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WOMEN’S LEGAL BUREAU, INC.

June 2006
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When the Philippine government ratified the CEDAW in 1981, it submitted itself to legally-
binding commitments to promote women’s human rights and take national action to ensure that they
access and enjoy these rights. Tragically, after more than two decades, no substantial or significant
progress has been made and the Convention continues to be flagrantly breached. The elusiveness of
this basket of rights, guaranteed by the CEDAW cannot but lead to an interrogation of the context in
which they are supposed to be realized.

It is a context of increasing political repression of militant leaders and people’s organizations that
have charged the current administration with election fraud and corruption, and protest the general
decline in quality-of-life indicators. It is also a context marked by the same export-oriented, market-
driven policies, which continue to be implemented despite the poverty-creating impacts on poor
women and other marginalized sectors.

These represent grave systemic flaws that impede rather than advance women’s human rights.
Unless these are confronted, there will be no progress on the CEDAW beyond monitoring gaps and
identifying accountabilities. Only by purposively moving towards resolving these structural inequities
can discrimination against women, in all its forms, begin to be decisively eliminated.

Women’s Economic Empowerment

Women’s economic empowerment is one of the areas of concern the Philippine government
promised to as part of efforts to facilitate the implementation of the CEDAW. However, the
difference between policy and practice has yawned wider over the years, spelling more
disempowering than empowering conditions for millions of Filipino women in the country and abroad.

For instance, more women are leaving the country to find decent-paying work abroad. From a few
thousands in the 90s, the number of documented Overseas Filipino Workers, a majority of whom are
women has risen to the millions.

Conditions are similarly dismal for rural women, whose work in both production and social
reproduction is largely unpaid to begin with. Rural poverty incidence has hardly budged. Provinces in
the island of Mindanao, where the largest concentration of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples
can also be found, consistently posted the lowest human development outcomes relative to other
regions.

Women and the Environment

Women’s knowledge of biodiversity as a source of water, food, medicines and livelihood, the
drive to further open up the country’s resources to foreign investments and capital with
government’s liberalization of the mining industry more ancestral territories the indigenous peoples,
of whom an estimated 49 percent are women, are being targeted for exploration by foreign firms.

For indigenous women and Muslim women, the environment is linked not only to their economic
sustenance, it is also entwined with their cultural, social and spiritual life as a people. This reality,
however, is unrecognized by a government disdainful of those women’s cultural rights.

2
Violence Against Women (VAW)

In 1998, there was an estimated 400,000 - 500,000 Filipino women (aged 15-20) working in
prostitution. More recent research findings that prostitution has become a multi-million dollar
business, reportedly with the fourth largest contribution to GNP, indicate that the numbers today
must be much higher than what is usually quoted by official sources. Push and pull factors persist,
widening the net for women and girls’ recruitment into the industry, both in the Philippines and
abroad.

The 2004 enactment of RA 9262 or the Anti-Violence against Women and Children (Anti-VAWC) law
and the innovation of a 30-day Temporary Protection Order was a step forward. But implementation,
thus far, shows little understanding of the law, much less gender-based violence.

The rape of a 22-year old woman reportedly by six US American marines participating in joint
military exercises provided for by the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement has gripped the Philippines
since November 2005. Foreign policy, in this case, intersects with VAW, and despite existing legal
instruments, government has unabashedly shown its malleability in the face of a powerful country
like the United States.

Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights

Filipino women are still without any national legislation on their reproductive rights. It is obviously
realpolitik that defines government’s actual operating framework on sexual and reproductive issues,
which is to compromise, and even surrender women’s enjoyment of their rights in order to
accommodate the church and other conservative allies. Government’s own figures paint an appalling
picture of the reproductive health conditions of Filipino women today, with high unmet needs for
contraception. Induced abortions of nearly half a million women are estimated to occur each year,
with thousands dying from complications. Still, government continues to over privilege natural family
planning (NFP), strengthening religious prejudices against those who opt to choose artificial
contraceptive methods.

The heterosexist bias manifested in the invisibility of lesbian rights and health in government
programs predictably trickles down the public health bureaucracy. There is still no anti-
discriminatory legislation protecting lesbians. Monitoring and assessing lesbian health conditions and
needs remains difficult because of low levels of awareness and the proliferation of misconceptions
attached to lesbian identities. In turn, this impairs access to and availability of appropriate health
care services.

The neglect, even determined suppression of women’s sexual and reproductive health rights
becomes even more deplorable when seen alongside other health issues that women have to endure.
Basic health services do not enjoy the top-priority status that government awards to debt payments,
and have suffered the biggest cuts in the national budget. Many rural health centers have closed
down or are barely operational and qualified health professionals are joining the migrant labor force
in ever-increasing numbers.

Women’s Participation in Public Life

The ever-increasing imbalances in entitlements and access to resources provide fertile ground
for corruption in Philippine politics to flourish, which in turn, compound the difficulties that are
stacked against women’s participation in public life. Recent surveys report that seven out of ten
Filipinos see government corruption as growing worse in the last three years, and further worsening
in the future.
3
The constriction of democratic spaces becomes even more apparent in Philippine elections. Issues of
vote-rigging in the 2004 elections remain unresolved to this day and continue to fuel popular protest.
Local elite dominate elections in the country routinely capitalizing on the economic vulnerabilities of
the poor to ensure election outcomes. Predictably, the legislature that these electoral exercises
have produced continues to provide an arena for horse trading, church and big business interests
included, with little space for the voices of the basic sectors to be heard.

Women’s local sectoral representation can best be described as superficial gestures of government’s
commitment to gender mainstreaming and gender-responsive governance. In practice, the
government performs exclusionary activities and arbitrarily exercises its political discretion, such
that women belonging to or have connections to local influential clans are privileged over grassroots
women.

Today, the Filipino people find themselves under increasing pressure to submit to calls for changing
the 1987 Constitution. Alarmingly, the proposed amendments invest the “new” parliament with
unsurpassed powers since Marcos’ time.

Women’s groups together with civil society organizations have been staging protests to challenge
these moves, along with other issues, and bring attention to greater impoverishment suffered
particularly by women in the grassroots. However, with disturbing consistency, government’s
response has been vicious and punitive. Women and activists and leaders have been among those
beaten, harassed, arbitrarily arrested and detained by the police. The frequency of killings and
arrests are growing to such a degree that some political analysts fear a return to martial law, or a
form of constitutional authoritarianism.

These developments spell the continued narrowing of already limited spaces for women’s
participation, especially the most marginalized and excluded sections. These also dampen initiatives
of women’s organizations that would have more actively engaged in public life under more
democratic circumstances.

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This Philippine Shadow Report is a synthesis of the experiences and insights generated from a
series of consultations held in the early part of 2006, a process which brought together women’s
organizations from the three major regions of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The three-day training
seminar on the CEDAW that preceded all of these consultations allowed participants not only to
comprehensively learn about the Convention but to fully appreciate how the CEDAW could be
relevant and meaningful to women’s lives.

All in all, more than a hundred women’s organizations from all over the country participated, the
majority representing rural and urban poor women, women workers including migrant women,
indigenous and Muslim women and lesbian women. Leaders of different NGOs of women were also
part of the consultative process.

4
From the information exchanged and the sharing of data and critical analyses, participants were able
to clearly see the gaps between government’s commitments to the CEDAW and what is really
happening on the ground. These outputs were systematically documented and became the primary
data source for the writing of the shadow report. This report is thus privileged by the first-hand
knowledge of women on the obstacles to the implementation of the CEDAW.

The lead organization that planned and implemented these activities including the final writing of
the Shadow Report is the Women’s Legal Bureau, Inc, (WLB) a Philippine women’s institute with
more than a decade’s work experience on women’s rights, women and the law and the legal system,
and legal education and advocacy and research. With support from UNIFEM and the International
Women’s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW), WLB was able to conduct the consultations, do further
research, report writing and submission before the 36th session of the Committee on the Elimination
of Discrimination against Women’s was held.

Maximizing the rich outputs of the consultations, this Shadow Report does not simply follow the
outline of the Philippine government’s 5th and 6th report but goes into more substantial discussions of
dynamically linked issues and interwoven dimensions. Thus, the report is not structured on a per
article basis but rather, attempts to be more holistic, in that it defines the general conditions in
which the CEDAW is supposed to operate and the challenges to its implementation. It then fleshes
these out in thematical discussions of urgent concerns raised by women themselves.

