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Philippines

(Photograph by Robinson Niñal)

The Republic of the Philippines is a Southeast Asian nation made up of over 7,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. Its history of colonization – first by Spain and then the United States – has shaped its affinity with the West. English is one of its official languages, and Roman Catholicism its predominant religion.

With its fast growing population of 88.6 million as of the 2007 census, the Philippines is one of the most populous countries in Southeast Asia. Significant numbers of Filipinos are migrant workers abroad – in 2006, the number of overseas Filipinos dependent on temporary employment contracts was about 3.8 million globally, with another estimated 874,000 migrant workers considered irregular (undocumented or without work permits) ¹. While many Filipino migrants are employed abroad as IT professionals, doctors, nurses, and entertainers among other professions, in Asia and the Middle East, a large number also work as domestic helpers, with the significant majority of these being women. ²

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Philippines experienced soaring economic development, and was considered the second largest economy in Asia next to Japan. Growth began to steadily decline thereafter, with the country plunging into recession and accumulating massive national debt. Economic liberalization improved the economy in the 1990s, but this was set back somewhat by the Asian Financial Crisis. Today, after numerous reforms and fiscally conservative policies, the Philippine economy is growing again.

 

Poverty Remains a Serious Challenge

 

Deep poverty remains pervasive throughout the country however. The Human Poverty Index 2007/2008 ranks the Philippines 37th out of 108 developing countries for which the index has been calculated. The country is dependent on an agricultural base, and infrastructural development has been poor and uneven which means that many remote communities are largely cut off from basic goods and services. In addition, the economy is heavily reliant on the billions of dollars in remittances that are sent home each year by migrant workers, an amount that surpasses foreign direct investment. Economists have warned that this reliance could distract from building a strong domestic economy. ³

 

According to the 2008 Joint Country Gender assessment ⁴, while the poverty incidence has generally been on the decline in the last 18 years, the poverty magnitude—the actual number of poor people—has increased. There were 2.5 million more poor people in 2006 than there were in 2003. ⁵ Roughly two-thirds of the Filipino poor live in rural areas. In the urban areas, poverty is a spillover effect of rural poverty as people migrate in hopes of finding better opportunities in the cities. The pressures of rapidly increasing rural-urban migration on the urban carrying capacity in terms of housing, basic services, waste management and air and water pollution have created a dire situation for much of the urban poor, and led to the proliferation of slums, often in precarious or high-risk areas such as riverbanks, railroad tracks, and dumpsites. ⁶

 

Many of Philippines’ poor also come from its indigenous ethno-linguistic communities located in its remote areas – these groups often lack access to basic services, have low educational levels and have been caught in the cross fire of armed conflict. Decades-long hostilities between the Philippines Armed Forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) continue, the result of a separatist Muslim insurgency in the southern parts of the country resentful of a Catholic-dominated republic and frustrated with the especially poor economic development in the southern provinces. ⁷

 

The Women’s Movement and the Situation of Filipino Women

 

Date of Accession/ Ratification:           15 July 1980 (signed), 5 Aug 1981 (ratified) Reservations:       None Reporting Status: Initial report examined in 1984 2nd report examined 1991 3rd and 4th combined reports examined at 16th Session, 1997 5th and 6th combined reports examined at 36th Session, 2006 7th and 8th combined reports due in 2010 Optional Protocol: Ratified 12 November 2003 Coordinating Agency for CEDAW implementation: National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW)

In 2005, the Philippines celebrated the centennial of its women’s movement. This is traced to the founding of the Asociacion Feminista Filipina in 1905 and its campaign for women’s access to education, maternal and child health and women’s suffrage. In 1937, Filipino women won the right to vote and since then, have fought alongside men for structural reforms in society. In the 70s, when women activists were among those fighting the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos, they articulated patriarchy as one of the basic social challenges. When Marcos was ousted in 1986, Corazon Aquino was installed as the first female president.
Filipino women are generally better educated than women in many of the other Southeast Asian countries. The adult illiteracy rate (2004) is relatively low at 7.4 percent, and the ratio of female to male literacy (at age 15 and older) is 102.1 percent. ⁸ Access to schooling for girls is higher than for boys, with higher rates of retention and larger numbers of girls continuing to higher education.

 

Although the country has had two female presidents, and increasing numbers of women are entering public service, overall female representation remains low. Men dominate in local government and the courts, where significantly fewer women than men are judges, and typically only in the lower courts. Low levels of female representation in decision-making have an impact on legislation – many laws particularly those dealing with civil law (involving spousal and family relations for instance) are still discriminatory against women. ⁹

 

In the workforce, women are generally under-represented and tend not to occupy the higher or better paying positions. The low labor force involvement of women reflects the greater preference given to the employment of men, a key factor also in the overrepresentation of women in the informal sector. Ever larger numbers of women – more than half of all migrant workers by recent estimates, with the majority aged between 25-29 – are migrating overseas in search of employment. ¹⁰ These migrant women workers, a large number of whom take on jobs as entertainers or domestic helpers, often face serious challenges in terms of their working conditions and status, and are vulnerable to exploitation in the form of abuse and trafficking.

 

Violence against women is endemic in the Philippines. Domestic violence rates are high, fueled by entrenched patriarchal attitudes and imbalanced power relationships within the family. Trafficking in women and girls and exploitation of prostitution continues to thrive, owing largely to poverty and impunity for perpetrators.

Footnotes:

1. Table 29, OFW Global Presence, A Compendium of Overseas Employment Statistics 2006, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

2. In seven of the top ten destinations of Filipino overseas workers in 2002, women predominate. In most of these countries, women work as domestic helpers, as in Hong Kong, Kuwait, Singapore and Italy. In Hong Kong, where 93 percent of all Filipino contract workers are women, Filipinos are the largest group of foreign domestic workers; in Singapore, Filipinos make up one of the two largest groups of domestic helpers in the country. See Filipinos Beyond Borders: The State of the Philippine Population Report 4, Commission on Population.

 

3. Global Economic Prospects: The Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration, World Bank, 2005.

 

4. Paradox and Promise in the Philippines: A Joint Country Gender Assessment, Asian Development Bank, Canadian International Development Agency, European Commission, National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women, United Nations Children’s Fund, United Nations Development Fund for Women, United Nations Population Fund, 2008

 

5. National Statistical Coordination Board, 2008 as quoted in the Joint Country Gender Assessment of ADB-CIDA-EC-NCRFW-UNICEF-UNIFEM-UNFPA, 2008.

6. A Common View, A Common Journey, Common Country Assessment of the Philippines, UN, 2004

 

7. Ibid. At the peak of the conflict (2000-2001), an estimated 932,000 people were displaced. While many have returned to their homes, deep concerns persist about the conditions to which they return.

 

8. Human Development Report 2007/2008

 

9. Common Country Assessment of the Philippines, UN, 2004.

 

10. Press Release: 2004 Survey on Overseas Filipinos, Government Census, 2005

 

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