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Mark Z. Saludes
Published 7:00 PM, March 08, 2015
This was the statement made by Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) Chairperson
Remedios Ignacio-Rikken at a program celebrating the International Women’s Month at
the Quezon Memorial Circle on Sunday, March 8.
As the government’s lead agency for women’s advocacy and empowerment, PCW is
organizing activities to celebrate and promote Women’s Rights for the month of March,
as mandated by former president Cory Aquino’s proclamation no. 227, issued on
February 27, 1988.
Proclamation 227 highlighted the historical contributions Filipino women of every class,
religion and ethnic background have made to the growth and strength of the nation.
Guided with this year’s theme; “Juana, desisyon mo ay mahalaga sa kinabukasan ng
bawat isa, Ikaw na!,” (Juana, your decision is important to the future of everyone) the
government is encouraging women in all sectors of the society to take an active
leadership role in determining our collective future.
“In barangays, municipalities, cities, the Congress, the Senate and in all branches and
departments of the government, women must contribute in governance and
management, [and] be part of every judgment and ruling in the civil societ," Rikken said.
"It is about time that women lead like how mothers take good care of their children. The
world will become a better place if both men and women are being heard.” Rikken
added.
At home
The government says it is doing its part to empower women at all levels of society.
Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman told Rappler that the government’s main focus
is to give the women of every household the control and share the authority inside the
family, especially for poor women through its Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps).
“The DSWD is one of the national government agencies responsible for ensuring that
the vulnerability of women is protected, and if they were victimized, they should be
rehabilitated; therefore empowering them should be the proactive work of the
government. This is being done in several programs such as the 4Ps where 95% of
card holders, or the beneficiaries, are women,” said Soliman.
Mandated by law
The Philippines is widely recognized for having been able to close the gap in terms of
gender equality in the workplace. According to the Global Gender Gap Report for 2014,
the Philippines ranks within the top 10 countries with low gender inequality.
It helps that there are specific laws, like Republic Act 9710 or the Magna Carta for
Women, that seek to eliminate discrimination against women by recognizing, protecting,
fulfilling and promoting the rights of Filipino women. This includes the non-discrimination
in employment in the fields of military, police and other several services.
One such example is the Bureau of Fire Protection, which now employs women as
frontline firefighters.
FIRE WOMEN. An all women fire fighting team of the Bureau of Fire Protection-NCR
"Lady Members of the BFP can operate trucks, perform the functions in a search and
rescue and execute jobs that a male firefighter could do; therefore we can have an all
female fire truck crew in the future.” said SFO3 Lonel Lopez of Quezon City Fire District.
“Gender equality is still an issue but we must not stop struggling and proving that
women are vital elements of the society and in decision-making.” Lopez added.
Women make up over half of our population. Their contribution to society has been incalculable, but
disparities clearly remain between the fulfillment of their needs, on the one hand, and the services
and protections afforded them by the state, on the other.
The coming celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8—originated in 1909 by Socialists
in New York commemorating the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union—
provides us with an opportunity to celebrate some hard-won achievements, call attention to currently
unresolved issues and look toward future needs and hopes of women’s lives in the Philippines. What
is the status of women and to what extent has the quality of their lives improved? What role has the
government played in spurring or, at times, impeding, such developments, at least in the past fifty
years?
The state’s involvement in women’s lives goes back to the Spanish colonial era, with the Church’s
active involvement in regulating sexual conduct and marital relations through ritual and the
sacraments. During the first half of the twentieth century, the US colonial state secularized and co-
educationalized public schools, opening up more opportunities for women. Women’s full citizenship
status was further enhanced with the victory of women’s suffrage groups pressuring the
Commonwealth government into granting them the vote in 1937. My own mother fondly remembers
going to colonial public schools in Lingayen, Pangasinan in the 1930s and then to UP after the war,
where all sorts of doors opened up for her generation.
In the post-war period, the state’s interest in women’s development was initially institutionalized
during the Marcos era. Whatever else one might think of the Marcos dictatorship, it drew, at least in
its initial years, from the expertise of intellectuals and technocrats. They, in turn, sought to tap
women’s potential for national development. For example, they set up the Population Commission to
regulate rising birth rates and make available birth control for women. They also established
the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (now the Philippine Commission on
Women) in 1975. It served—and continues to serve—as the national machinery for integrating
women into the economic and socio-cultural fabric of the country.
Later administrations followed suit with uneven, and at times contradictory, attempts to further
women’s development. Cory Aquino set up the Philippine Development Plan for Women; FVR had
his Gender and Development Budget and his administration’s grant of full representation of women
in the Social Service Commission; even Erap Estrada, not known to be a feminist, established
(though did not fully fund) the Philippine Agenda for Women Empowerment; and GMA put in place
the Framework Plan for Women, as well as the Magna Carta for Women.
Today, there are several ways by which the government reckons with the status of women. Two
important metrics are education and employment. In education, the Marcos regime measured
women’s education by the number of students who had completed primary, secondary and tertiary
levels of education. But since the Cory years, educational levels have been measured by recourse to
two categories: the Simple Literacy Rate and Functional Literacy Rate.
Simple Literacy indicates a person’s ability to read and write while understanding a simple message
in any language or dialect, while Functional Literacy assumes a higher level of literacy, including a
grasp of numeracy, encompassing the overall ability of a person to use written communication in
carrying out important activities in his/her life.
The Challenge
Sources: LFPR, Phils 2005-2013; Decent Work Country Profile, 2012Sources: LFPR, Phils 2005-
2013; Decent Work Country Profile, 2012