From the overview of the national situation, the situation proceeds to discuss 1) Women’s Economic
Empowerment, 2) Women and the Environment, 3) Violence Against Women, 4) Sexual and
Reproductive Health Rights, and 5) Women’s Participation in Public Life.

The report’s concluding sections highlight the major arguments and assertions raised, as well as
general and specific recommendations that the Committee of 23 experts on CEDAW can support as it
calls for the Philippine government to undertake, to achieve full compliance to its obligations under
CEDAW. While government is taken to task, primarily on the exercise of its political will to act on
conditions disabling of the CEDAW, it goes beyond finding blame and seeking accountabilities.
Women are speaking through this report, pointing out the directions government must take to show
its sincerity and seriousness in realizing the vision and goals of the CEDAW.

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A month before the Women’s Convention entered into force in September 1981, the
Philippine government had already ratified the treaty, in effect submitting itself to legally-binding
and far-reaching commitments to promote women’s human rights and take national action against all
forms of discrimination that prevent them from accessing and enjoying these rights. Tragically, after
more than two decades, de facto discrimination remains the rule rather than the exception, and
despite the strides in de jure recognition of women’s rights, substantive equality still lies beyond the
grasp of the majority of Filipino women. While laws and policies are important, they are only as good
as the social and political conditions that effectively and promptly allow the dismantling of layer
upon layer of discrimination against women. Left unaddressed, or worse, deliberately allowed to
remain, these systemic conditions will always pose obstacles to the exercise of women’s rights, as is
the case in Philippine society today.

5
Constricting Democratic Spaces

Widespread reports of vote-rigging and other forms of election fraud that included the
diversion of public money and resources tainted the 2004 presidential polls right from the onset. To
many Filipinos, these were confirmed by the exposé on wiretapped phone conversations between no
less than President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Atty. Virgilio Garcillano, Commission on Elections
chair. The legitimacy of government has since been hanging by a thread, hounded by reports of
corruption scandals and rocked by unabated protest.

Up to PhP780 million (US$15 million) of a PhP35 billion agricultural support package for poor farmers,
cannot be accounted for and the key government official responsible for the fund is nowhere to be
found. Billions of pesos have also inexplicably disappeared from partially recovered assets of the
Marcos dictatorship.1 Other issues of corruption may never come to light with the issuance of
Executive Order 464, which bans government officials from testifying in congressional hearings
without the approval of the President.

Predictably, the strong-arm responses of government to public dissent and particularly to popular
calls for the president’s resignation, have all the more invited heightened criticism and protest
across different sectors. For instance, police had shifted from its “Maximum Tolerance” handling of
protest demonstrations to the “Calibrated Pre-Emptive Response” policy which, by prior restraint,
impinges on the exercise of core democratic rights to free speech and peaceful assembly. In
February 2006, reports of an alleged coup plot were met by government’s declaration of a State of
National Emergency (Presidential Proclamation 10172) that for many Filipinos resembled too closely
Ferdinand Marcos’ declaration of martial law in 1972.

An alarming spate of arbitrary arrests, illegal detention, killings of local leaders and violent
dispersals of mass mobilizations unfolded in the succeeding months and persist to this day.
Maneuvers of government and the military continue to constrain the exercise of basic rights to free
speech, press and peaceful assembly. The threat of “warrant-less arrests”3 still hangs heavily,
curtailing the movements of leaders of militant organizations suspected of involvement in the
alleged coup plot. Several women activists have, at one time or another, been invited for
questioning and arbitrarily detained. Recently, another journalist was killed, bringing to 42 the
number of media people slain since 2001.4

The crisis of credibility has spread to other government institutions and processes, deepening public
distrust of many years’ duration in their capacity to keep faith with their mandates. Electoral
processes and the Commission on Elections, long perceived as controlled by moneyed elites, have
become more suspect than ever to the average Filipino. So too, is Congress, since the majority of the
members of the Lower House are known allies of the current administration. A key agency in the
implementation of laws, the Department of Justice (DoJ) for its part, has vigorously supported
punitive police actions against protest demonstrators, while unabashedly hampering and confusing
the execution of justice, as in the prosecution of the Subic rape case5.

1
Excluding the PhP8 billion (US$1.5 billion) set aside for human rights victims under the dictatorship, what is left of the estimated PhP27 billion (US$5
billion) partially recovered by past Philippine administrations from Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth of around US$680 million can no longer be traced.
2
PP 1017 was lifted after several days in the wake of the protest it ignited.
People’s organizations later challenged the constitutional basis of PP 1017 before the Supreme Court, only to be subjected to the politicking that infects all
branches of the Philippine government including the highest court of the land. While it upheld the constitutionality of PP 1017, the Supreme Court declared
one of its provisions (General Order No. 5 authorizing warrant-less arrests) unconstitutional.
3
General Order No. 5 under PP 1017.
4
A Renewal of Vows. Press statement of the National Union of Journalists for Peace, 31 May 2006 posted at www.nujp.org and accessed 7 June 2006.
5
On 21 November 2005, a 22-year old Filipino woman filed charges of rape against four US navy men stationed in Subic, Zambales Province. This
occurred during joint US-RP military exercises, which are routinely held in different parts of the country as provided for by the Voluntary Forces
Agreement.
6
Just when the Presidency needs a way out of the crisis, the Lower House and local authorities have
escalated moves to amend the 1987 Constitution. However, along with the proposed amendment for
shifting from a bicameral to a parliamentary form of government, are proposed constitutional
changes that pave the way for term extensions of public officials, including the President. Also
incorporated are commander-in-chief powers unprecedented since Marcos’ time, from signing loan
contracts to allowing the presence of foreign military forces, with little or no restriction. Even the
only mechanism that has allowed representatives of marginalized sectors, women included, to
participate in drafting legislation is endangered.

Warped Development Priorities

The Philippine government made commitments once more to alleviating poverty, this time to
halving the number of poor and hungry people in 1990 by 2015 under the UN Millennium Development
Goals, but this does not seem to be the direction it is going. The same export-oriented, market-
driven structural adjustment policies are being implemented despite their utter failure at
substantively improving human development indicators for the majority of Filipinos in the last two
decades. In today’s globalized marked economy, government’s acquiescence to loan conditionalities
that include policies of trade liberalization, deregulation and privatization has, in fact, intensified.
With the interests of foreign investors and their local partners prioritized over their own, large
numbers of poor, marginalized women, along with other vulnerable groups are but collateral damage
in government’s pursuit of this “development” track.

Economic growth was reportedly sustained from years 2000 through 2003 but it turns out that this
was far from pro-poor. Initial findings of the 2003 Family Income and Expenditure Survey show a 10-
percent drop in real average family incomes. For the bottom 30 percent of the population things
were even worse as real average income contracted by around six percent for the period.6

The much-vaunted GNP growth of 6.2 percent in 2004 hinged largely on income earnings from
abroad, rising significantly from 8.5 percent to 13.8 percent due to the deployment of 8.3 percent
more OFWs in 2004.7 OFW remittances have continuously been rising from US$3.9 billion in 1994 to
US$7.6 billion in 2003.8 Women comprise the overwhelming majority of the estimated eight million
Filipinos working abroad, reaching almost 200,000 in 2004.9 Despite increasing reports of abuse, it
has been business as usual for the government which persists in promoting the overseas employment
program it started way back in mid-70s.

