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Encouraging women
to go into business
Rosanne Galea, newly appointed President of the Malta Association
of Women in Business, talks to Blanche Gatt about her plans
for her two-year appointment
As a businesswoman who experienced many of the frustrations
our society throws into the path of female entrepreneurs when
she was setting up her own company, Rosanne has drawn up a powerful
agenda for her two-year term as President of the Malta Association
of Women in Business (MAWB). Taking the issues that she and
her fellow members have identified as being pivotal to the success
and growth of women in business, the new President of the association
has an ambitious vision for its expansion.
And, as a businesswoman who not only owns and runs three companies,
but also manages the Mediterranean Insurance Training Centre,
with overall responsibility for around 58 full and part-time
employees of these four enterprises, Rosanne is also highly
aware of human resource issues, and the importance of creating
an environment that would encourage women to not only go back
to work, but perhaps even go into business.
“My first priority,” she explained, “is to increase
our membership of women already in business. At present we have
40 members, representing the insurance, import/export, tourism,
manufacturing, distribution, IT, advertising and retail trades
among others. We have no statistics about how many women there
actually are running their own businesses, but we do know that
there is great scope for expansion of our member base. My job
will be to see that as many as possible of these women are given
the opportunity to join the association, and my fixed target
is to double the number of members by the end of the year.”
“The second item on my agenda,” she continued, “is
to locate prem-ises for the association, which will incorporate
offices, a business incubator and an extensive library. Apart
from the need for us to have offices of our own, setting up
a business incubator for women will provide assistance to those
who possess the ideas and the drive to run a business to overcome
some of the legal, financial and practical obstacles that stand
in their way. This is my dream for the MAWB, and one that is
shared by our members.”
“Third on my list is eventually seeking out and identifying
women with the potential to go into business. If we want to
increase the number of women participating in the local business
community, then this is the most efficient way to do it. We
are already working on identifying EU funds that may be tapped
into for this purpose.”
Rosanne herself is no stranger to the obstacles and pitfalls
anyone, but perhaps more frequently a woman, can trip over while
trying to set up her own business. Starting as an employee of
an insurance company, as Rosanne began to climb the hierarchal
ladder, she began to realise that same-level male colleagues
were being paid higher salaries for doing the same job. “I
had to battle constantly against this injustice,” she recalled,
“and this definitely led me to the idea of starting my
own company.
“However, when I did decide to take the plunge, in 1991,
and went to the bank to apply for a loan I was turned down because
I was a woman, recently married and might get pregnant and stop
working! Eventually my husband went and got the loan, but there
should have been no need or place for this kind of thing. Even
today, when the situation is supposed to have improved, one
of our members, who went to her bank for a bank draft, found
out that they actually covertly phoned her husband for his permission
before issuing it.
“The association is now going to take up the matter with
the bank on our member’s behalf, but I had no such support
when I started out. My first company, Galea Insurance, launched
with a salesman’s licence for Middle Sea Insurance, and
we applied for and got a brokers’ licence in 1997. Then
in June 2000 we set up Galea Investment Services, as independent
financial advisors, and in November 2000, together with my partner
Dr Katie Birch, I set up FutureFocus Ltd, a management consultancy
firm.”
Throughout the years Rosanne was building and expanding her
businesses, she was also starting a family. She now has two
children, seven-year-old Corinne and three- year-old Katia.
“Of course, I have had a lot of support from my husband
and my parents, who, despite being in their late 60s, help me
enormously by caring for the girls.
“However, a lot of women think that setting up their own
company means abandoning their children. In actual fact the
opposite is true, because when it is your own company, you can
work from home and organise your hours to suit yourself, rather
than your employer.”
The business environment is tough, and the world of insurance
and financial services ranks among the most competitive. However,
not all problems Rosanne and her fellow MAWB members face are
gender-related. “We also focus a lot on many issues that
are a concern to anyone in business,” she explained.
“For example, everyone in business is suffering from a
very big problem of cheques bouncing all the time. And because
the banks here do not have a system of confiscating chequebooks
from people who persistently issue bad cheques, they just continue
doing it. This often affects business in a very negative way
and we are going to be tackling this issue in earnest in the
near future.”
Apart from dealing with general business issues, the Association
of Women in Business also offers its members a networking platform
to make new business contacts, share information and pool experience.
“For instance,” Rosanne elaborated, “when the
Pope came I had a problem about working out whether the day
should be taken out of employees’ leave entitlement or
not. To solve it, I called a couple of other members to ask
how they were handling it, and managed to come up with a fair
solution.”
Networking also happens on an international level. Last weekend,
MAWB hosted the presidents’ meeting of the worldwide association
of women in business, “Femme Chef d’Entrepreneur Mondiale”.
Comprising around 60 National Associations from across the globe,
either as full members or observer members, this is the world’s
largest association of women in business.
“During the conference,” said Rosanne, “many
international issues were discussed, but among the most interesting
was the idea of setting up a virtual university that would teach
women, over the internet, how to set and run their businesses.
On a more specific level, the President representing the African
continent, Francoise Foning, explained that the people she represented
needed funding in order to be in a position to start businesses.
I then offered to assist them in getting Commonwealth funds
to enable them to come and train in Malta. Other people offered
contacts to large international
organisations and help with fund-raising.” While many pundits
and politicians pay lip service to the ideal of job sharing
and working from home as a way of encouraging more women to
rejoin the labour force, the MAWB has now got a president who
not only believes in the value of these solutions, but also
practices them.
“I have mainly women working for me,” she said, “and
if they feel they could be working productively at home, then
I encourage it.
The lady who does our accounts regularly takes them to do at
home, and anyone who is working on something that does not require
their presence in the office is always encouraged to do it at
home. The point is, if I am employed from 9 to 5pm, why should
I be tied to the office and those particular hours? If I am
also a mother and could spend the afternoon with my children
and then work those three hours during the night while the kids
are asleep, that would make a tremendous difference to me and
my family.”
Rosanne explained that most of the association’s members
support these issues, within the constraints of each particular
industry, but this is one issue they shall be lobbying government
to encourage. Other topics, like the long-vaunted but still
unavailable child-care facilities, low interest loans for start-ups
and a crack-down on discriminatory financial treatment for business
women will also be addressed to government.
The Malta Association of Women in Business may not represent
the majority of Maltese women, however the issues and working
practices they espouse could also benefit employees. And, perhaps
even more importantly, the MAWB is committed to seeing more
women participating as members of the Maltese business community,
more women running their own businesses, more women taking control
of their own working lives.
“When you have your own business,” concluded Rosanne,
“you have more flexibility and more control. You alone
decide when and how to work, how much you get paid, and whether
your employees get the right to an equal salary, to flexible
working hours, to home-working and job-share alternatives. When
you have your own business you are empowering yourself to live
and work the way it suits you and your family the most.”
The Association of Women in Business is organising a Mass to
celebrate Women in Business Day on Sunday 20 May at 10.30am
at the Cappuchins Church, Floriana. Women in business, as well
as all those who support them, as well as the public, are invited
to attend.
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