21st century Archives – THINK Magazine

Life is hard sometimes. Juggling the demands of work with family while remaining healthy and sane can be tough. Done successfully, that lifestyle can look like a carefully choreographed dance. Add a bout of the flu to the mix though, and the dance gets thrown off. Now you find yourself strewn on the dance floor, with hurdles coming your way.

So far, mothers in our societies have carried the lion’s share of caring responsibilities and bear the Motherhood Penalty, affecting their earnings and career progression, amongst many other things. The International Labour Organisation claims that closing the gender gap in caring responsibilities between women and men is a priority for social development in the 21st Century.

The European Union (EU) is proposing a series of measures which aims to do exactly that. The first tackles paternity leave. At the time of writing, men in Malta are allowed at most two days off from work when they become parents. Under the new scheme, fathers will be able to take at least 10 working days of paid paternity leave around the birth of their child. When it comes to parental leave, a non-transferable quota of four months will be reserved for each parent to take, up until the child is 12 years old. It should be noted that 90% of fathers across the EU do not make use of parental leave at present. Finally, there is caring leave for workers who care for seriously ill or dependent relatives. These people will be entitled to five additional days of paid leave.

Whilst these three initiatives make sense, when analysed through the gender lens, the reality is that when people make use of these measures, they will not be compensated in full, but at the replacement rate of compulsory sick pay level. This immediately sets off the alarm bells.

Taking parental leave could mean a reduction of around 80% in income. Are Maltese parents, especially fathers, willing to accept such a drastic pay cut with every new child that arrives, along with a spike in costs? The result will be that fathers are likely to shun this additional leave, while mothers may be more prone to take the extra leave at the reduced pay rate. This will simply reinforce gender roles and gender stereotypes.

The aspect of this law that equates parental and caring leave to sick leave has to be removed. Parents manoeuvring through the fast lane of life and trying to care for their children by taking paternity, parental, or caring leave are not sick, so why pay them as such? Why impose a parental penalty on parents who are bringing up the next generation of citizens? The EU needs to do some serious rethinking if it really wants to contribute to the most significant social development of the 21st century.

Author: Dr Anna Borg

Theatre, dance, and music are changing at the University of Malta. Recently, three new research groups were launched by the School of Performing Arts (SPA) with the aim of bridging different disciplines through the development of shared work processes and research areas. Through interdisciplinary research, these groups want to look outwards towards new concepts.

The groups cover three themes. First, ‘Twenty-first-Century Studies in Performance’, which is committed to the locating, reimagining, and development of performance practices in the 21^st century. Second, ‘Culture and Performance’, which is guided by the premise that culture and performance refer to complexities that emerge from the multitude of phenomena these terms describe. Third, ‘Performing Arts Histories and Historiographies’, which investigates and archives material related to historical events across the performing arts. These themes are possible thanks to a web of local and international collaborations, ranging from the Digital Arts and Humanities to Cognitive Science and Intelligent Computer Systems.

These new research platforms seek to facilitate dialogue between scholars and practitioners, academics and citizens.

Annual Collective Performance of the School of Performing Arts. White White is a performance about space, or the absence of it. Once upon a time, characters were in search of an author. Today they are in search of a space. The characters, played by the students of the School of Performing Arts at the University of Malta, are lost in a corridor in-between places. Around them all is empty. A void. Like a vault, all they have isÖWhite! Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi — Annual Collective Performance of the School of Performing Arts.
White
White is a performance about space, or the absence of it.
Once upon a time, characters were in search of an author. Today they are in search of a space. The characters, played by the students of the School of Performing Arts at the University of Malta, are lost in a corridor in-between places. Around them all is empty. A void. Like a vault, all they have is White!
Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

inFragments A devised performance created by the students of the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta MITP Photo by Darrin Zammit Lupi — inFragments
A devised performance created by the students of the School of Performing Arts, University of Malta
MITP
Photo by Darrin Zammit Lupi

SPA has an upcoming conference featuring some of the above topics called Interweaving Cultures: Theory and Practice in March 2017. For more information contact Dr Stefan Aquilina (stefan.aquilina@um.edu.mt) or, on the conference, Prof. Vicki Ann Cremona (vicki.cremona@um.edu.mt).

21st century culture dance History performance school of performing arts SPA theatre university of malta

Sharing is caring, but at what cost?

Bridging (through) the performing arts

SPA has an upcoming conference featuring some of the above topics called Interweaving Cultures: Theory and Practice in March 2017. For more information contact Dr Stefan Aquilina (stefan.aquilina@um.edu.mt) or, on the conference, Prof. Vicki Ann Cremona (vicki.cremona@um.edu.mt).