Bleak poverty indicators and trends are hardly surprising considering that the needs defined by the
United Nations as key to people’s development – education, health, food and nutrition, access to
clean water, among others – are not among the primary concerns of the Philippine government.
Other mechanisms meant to uplift women’s conditions are similarly deprioritized. For example, the
Gender and Development Budget, the mechanism meant to drive gender mainstreaming forward,
gets only five percent of the budgets of line agencies and local government units; actual allocations
may be much smaller considering prevalent reports of misappropriation and misuse.10

6
“Absolute number of poor has increased”. Asian Development Bank. Inquirer News Service. Posted March 20, 2005 at www.inq7.net.
7
Philippine Business Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 1. www.philippinebusiness.com.ph.
8
Personal Income of Filipino Overseas Workers. Selected Philippine Economic Indicators (1994-2003). Accessed at www.bsp.gov.ph, 1 June 2006.
9
Of the 199,423 female OFWs reported by the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency reported in 2002, some 88,669 or 90 percent went into the services
sector.
10
Forty percent of government agencies reportedly submit a GAD budget, yet less than one percent of the budget is used. Reports abound on the
misappropriation of GAD funds at the local levels. In Bacolod City, province of Negros Occidental, GAD funds in 10 of the 61 barangays are used as buffer
funds for bonuses or budget supplement through the guise of fund realignment. In a Luzon province, a male barangay (village) captain created his own
women’s organization which thereafter controlled distribution of GAD budget.

7
Debt service, however, is an unshakeable priority. The Philippines stands out from other borrowers
for its Automatic Appropriations Law – a policy of automatically allotting revenues for debt service,
before deciding on other public expenditures. For 2006, 32 percent of the annual budget has already
been set aside for interest payments. As debt payments have been consistently prioritized,
government’s capital outlay for productive public investments and services has been on a general
decline.

The Philippines’ Accession to the WTO: Greater Threats of Gender Discrimination

In the light of the crippling impacts of trade liberalization, the 2nd APEC Ministerial Meeting
on Women recommended in 2002 a policy review to ensure women are protected and promoted.
With government however, admitting a huge failing in general monitoring systems, it is unlikely that
significant changes have been made in this respect.

If anything, the noose has further tightened on women’s rights with the country’s accession in 1995
to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its many accords pushing for the unhampered movement
of capital, goods and services. These agreements have one thing in common: they give private
corporations as much or even greater rights and privileges as governments and their citizens.
National laws that do not conform to WTO rules can be shot down as obstacles to markets and free
trade. Policies for instance that protect women against gender discrimination in the workplace or set
strict safeguards against environmental degradation may be stricken down. Many of these laws and
regulations, hard won by women’s organizations, trade unions, environmental groups and other civil
society formations, are at risk under WTO disciplines of being amended or totally repealed. The
liberalization of the Philippine mining, agriculture and fisheries sectors is already a clear beginning in
this direction, and will have tremendous impacts, particularly on women in rural areas, indigenous
and ethnic communities and in labor migration.

A Culture Disabling to the CEDAW

All these are taking place in a context where elite politics is kept alive through patronage and
horsetrading by the influential and powerful few who have the most to gain from it. It breeds the
kind of politics and governance the country has today, inured to corruption and driven by economic
and political self-aggrandizement. It sustains a situation where only a handful of male-dominated
elite circles actually make the critical decisions on the country’s present and future. Alongside these
traditional politicians, only upper class, elite women have been installed in important positions from
the national down to the local levels of government, to the exclusion of grassroots women
representation and participation.

The clout of the powerful Catholic Church is unavoidably sought by members of local clans who seek
public office or politicians who want to keep their hold on power. The Church, in turn, plays politics
with those who support its conservative agenda. Thus, even with the categorical separation of the
Church and State in the Constitution, the divisions are in reality blurred and highly malleable.
Filipino women’s well-being are inevitably sacrificed in this quid pro quo arrangement that swings
votes for one, and preserves the gender-insensitive doctrines of the Catholic Church for the other.
Currying favor from the Catholic Church, for instance, has meant laggardly action by Congress on a
proposed Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights bill and a consistent refusal to endorse the use of
artificial contraceptives.

A sexist religiosity that projects women as ideally submissive and home-bound goes largely
unchallenged in Philippines, infecting and constituting other culturally-influential institutions like
education and media. The socialization begins early in life, such that it is more difficult for women
to see themselves as autonomous citizens with a stake in public life and with a democratic right to
8
engage in it. Government is yet to make truly substantial and decisive interventions in ensuring an
environment that capacitates women outside of their social reproductive tasks, if it is truly serious in
its commitment to the Women’s Convention.

Beyond noting gaps and raising accountabilities

The Women’s Convention faces a losing proposition under these conditions. The gravity of
these structural conditions that impede rather than advance women’s human rights, and the fact
that the Philippine government has not addressed them begs the question as to how government
could possibly comply with the CEDAW in this context, or in the first instance, ratify a covenant
before the international community of nations, and yet fail to promote and put in the necessary
measures for the attainment of its goals.

As problems persist and pervade, and extract an increasingly heavier toll in terms of women’s lives,
the need for rooting out causes becomes doubly urgent. Until structural inequities are resolved, the
issue of economically empowering women will not move significantly beyond identifying ever-
widening gaps and raising accountabilities.

9
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Women’s economic empowerment counts among the three areas of concern (including
women’s human rights and gender-responsive governance) that the Philippine government promised
to address under the Framework Plan for Women (FPW), as part of the effort to facilitate the
implementation of the CEDAW. The FPW is, in fact, only one of several development plans dating
back to the 80s, providing for economic empowerment.

However, the difference between policy and practice has yawned wider over the years, spelling more
disempowering than empowering conditions for millions of Filipino women in the country and abroad.
As of 2003 estimates, 44 percent of the population is estimated to be living on less than US$2. From
1997-2000, the absolute number of urban poor families rose by nearly 11 percent nationwide; for
seven regions, this grew by more than 20 percent. This translates to an additional 4.3 million families
living below the poverty thresholds during the same period.11

The difficulty of realizing Filipino women’s rights of solving poverty-related problems in the country
emphasizes that structural inequalities and inequities are still well-entrenched and pose the biggest
obstacles to any human development goal. It is clear that while FPW goals of “promoting women’s
economic empowerment through access to capital, markets, training, information, technology and
technical assistance,…”, they are not the strategic and substantive interventions that a decisive
move on realizing women’s economic empowerment would require.

Creditors and Foreign Investors: Shaping Development Priorities and Directions

The failure of structural adjustment policies in the last two decades does not seem to have
dawned. Mass poverty has only deepened. Growth rates continue to be fueled, not by genuine
industrialization or increasing exports, but by the infusion of foreign money from borrowings and
income from abroad.

Dependent on borrowings, the Philippine government has become vulnerable to policy-shaping loan
conditionalities, such as what its anti-poverty agenda calls asset reform which involves handing over
all or part of public agencies to profit-motivated private providers. For poor households and
communities without the capacity to pay for human requirements as basic as water, this has turned
deadly. In 2004, the failure of water concessionaires to upgrade aging water pipes led to the
outbreak of cholera and other gastro-intestinal diseases in Tondo, Manila. Women, if they were not
among at least seven dead and the more than 600 who fell ill from the contaminated water, tended
to the sick and the dying, on top of their regular household chores. Water rates in Metro Manila have
ballooned on average more than 700 percent in less than 10 years, increasingly eroding the access of
poor communities to a critical resource.12

Ironically, the government through the FPW talks about improving women’s access to basic services
at the same time that it has been slashing social service budgets to make up for its budget deficits.
In the 2006 budget, almost a third of the budget has already been earmarked for interest payments
alone. Another PhP381.1 billion will have to be shelled out for principal payments. The total debt of
PhP722 billion translates to a staggering PhP1.37 million per minute automatically appropriated for
debt service. Even tax revenues are not exempt; 80 centavos of every peso remitted will be sucked

11
The annual per capita poverty threshold, or the amount required to satisfy food and non-food basic needs at the national level, reached PhP11,605 in 2000.
12
Lessons from a Failed Privatization Experience, Freedom from Debt Coalition, January 2004.
10
into debt service. By comparison, all social services from education and health to community
development and agrarian reform have been allotted only PhP293 billion. Against 85 million Filipinos,
social services comes up to a mere PhP3,400 per person.13
The promise of providing mass housing for instance has all but been forgotten. From the PhP20
billion financing pledged, only over a billion pesos was released in three years. Meanwhile, new
shelter requirements grew at around 400,000 annually, adding to the backlog of 500,000 units. By
2003, unmet housing needs had reached the four million mark.14

More basic needs such as water and sanitation needs have been gravely neglected. In 2002, 39 and 29
percent of the rural and urban population, respectively, had no access to improved sanitation
facilities. Twenty-three percent of the rural population and fifteen percent of the urban population
had to contend with poor water sources.15 The number of barangay (village) health stations has also
fallen from 1995 – 2002 along with the number of government doctors and nurses.16

