Women and the law

Abstract

The position of women under Maltese law was established under the influence of Canon Law which based itself on the opinions of St Paul who declared: "Let women keep silence in the churches for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, so also the law saith. But if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a shame for a woman to speak in Church." (1 Cor., XIV 34). Women were consequently barred from holding office within the Church and even from forming "part of the choir or of the musical Chapel" (Pope Pius X in his motu proprio on church music dated 22nd November 1903). It has been argued that this incapacity was not based on any ideological inferiority of the female sex, but on what was considered to be in keeping with the modesty of the woman. This concept of "modesty" for the woman is a very arbitrary one, and one which has undergone considerable modification, even within the church itself, with the passage of time.