When Marthese Portelli told her employer she was pregnant, his first reaction was: "Does that mean you're leaving?" At that point she thought she would lose her job but then he told her he would do anything to keep her. This included hiring a nanny of her choice and allowing her to work from home and take as much maternity leave as she needed.

Now a former Nationalist Party MEP candidate and still a director at WasteServ, Mrs Portelli says her boss was "an angel" for going out of his way in such a manner. But even though she acknowledges that this cannot happen all the time, she argues that in many cases it can and should happen... and could also make economic sense for the companies themselves.

"Spending some extra money to accommodate a woman who is having children can cost less than having to find new people and teaching them from scratch with no guarantee that they will be good," she told a conference on Friday.

She stressed the need for childcare facilities at the workplace where, for example, employees could share a nanny instead of having to get one each. But Josette Vella, a spokesman for the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises - GRTU, argued that this was not as easy as it sounded, especially for small businesses.

Some companies could not afford to lose an employee for months on maternity leave or to provide such flexibility. Others pointed out that such measures should not be seen as only being applicable to women, in the same way that raising children should not only fall under the woman's responsibility and should be a joint effort between the partners. European Commission representative Joanna Drake said gender equality needed to be tackled in a holistic way, from how children were raised to how quotas were imposed.

She said that political will needed to come from all sides. Taking the example of the European Commission, she said that even though President José Manuel Barroso introduced strict regulations to promote equality, many governments were still nominating only men instead of women to certain positions. She was later questioned about a recent case in which the Maltese government finally decided to include a woman in its list of nominations for the post of judge on the European Court of Human Rights, after three years of nominating only men.

She said quotas were "part of the picture" but if they were done just to obey regulations, they could backfire. She stressed that there needed to be a holistic approach to gender equality, which included the cooperation of the media and those who were raising children. It was a "complete disgrace", Dr Drake said, that Malta still did not have any women MEPs; it was clear that in Malta merit was still secondary to gender.

During the conference, organised by the National Council of Women, several women from different small states of Europe shared their experiences of good policies that helped them break the metaphorical glass ceiling. Elin Norodahl, a lawyer from Iceland, explained that the financial crisis was a "blessing in disguise" for women because it highlighted the need to do things differently and focus on "female values".
She said traditional companies focused on risk-taking, greed and short-term goals whereas, with female input, companies in Iceland were becoming more person-oriented, risk-aware and focused on the long-term.

She also pointed out that, in Iceland, which now has a woman Prime Minister, a number of policies had helped women gain the financial and political power they needed to break the glass ceiling. All political parties now made sure they nominated as many women candidates as male candidates during elections.