The Feminization of Domestic Labor and Migrant Labor

Many of government’s responses to labor issues have again been in the area of enacting
policy. At the same time, however, government has been known to relax national laws to
accommodate foreign interests and big business. This has allowed private business to circumvent
labor laws and to exploit greater numbers of women desperate for employment.17 Numbers of women
(15 years and above) in the labor force began rising from 9.7 million in 1992 to 26.85 million in 2004,
slightly higher than the number of males of the same age range. The increasingly feminization of
labor force, however, is more attributable to rising demand for women’s cheap labor rather than
government’s attentiveness to undertaking “…all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination
against women in the field of employment….”18

Labor force participation rates from 1997-2004 still showed a large gap, growing from 48.9 percent
to 50.2 percent for women as compared to the men which rose from 82.4 percent to 83.8 percent
during the same period. Unemployment rates among women have generally been higher compared to
men, from 8.5 percent in 1997 to 12.4 percent in 2004, as compared to unemployment rates for men
which registered 7.5 percent to 11.5 percent during the same period. Women are usually employed
in areas that only extend their social reproduction tasks in the household, that is, in
domestic/private household activities (laundresses, maids, cooks, babysitters, etc.), education as
well as health and social work industries.19

The shift from the formal to informal employment of women has become increasingly marked in the
last few years, indicating that more women are exposed today to unregulated working conditions
beyond the reach of the Labor Code. So-called close-open strategies, a proliferation of
apprenticeships or on-the-job trainings, “casualization” or contractualization, piece-work for piece
rates, etc., exploit women’s cheap labor in informal work. This has resulted, among others, to the
loss of job security and an increase of abusive work arrangements.

13
“On the Proposed 2006 Budget”. FDC. August 2005. Accessed from www.freedomfromdebtcoalition.org, 17 May 2006.
14
“GMA administration scored for empty promises on housing.” Freedom from Debt Coalition, October 2003.
15
World Bank, Economic Statistics accessed 19 May 2006 at http://www.econstats.com/wb/C151.htm.
16
“Health Facilities and Government Health Manpower 1995-2002”. Posted at www.nscb.gov.ph. Accessed 1 June 2006.
17
Philippine labor laws mandate that after six months workers should be regularized and be accorded all the social benefits that go with this status. This is
being violated with impunity, often by foreign companies partnering with local business who indefinitely keep workers on contractual basis, i.e., hiring them
on five-month contracts. Because of the dearth of employment, many workers have no choice but accept these anti-labor conditions.
18
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, Article 11, Sec. 1.
19
“Women and Men Aged 15 Years and Over, by Employment Indicators, Sex and Year”. October 1998-2005 Integrated Survey of Households, National
Statistics Office cited by the NSCB at www.nscb.gov.ph.
11
Government’s admission (and conspicuous lack of proposed actions) that “flexible employment is
usually beyond the reach of labor legislation and social protection” indicates that this problem goes
beyond law-making and monitoring impact. In the bigger picture, the dearth of decent employment,
especially for women, as against an ever-ballooning labor force is such that many who do get a
chance at the job market are pressed into accepting anti-labor conditions. This also represents a
dampening effect on fighting for one’s rights or even simply reporting sexual harassment and gender-
biased conditions in the workplace, which could mean being forced out of work. The right of women
to unionize has been compromised. By government’s own data, women’s participation in trade
unions has drastically declined from 59.6 percent in 1996 to only 25.6 percent in 2000.20

Limited participation of women in tripartite and/or multi-sectoral bodies further exacerbates a

situation where social benefits and protection schemes particularly relating to women’s needs are
not prioritized because of the additional costs this would entail government and private firms alike.
These social benefits include provisions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) on maternity
protection, the conditions of home-workers, reproductive health, and occupational safety and health
across formal and informal sectors.

The potential for earning higher incomes abroad, coupled with the sheer difficulty of finding decent-
paying work in the country, have been consistent push factors in Filipino labor migration. While there
is no formal policy encouraging labor migration, government continues to promote labor export in
other ways. The Department of Labor and Employment, for example, sends marketing missions
abroad to find job openings for Filipinos. OFWs are hailed as heroes, and with good reason: dollar
remittances significantly prop up the Philippine economy. From US$ 6,031,271 billion in 2001, OFW
remittances have risen to US$ 10,689,005 billion in 2005 and accounts for 10.2 percent of GNP.21

From the early 90s onwards, more women have become part of the migrant labor force. By 2001,
they made up 73 percent, deployed mostly as domestic workers, entertainers, and caregivers.22 In
2002 alone, census statistics recorded over 530,000 women (age 25-29), leaving to work mostly as
domestic helpers in Hong Kong. In the succeeding years, this figure would increase, a clear sign of
the feminization of Philippine labor migration. These figures do not include untold numbers of
women who are victimized by illegal contracting agencies and are trafficked into slave labor
conditions and prostitution.

The tragic consequences of this forced diaspora are well-documented but these recede in the
background, given government’s promotion and institutionalization of a culture of labor migration.
While many OFWs have found viable employment, there are harsh and cruel trade-offs in terms of
their physical and emotional well-being as well as those of the families they leave behind. Others,
especially among the large number of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, have not been so fortunate
and return home physically maimed, psychologically broken, or dead. Migration-related violence
recorded by the government from 1993-2000 shows that of the recorded 1,013 cases of human
trafficking, women made up 64 percent; 19 percent of this figure had been prostituted.

In the face of horrendous incidences of abuse, even death, suffered by OFWs in the hands of foreign
employers, government’s view of installing safety nets for women as but another “continuing
challenge” shows callousness appalling for a States Party to the CEDAW. At the minimum,
government has not even maximized protection mechanisms such as the UN Migrant Workers
Convention and related Conventions 97 and 143 of the International Labour Organization.

20
National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women at www.ncrf.gov.ph.
21
“Key Labor Statistics”. Central Bank data cited by the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics. http://www.bles.dole.gov.ph/key_labor/keylabstat.html
accessed 1 June 2006.
22
Unlad Kabayan Migrant Services Foundation, Inc. www.unladkabayan.org/phillabor.htm.
12
Rural Women

The impacts of corporate-led globalization are even more strongly felt among rural women,
whose work in both production and social reproduction is largely unpaid to begin with, contrary to
Article 14 of the CEDAW and General Recommendation No. 16 (X) issued more than 10 years ago.
Because of the concentration of public services in major cities, they live under doubly appalling
conditions of poverty and deprivation.

Rural poverty incidence has hardly budged, from 46.3 percent in 1988 to 47 percent in year 2000.
Provinces in the largest Philippine island of Mindanao, where the largest concentration of ethnic
minorities and indigenous peoples (61 percent) can also be found, consistently posted the most
dismal human development outcomes relative to other regions.23 Mountain Province, home to various
indigenous groupings of the Igorot, registered among the highest income gaps at 38 percent
compared to other provinces.24 Still lacking effective and adequate disaster-preparedness
interventions, the calamity-prone Bicol region again came up among the poorest regions.25

The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao has consistently registered the poorest indicators of
access to safe water and sanitation, and of women’s literacy. A child born in the ARMM has “…very
limited prospects for a long, productive, and healthy life compared with children in the rest of the
country. This child has a substantially higher than average chance of being born to a mother who is
not functionally literate and into a family sharing a lower than average income, and of living in a
home without access to safe water or a sanitary toilet."26 Because of this unbroken tradition of
impoverishment, Muslim women are pushed farther out into the margins where greater
vulnerabilities are taken advantage of by loan sharks, labor recruiters, sex traffickers and
prostitution rings.

The southern island of Mindanao is also the center of a long-drawn internecine conflict. This has
further intensified after 9/11 and the US-led war on terror, with the Philippine government
dislocating more livelihoods and communities by launching witch-hunting activities and pursuing
military campaigns in Mindanao. Mostly women and children comprise the internal refugees who
suffer hunger, deprivation, malnutrition and disease in ill-equipped, congested elementary schools
that are automatically converted into evacuation centers during emergencies.

