are constantly subject to.  But when you have rows and rows of social housing all concentrated in one area, it is no wonder that those who are in the lower income bracket tend to congregate there. The stories she wove of her adopted home town painted a vivid picture as she explained how women who are destitute tend to have more health problems; they also suffer from depression because of the financial stress they are under and the feeling of helplessness at not being able to get out of their situation. Children growing up in this bleak environment are, understandably, prone to more problems themselves.

Our perception of who is poor can also be false. Mario Cardona (researcher in Adult Education) explained how he sometimes sees children who are dressed in smart, clean school uniforms, but who he then sees playing in dilapidated balconies which are in danger of collapsing in front of his eyes. For, unlike the image which some like to conjure up – not everyone who receives social benefits is a bum, leeching off our taxes. Many are fiercely proud and are loathe to reveal their true financial situation.

As if to drive this point home, a well-spoken woman from the audience stood up and told us her own story of poverty. Married to a lawyer with five children, she found herself suddenly scrounging to make ends meet when she separated from her husband. I think she shocked most of us into silence with her tale of how they survived on pasta and cans of tuna for many months. “To this day I cannot stand to see a can of tuna”, she added wryly.

Dr Abela, whose research puts her into constant touch with unmarried mothers, made a passionate plea:  “Let’s stop giving girls the message that it’s OK to become a teenage mother, because it is NOT OK.  We have gone from the stigmatization of unplanned pregnancies among young girls to now almost condoning this behaviour.  The numbers have now spiraled out of control.”

I agree with her completely.  I would go one step further and suggest something even more radical. The state should  make it very clear that it will only give social benefits to an unmarried mother for her first baby. Any further children will be her responsibility and that of the father of the child. After all, one unplanned pregnancy is a mistake everyone can understand.  However, if you are unemployed and depending on benefits, you cannot afford any more “mistakes”.

Because let’s face it – we cannot speak about women in poverty in a vacuum. Where there are children involved somewhere there was a man in the picture as well. The need to make men responsible for supporting their own children has to be stepped up if we wish to bring down the alarming statistics of those who are below the poverty line.

Meanwhile, a concrete step has been taken by Caritas, whose research now confirms that the minimum wage is too low for a decent standard of living. The study emphasizes that the calculations have been made on such basic needs as food, clothing, education, housing, transport and health.  Just imagine – the current minimum wage stands at 158 Euros per week.  How far can this meagre amount possibly stretch even if one is an expert at hunting out bargains?

Where will we find the money? Well, as Mons Victor Grech succinctly pointed out, “just like the government found millions of euros to invest in various capital projects…the financial means to help the most vulnerable can be found as well.”

I’m a firm believer in the adage that ‘God helps those who help themselves’ and while there will always be those in need of social benefits, we should never stop driving home the message that there is dignity in work and being able to provide for one’s family without the need of handouts. Over and over again during the seminar we heard that education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty… but unfortunately, the people who need to hear these words the most never attend these kind of seminars.

They are too busy trying to keep from falling apart.