In agriculture, women make up 52 percent of the work force, contributing directly and indirectly to
family production without compensation. Women in fisheries engage in a range of production
activities such as fish-shrimp fry collection, fish marketing, maintenance of fishing gears,), fish
processing (smoking, canning), preservation and packing. Unemployment has been rising in recent
years; only 4.9 million of 11.9 million rural women of working age in 2002 were gainfully employed.27
Consequently, younger women are being drawn to employment possibilities in urban centers or in
other countries, vulnerable to trafficking and prostitution.

Way back in 1989, the Committee already called attention to the widespread gaps in applying the
principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value by issuing General Recommendation No. 13
(VIII), to strengthen Article 14 of the CEDAW. But rural women hired as wage workers are still

23
“The Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines”. Accessed at http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/Indigenous_Peoples/PHI/chapter_3.pdf 1 June 2006
24
The family income of poor Filipinos in the Mountain Province must increase by 38 percent of the poverty threshold for them not to be considered poor.
25
“Absolute number of poor has increased”. Asian Development Bank. Inquirer News Service. Posted March 20, 2005 at www.inq7.net.
26 13
World Bank, Human Development for Peace and Prosperity in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao." Human Development Sector Unit in East
Asia and Pacific Region, 2004.
27
Ernesto M. Ordoñez. “Rural women need stronger voice”. Inquirer News Service, 3 March 2005. Accessed at www.inq7.net 1 June 2006.
13
subjected to unequal pay for equal work. The PhP15 wage difference between men and women in
1997 rose to PhP21.58 in 2002.

Whether in unpaid family production or in wage work, what is immediately evident is the non-
valuation of rural women’s work,, a condition that the Philippine government should have addressed
under Sec. 1d, Article 11 of the CEDAW.28 Women make up a hefty 56.2 percent of agricultural
workers who are unpaid family workers.29 Stereotypes in agriculture and fisheries abound, and men
are still privileged over women, even with regards agrarian reform, control over productive resources
and support services. From 1996-2001, women composed only about 25.5 percent of the Department
of Agriculture’s beneficiaries in sector-based and agency-led programs.30 Even today, titles are issued
to male spouses; female spouses are not counted as beneficiaries. The Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program will end in 2008, but in 2004 there were still around twice as many men who have
been registered as holders of Certificates of Land Ownership Agreements (CLOAs).31

One of government’s responses to economic globalization has been the enactment of the Agriculture
and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) which further softens the ground for the liberalization of the
sector. There has been a rise in the use of highly toxic chemical inputs for high-value crops and in
capital-led conversions of crops, land and fisheries, which are displacing women farmers from their
traditional sources of livelihood. At the same time, rural women producers are being pushed into
bankruptcy and greater food insecurity because of the indiscriminate dumping of cheap imported
agriculture products. Caught in desperate circumstances, rural women are easy prey to usurers who
charge as high as 20 percent monthly interest. AFMA is supposed to provide safety nets in credit and
financing, research and development, etc., but government has not been able to translate these
commitments into actual money terms. Again, it violates the CEDAW, particularly with regard the
general recommendation to “…promote women’s fundamental human right to nutritional well-being
throughout their lifespan”…and by “…take steps to facilitate physical and economic access to
productive resources, especially for rural women….”.32

Implications of Key WTO Agreements on Women’s Rights

The first legally enforceable multilateral instrument covering 160 service sectors from
childcare and education to water use and sanitation, the General Agreement on Trade in Services is
among the most dangerous of the WTO treaties. The implications of GATS’ clear bias for private
over public service delivery are far-reaching for women, who are both providers and consumers of
services. Gender roles in society are such that the bulk of social reproductive work falls on women.
They are thus boxed into a particularly vulnerable position when government surrenders their public
service mandate to private corporations. Embedded as they are in unvalorized social reproduction
roles and tasks, women inescapably take up the slack and fill in the gaps by default, expending
longer, unpaid labor hours when government withdraws from services like child and health care, or
when private providers prove too expensive for average households to afford.

GATS also poses great dangers to women migrants because it covers only professionals (e.g.,
company managers and information technology personnel) and their movement across member-
countries of the WTO. This invites criminalization of the majority of skilled and semi-skilled OFWs. As
it were, the maltreatment of women in domestic work continues unabated, with national and

28 15
Article 11, Sec. 1d provides for “the right to equal remuneration, including benefits and to equal treatment in respect of work of equal value, as well as
equality of treatment in the evaluation of the quality of work”.
29
“NSCB 2006 Factsheet-Updates on Women and Men in the Philippines”. Accessed at www.nscb.gov.ph/factsheet/pdf06/fs2_06.asp 6 May 2006.
30
Department of Agriculture, as cited in “NSCB 2006 Factsheet-Updates on Women and Men in the Philippines”. Accessed at
www.nscb.gov.ph/factsheet/pdf06/fs2_06.asp 6 May 2006.
31
As against 912,797 men, only around 402,000 women were CLOA holders in 2004 according to the Department of Agrarian Reform.
32
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, General Recommendation 24 (XX), No. 7.
14
international measures still ineffectual in going after violators. Strangely, the FPW, “cognizant of the
threats of economic deregulation and trade liberation,” offers the “facilitation of overseas
employment work” as one of its interventions.33

Local producers, many of them women in vegetable farming, fisheries, small garments
manufacturers, and the indigenous women will be hit hardest by the AoA, NAMA and several other
WTO treaties which aim at progressively removing all barriers to the movement of goods and capital.
The passage of AFMA, for example, strengthens this direction, even as government has proven itself
powerless in stopping the entry of tons of smuggled vegetables, fish and rice priced 30-50 percent
lower than local produce. In fact, the Philippine government has not needed any prompting from the
WTO, applying tariffs way below ceilings set by the WTO.34

Women vegetable producers have been forced bankrupt by the inability of government to control the
flooding of cheaper, subsidized imports in local markets. Women in fishing communities, with no
safety nets provided by government, take up additional informal sector jobs on top of their social
reproduction chores to gain incomes lost to lower-priced, dumped fish from Taiwan or Vietnam. Even
subsistence agricultural production has been exposed to risk by a revitalized mining law that allows,
contrary to the Philippine Constitution, 100-percent foreign ownership through Financial and
Technical Assistance Agreements and Exploration Permits.35

The relentless spread of the market economy coupled with environmental degradation and the loss of
the ancestral territories have been particularly disastrous for the indigenous peoples, which number
more 15-20 million in the Philippines.36 From autonomous producers, many landless IP women have
become agricultural wage workers or contractual laborers in the service sectors. Knowledge of
indigenous women healers on medicinal herbs has also been laid open for bio-piracy by giant drug
transnational companies cashing in on the patenting rules of the Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights under the WTO.

A Dilemma of Clashing Paradigms

Because it is a States Party to the Women’s Convention, the Philippine government must be
taken to task for what it has or has not done vis-à-vis Article 3 which states that government must
undertake all appropriate measures to ensure the full development and advancement of women in all
fields. Here lies the fundamental issue before government today, which is the near impossibility of
complying with the CEDAW’s vision and goals, and for that matter, other international human rights
and sustainable development commitments while it pursues its market-driven agenda and strives for
integration into corporate-led economic globalization.

33
Republic of the Philippines. Combined 5th and 6th Philippine Progress Report On the Implementation of the UNthe CEDAW, June 2004.
34
Although government sets a 40 percent tariff on almost all vegetable imports, the applied tariff is only seven percent.
35
Article XII, Sec. 2 states: “The exploration, development, and utilization of natural resources shall be under the full control and supervision of the State.
The State may directly undertake such activities, or it may enter into co-production, joint venture, or production-sharing agreements with Filipino citizens, or
corporations or associations at least sixty per centum of whose capital is owned by such citizens.”
36
National Commission on Indigenous Peoples as cited by Aida Priscilla T. Cadiogan in “The Situation of Indigenous Women in the Philippines”.
Celebrating Diversity, Heightening Solidarity. Proceedings of the 2nd Asian Indigenous Women’s Conference, 4-8 March 2004, Baguio City. Asian
Indigenous Women’s Network and Tebtebba Indigenous People’s International Centre for Policy Research and Education, 2005.

15
As problems persist and pervade, and erode women’s rights and their enjoyment thereof, the need
for coming to terms with this dilemma becomes doubly urgent. For until structural inequities are
resolved, the issue of economically empowering women will not move significantly beyond
identifying ever-widening gaps and raising accountabilities.

16
 Women and Environment

So tightly linked are the lives of women to environmental resources that indiscriminate
resource extraction and the degradation that this inevitably brings translates correspondingly to a
curtailment of their human rights and an increase in already all too many forms of discrimination
foisted upon them. Women and the environment have in fact been called “shadow subsidies”37, both
supporting all societies but both under-valued and claimed for free.

Especially among rural communities, it has been women’s knowledge of biodiversity as a source of
water, food, medicines and livelihood, which covers for what government has unsuccessfully or is
increasingly failing to provide. Yet, even this is under threat from government’s pursuit of a market-
driven economic development paradigm hinged on further opening up the country’s resources to
foreign investments and capital. This track basically continues the structural adjustment processes of
the 80s which has, among others, intensified large-scale mining, logging, commercial fisheries and
cash crop production – all at great cost to communities and the environment.

Mining Away the Future

A dangerous consequence of this direction is already playing out in the liberalization of the
mining sector. Just a few years after international financial institutions took notice of the “under-
performing” mining industry and the restrictive measures governing foreign investment in key
sectors, Republic Act (RA) 7942 or the Philippine Mining Act was passed in March 1995 despite protest
from civil society organizations. This fulfilled a major recommendation of the World Bank and other
creditors for government to institute legislation that would assure investors risk-free business, ease
their access to exploration permits and mining concessions, and even grant the President authority to
approve 100 percent foreign equity through financial and technical assistance agreements (FTAAs).38
Under RA 7942, foreign firms investing at least US$50 million can now explore or mine up to 81,000
hectares for a period of 25-50 years, and through such methods as open pit mining, which has been
banned in countries like the US and Canada. Foreign mining companies are further extended
privileges ranging from the use of water resources to making decisions over the classification of
mining lands, and even the ejection of communities where right-of-way is awarded to exploration
projects.39

Existing mining sites and targets for further exploration are concentrated in the ancestral territories
of 15-20 million indigenous peoples (around 12-16 percent of the population) in various areas of the
archipelago; an estimated 49 percent or some 10 million are women. Twenty-three priority mining
projects, which cover 13 million hectares or 45 percent of the Philippines’ total land area, have
already been identified under the Mining Revitalization Program. It is estimated to bring loss of
livelihoods and dislocation to 11.7 million people from indigenous communities.40 Five of these areas
are in the Cordillera region, home to several ethno-linguistic groups collectively known as the
Igorots, and a magnet for mining transnational corporations.

37
Cited by Wee, Vivienne. The Gender Dimension in Environment and Development Policy:The Southeast Asian Experience. Paper prepared for the
Northeast Asia - Southeast Asia Consultation on Development and Environment, Bangkok, October 20 - 22, 1995. Engender (Centre for Environment,
Gender and Development Pte Ltd). Accessed at http://www.nautilus.org/archives/pub/ftp/aprenet/Library/Papers/devseasia 3 June 2006.
38
The Philippine government initially put aside RA 7942 due to strong public opposition in 2003. On 27 January 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the
Mining Act "favors the interest of foreign corporations" and directly assaults the country's sovereignty and patrimony. However, the same year, the SC
reversed itself and declared the constitutionality of RA 7942.
39
Josef, J.C.. “In the Grip of Greed and Gold”. PAID! Freedom from Debt Coalition. Vol. 12, Nos. 1-2, October-November 2002.
40
Cadiogan, Aida Priscilla T. “Situation of Indigenous Women in the Philippines”. Celebrating Diversity, Heightening Solidarity, Proceedings of the 2nd
Asian Indigenous Women’s Conference, 4-8 March 2004, Baguio City. Asian Indigenous Women’s Network and Tebtebba Indigenous People’s International
Centre for Policy Research and Education, 2005.
15
In 1996, the worst mining disaster recorded in Philippine history occurred when three million tons of
waste from operations of the Marcopper Mining Corporation spilled into major water systems in the
Province of Marinduque. Government has taken strong legal action against mine officials but this is
little consolation to residents who have been left with two dead rivers, which used to provide food,
irrigation and water, and heavy metal contamination, from being exposed to various toxic substances
ranging from mercury to arsenic.41
More recently, in October 2005, another mine tailings dam gave way in Rapu-Rapu Island off Albay
Province, spilling cyanide and other chemical waste into surrounding water bodies and possibly
endangering neighboring conservation sites for whale sharks. The company was fined less than PhP11
million. The toxic metals have been found directly harmful for its cancer-causing qualities and may
also lead to fetal deformities and mental retardation.42 Decrease in fish stocks and outbreaks of skin
diseases among residents have already been flagged by an independent citizens’ probe body but
these were dismissed by the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines as “overly dramatized”.
The list of environmental destruction and endangered biodiversity stretches from the ghost
communities of Hinatuan Island, Nonoc Island, Sison, Claver, Mainit, and Taganito in Surigao del
Norte, severely damaged due to open-pit mining operations43 and the poisoned streams from mining
explorations in Sipalay City, Cauayan, Hinobaan in Negros Occidental and parts of Negros Oriental to
the wastelands created by quarrying sites in Sulu and Basilan.44
In 2004, the appeal of indigenous groups to hold the National Minerals Policy Framework in abeyance
was overridden with the release of Executive Order 270 or the National Policy Agenda on Revitalizing
Mining in the Philippines. It was not clear whether the participation of grassroots women and
indigenous people’s organizations was ensured in the process, as consultation processes had
reportedly been rushed over a mere two-month period.

The document disturbingly foreshadows more damage to coastal resources as those apprehended for
disposing of mine tailings into the sea will only be fined PhP50 (less than US$1)/ton for damages
incurred. It has also watered down the progressive 1997 Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA or RA
8371), a product of years of people’s advocacy, by pushing for its harmonization with other laws,
including the Philippine Mining Act. This threatens the weakening of the indigenous people’s right
under IPRA to Free and Prior Informed Consent45 before any incursion can be made into their
ancestral territories.46

Reports received show that as of March 2005, 114 mining applications covering 66 percent or 1.2
million hectares of Cordillera land have already been approved by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau.
Some of the country’s remaining watersheds and forest reserves – supposedly protected by the
Philippine Constitution and other legislation such as the National Integrated Protected Area System –
are located in these areas. Economic dislocation looms for 19,500 small miners from 6,300 families
who stand to lose their jobs when the big mining companies start their operations.47

41
Coumans. Catherine. “Boac Tragedy Aftermath: Canadian Transnational Dumps Waste, Responsibility in Marinduque”. 24-26 March 1999. Accessed
from http://www.pcij.org/stories/1999/marcopper.html.
42
Center for Women’s Resources, Ulat Lila.
43
Using CEDAW in the Philippines: Claiming our Place, Claiming our Rights. Proceedings of the Mindanao Training on CEDAW for Women NGOs and
Human Rights Advocates, 3-7 April 2006, Hotel Mensang, Davao City.
44
Karl G. Ombion. “Negros folk gear for war with mining companies”. Vol. VI, No. 3, February 19 - 25, 2006. Accessed at www.bulatlat.com.
45
Chapter 2 Sec. 3g of IPRA defines Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) as “the consensus of all members of the indigenous cultural
communities/indigenous peoples to be determined in accordance with their respective customary laws and practices, free from any external manipulation,
interference, coercion, and obtained after fully disclosing the intent and scope of the activity, in a language and process understandable to the community”.
46
Reject the draft "National Minerals Policy Framework". Scrap the Philippine Mining Act of 1995. Sign-On Unity Statement. Undated. Chapter 2 Sec. 3g of
IPRA defines Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) as “the consensus of all members of the indigenous cultural communities/indigenous peoples to be
determined in accordance with their respective customary laws and practices, free from any external manipulation, interference, coercion, and obtained after
fully disclosing the intent and scope of the activity, in a language and process understandable to the community”.
47
Ulat Lila, Center for Women’s Resources citing bulatlat.com 23 October 2005.
16
Large-scale mining, in addition to illegal logging activities figure prominently in the distressing
disappearance of the country’s forestlands. Cited by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization for
having one of the highest deforestation rates in the region and the world, the Philippines lost 32.3
percent of its forest cover, or around 3,412,000 hectares between 1990- 2005. This is estimated to
have led to the destruction of 7.9 percent of forest and woodland habitat.48 Samar, the third largest
Philippines and known for its concentration of biodiversity, faces this threat from bauxite mining and
corporate logging following the lifting of a logging moratorium and the restoration of suspended
logging permits.49 The resulting massive loss of human life, property and livelihoods from disasters
caused by environmental degradation again bring to mind what indigenous people wisely posit: When
the forests are gone and the rivers are dry of what good is gold? The people are scattered as the
winds do to dust, Can gold restore life?50
Ironically, government is bleeding communities and their resources in exchange for a drop in the
bucket of massive profits that will be reaped by the large scale mining operators. For example, only
19 percent of US$245 million potential sales from the Rapu-Rapu project will go to the government in
the form of excise tax and income tax without incentives. As for Didipio Copper Project in Nueva
Vizcaya Province (of the 100-percent owned Australian Climax-Arimco Mining Corp.), a mere 17
percent of US$623 million will be paid to government through taxes.51

The Low-Down on Export-Oriented Fisheries

Government invites a harsher backlash on the environmental resources of marginalized

communities and poor women under the corporate-led trading regimes of the World Trade
Organization (WTO). The 1997 Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization Act or AFMA was passed in
compliance with the country’s commitments to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. AFMA
promotes the use of hazardous agro-chemicals, genetically modified seeds, and technologies for
export-oriented fish/shrimp culture activity.
The Philippines is one of the leading shrimp-producing countries in the world, but for the income
that this brings, the government may as well sacrifice the future of coastal resources. Aurora
Province, for instance, pioneered intensive shrimp farming in the 90s only to learn too late about its
disastrous consequences. Degradation of the nearby fish habitats multiplied in only a few years
because of production-stimulating inputs required by this technology. In only 6 months, over 500 tons
of feeds poured into the 39-hectare project. The accumulated pond sludge of 370 tons was then
dumped in the river, killing corals and sea grass. Fishery species and fish yields soon decreased.
Women shell gatherers became inflicted with skin blisters. Potable water was also depleted from
salinization caused by the heavy use of deep wells.52

Just like intensive shrimp farming, commercial fish farming is encouraged by AFMA through offers of
duty-free or low tariff access to inputs, tax holidays and other incentives to investors. Many coastal
communities, however, have witnessed and suffered first-hand from the negative impacts caused by
the deforestation of mangroves and coastal vegetation and their conversion into fishponds. Because
of the chemical wastes from commercial feeds and pesticides that flow into adjacent land and water
systems, entire coastal ecosystems have been threatened.

48
World Deforestation Rate Table. Accessed at http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Philippines.htm. 8 June 2006.
49
Felicisimo Manalansan. “Saving the Philippine Environment”. Bulatlat, 6 December 2005. http://qc.indymedia.org/news/2005/12/5485.php Print
comments.
50
Rowill Aguillon. “Mining Debt: A Victim’s Point of View”. Accessed at www.jubileesouth/org/journal/mining.htm 8 June 2006.
51
“President Arroyo’s Decision Not To Ban Mining: A Poor Bet to RP’s Economic Growth”. Press Release citing “Philippine Mining Investment
Opportunities, 2003 Report of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines”. Legal Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan, 23 May 2006.
52
Center for Empowerment and Resource Development and Tambuyog Development Center. “The Impact of Intensive Shrimp Farming”. PAID! Freedom
from Debt Coalition. Vol. 12, Nos. 1-2, October-November 2002.
17
Women in coastal communities participate in almost all aspects of community livelihood: as primary
food producers in farming and fishing; as traders of fish and other locally produced goods; as
producers of handmade crafts; as housewives and caregivers. Any decline in the productivity of
fishing grounds and crop areas is immediately felt by women, not only in terms of income poverty
but time poverty, as they continue to attend to social reproduction while doubling their efforts to
produce from degraded resources their previous levels of income.53

CEDAW and Environmental Concerns

“As a vulnerable group, women are greatly affected by the state of the environment.
Environmental problems are either caused or aggravated by profit-driven concepts of development
that least prioritize environmental preservation and conservation. These affect women’s livelihood,
food security and overall health and well-being, thus limiting their participation and
empowerment.”1854

Furthermore, for women like those of the rural lumads1955and Muslim women, the environment is
linked not only to their economic sustenance, it is entwined in their cultural, social and spiritual life
as a people. This reality, however, is unrecognized by a government disdainful of those women’s
cultural rights. Philippine laws disregard for one the issue of ancestral domain and the view of
indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities on the sacredness of land and why it cannot be
commodified or subjected to purchase, sale, ownership or lease.
Poverty in the countryside, though recognized by government as significant factors in rural to urban
migration and in drawing more women to overseas employment work, is ironically promoted by
policies that further deepen rural impoverishment. The Philippine government cannot claim
adherence to the CEDAW and yet pursue environmentally destructive programs that result in adverse
consequences for women and communities. These policies and programs are contrary to prescriptions
particularly under Articles 3 and 24 of the Convention, which explicitly oblige governments to ensure
the full development and advancement of women and the promotion of their rights. Government
should, therefore, not take any action that violates or impairs, or encourages violation and
impairment by third parties, including private corporations, of the human rights of women. CEDAW’s
Art. 12 as elaborated on in its General Recommendation No. 24 obliges government to respect,
protect and promote women’s right to health as it has specific obligations set out under other
substantive articles of the Convention like articles 14 and 13 (c) thereof.

53
Luz Lopez-Rodriguez “The Fishers of Talangban: Women’s Roles and Gender Issues in Community Based Coastal Resource Management”. Seeds of
Hope. UPCSWCD, 1996.
18
Philippine NGO Beijing+10 Report. “Women and the Environment, February 2005.
19
Non-Christian/Muslim indigenous people in Mindanao, comprising together with the Muslims, 61 percent of all indigenous and ethnic groups in the
Philippines.
18
Extent of the implementation of development projects and violations of indigenous peoples’ rights

• The Higaonon and Banwaon peoples of Mindanao are victims of land grabbing by private corporations that was facilitated by
government agencies. The Nasipit Lumber Company has Timber License Agreements covering more than 100,000 hectares in the
tri-boundaries of Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon and Agusan del Norte. The programs of the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources (DENR) and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples on Community-Based Forest Management and Certificate
of Ancestral Domain Claim/Title, respectively, have privatized communally owned ancestral lands to private individuals and groups.

Under the DENR's program making the CARAGA region a timber corridor, about 50,000 hectares will be converted to tree plantations
of Shannalynd and Tecland companies; these are adjacent to Banwaon ancestral territories in Agusan del Sur. Vast tracts of former
Higaonon lands are now pineapple and banana plantations of Del Monte, and cattle ranches and sugarcane plantations in Bukidnon.
About 2,000 hectares of agricultural lands in 10 barangays of Talakag, also in Bukidnon, are targeted for palm oil plantation.
Negotiations with Higaonon landowners are still going on. NCIP personnel are reportedly brokering the use of their lands. Politicians
and military officials are creating fake datus (community leaders) to make it easier for them to get the consent of members of the
community.

• The majority of the Tumanduk people in the Visayas thrive on ancestral lands that the government has awarded to different entities.
Their problems of hunger and poverty are exacerbated by this land insecurity. The problem started in 1962 when President Diosdado
Macapagal declared 24 barangays in the municipalities of Tapaz and Jamindan in Capiz province as a military reservation for the 3rd
Infantry Division of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The reservation covers more than 33,300 hectares of ancestral land. The
military conducts about two war games yearly in the area, disrupting the community life of some 12,000 Tumanduks. Since 1994
Tumanduk families have received and continue to receive eviction notices.

Excerpted from: Celebrating Diversity, Heightening Solidarity, Proceedings of the 2nd Asian Indigenous Women’s Conference, 4-
8 March 2004, Baguio City. Asian Indigenous Women’s Network and Tebtebba Indigenous People’s International Centre for
Policy Research and Education, 2005.

19
 VViioolleennccee AAggaaiinnsstt W
Woom
meenn

In pursuit of its aim to remove obstacles to women’s advancement, CEDAW categorically

stresses the obligation of States Parties to change social contexts where beliefs, customs and norms
based on the idea of women’s inferior status flourish and prevent them from the full enjoyment of
their fundamental rights. These manifest in many forms, but none perhaps as clearly and agonizingly
portrays the asymmetrical power relations between men and women as when women are subjected
to physical, sexual and psychological assault and abuse.

For thousands of Filipino women, this is the only context they know: a context of impunity where
there is neither security nor safety in their persons, their workplaces, their communities or their
homes. Domestic violence is the most common form of gender-based violence in the Philippines
country, followed by rape.56 It has been reported that on average, a woman is beaten every two to
three hours and another is raped every eight hours.57

The Philippine government may indeed pride itself on the formal laws and processes that address
the violence against women (VAW), even as it has yet to institutionalize the meaning of
discrimination against women, as enshrined in the CEDAW. But it is precisely because such policies
exist that the prevalence and persistence of this sex and gender-based abuse becomes glaring and
inexcusable. That several of these instruments were borne out of women’s determined struggles to
claim and protect their rights, makes government even more culpable and accountable.

The Pervasiveness of VAW

Patriarchal views, values and practices are still very much the norm in Philippine society, and
are reproduced in countless ways and in varying degrees by different institutions, among them the
conservative Catholic Church, fundamentalist Christian and Muslim religious groups, the largely
consumerist media, schools and government itself. Thus, even as more women have been drawn into
formal production by changing global demands and labor requirements, social reproduction is still
their exclusive, unchanging, uncompensated burden. They also remain largely seen as objects for
men’s sexual gratification – a social construction that underpins the global industry of trafficking and
prostitution. Government’s failure to develop a framework against which to measure and
discrimination against Filipino women is immediately a stumbling block in modifying socio-cultural
conduct prejudicial to women, as it agreed to do when it ratified the CEDAW.

Prostitution, Trafficking and VAW

In 1998, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated around 400,000 - 500,000
Filipino women (aged 15-20) working in prostitution. Others have calculated the number of
prostituted women to be about the size of the country's manufacturing workforce.58 Government is
yet to emplace a systematic monitoring system for gathering statistical data, which is another of its
unfulfilled commitments under the CEDAW General Recommendation No. 12 (VIII). Building national
baseline information on the trafficking and prostitution of Filipino women and children is already

56
Social Weather Station
57
“Despite laws against VAW: women and children are still raped and beaten up everyday-CWR”. Center for Women's Resources (CWR), 1 March
2005.
58
Rene Ofreneo, a f (Dario Agnote, "Sex trade key part of S.E. Asian economies, study says," Kyodo News, 18 August 1998
20
hampered by the clandestine nature of these industries, a culture of shame and lack of awareness
among public officials, among others.

But that was nine years ago. Research findings that prostitution has become a multi-million dollar
business, reportedly with the fourth largest contribution to GNP, indicate that the numbers today
must be much higher than what is usually quoted by official sources.59 More children are also being
trapped in circumstances of sexual exploitation including prostitution, pornography, and as victims of
pedophilia, and may have alarmingly passed previous estimates of 100,000 with the growing use of
the internet. The Philippines was reported fourth among nine nations with the most children in
prostitution.60 The Anti-Child Abuse Law, the first to be passed in Asia, has obviously not had much
success in rooting out the issue of prostituted children and in curbing, if not totally stopping its
spread.

Though figures remain difficult to ascertain, what undeniably persists are the push and pull factors
widening the net for women and girls’ recruitment into the industry. These include the impacts of
sex/gender-based discrimination, poverty and globalization which have not been decisively
addressed by government and are deeper than before. Amihan, a national formation of peasant
women had alarming news during the 25th commemoration of World Food Day in October 2005: the
increasing occurrence of palit-bigas prostitution (rice for sex) among rural women. If the customers
were generous, said interviewees in Batangas Province, they would throw in a can or two of
sardines.61

Adding to desperate conditions of poverty and hunger, other forms of discrimination and abuse
endured in silence and shame also pave the way for recruitment in the flesh trade. Women and girls
express in various studies the need to escape, particularly in cases of forced marriages, sex
enslavement and after having been physically, psychologically and sexually abused by their husbands
or other male relatives. Hounded by social stigma, unwed mothers rejected by relatives or who
simply decide to leave home rather than “bring shame” to their families are also drawn into
prostitution.

Almost 90 percent of the prostituted women and children in Camagayan, a notorious red light district
in Cebu City (Central Visayas, Region 5) had reportedly been trafficked from provinces and cities in
Mindanao and Central Luzon.62 Camagayan is only one of many communities known to maintain
prostitution of women and children as its main economic activity, with the collaboration of local
police and village officials. In Cotabato City, Maguindanao Province, where women from the poorest
provinces of the country have fled to in search of better lives, prostitution is also rising. They face
the added risk of being executed by Muslim extremists, as what happened to a number of prostituted
women in the early 90s. The same trend is true for the secondary urban centers of Davao, Cagayan,
General Santos and Pagadian in Mindanao.. From this southernmost island of the country, it is but a
short distance to other countries in the region where sex traffickers are known to drop their human
cargo.63

59
Agence France Presse. “Prostitution in RP fourth largest source of GNP – study”. Citing “Child Pornography in the Philippines”, a UNICEF-
commissioned study released by the Psychological Trauma Program of the University of the Philippines Posted at http://news.inq7.net/top/index.php, 5
April 2005.
60
UNICEF and non-governmental organizations, Sol. F. Juvida, "Philippines - Children: Scourge of Child Prostitution," IPS, 12 October 1997
61
Alexander Martin Remollino. “‘Palit-Bigas’ Prostitution”. Bulatlat. Vol. V, No. 37, October 23-29, 2005. Accessed at http://www.bulatlat.com/news/5-
37/5-37-prosti_printer.html 22 May 2006.
62
State violence in the Philippines, An alternative report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, 2003
63
Al Jacinto. “Prostitution, human trafficking main problems in Mindanao”. SunStar Zamboanga. November 23, 2005. Accessed at www.sunstar.com.ph. 23
May 2006.
21
VAW and Migration

With the push towards borderless economies, prostitution is no longer simply a national
concern but an international issue tied up with trafficking in women in the context of migration for
work. Studies note that from only 12 percent of workers (around 2,275) who sought employment
abroad two decades ago, women in 2004-2005 comprised over half of all workers, or approximately
365,000 employed mostly as domestic helpers and “Overseas Performing Artists” (OPAs). More than
half of at least 3,000 Filipinos leaving the country on a daily basis are women, according to the
Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA). Of the 7.41 million Filipinos working abroad as of
December 2001, up to 1.62 million might have been victims of trafficking or human smuggling.64

In the last three years, from 2002-2004, the Department of Foreign Affairs – Office of the
Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs reported 195 cases of Filipino women trafficked in South
Korea, Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Malaysia, Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Bahrain, and Lagos (Nigeria).65
There may be other cases of human trafficking and smuggling that remain undocumented.

Among the most vulnerable to trafficking are the majority of Filipino women who apply under
uncertain conditions for domestic work in other countries. They are commonly kept in the dark about
the terms and place of employment, and easily become prey to prostitution rings when they reach
their final destination. Others are deceived by their preparation and training as OPAs. Women
entertainers in Japan, for example, “…do not actually perform on stage. Their performance is based
not on their singing or dancing prowess, but on how many customers they manage to lure into the
club every night”.66

The passage of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 (RA 9208), fruit of a nine-year advocacy of
women’s groups, provides a legal framework in which prostitution, as one of the end results of
trafficking in persons, can be addressed in terms of some aspects related to human rights. However,
to date, no large scale syndicates of traffickers have been brought to justice, and trafficking
continues to be a major national and international problem. Corrupt and unscrupulous officials in
various levels of the national and local bureaucracy have been reported to be either directly involved
in trafficking in persons or as coddlers of traffickers.

Meanwhile, despite the law, other forms of trafficking have emerged. Mindanao in Southern
Philippines has open sea and land borders that make trafficking in persons easy and difficult to track
and monitor. The phenomenon has been referred to as “backdoor trafficking” and has allowed
undocumented migrants to be smuggled to points as far as Europe and the Middle East.

It is bad enough that government has not been able to go after unscrupulous contracting agencies,
employers and syndicates that victimize vulnerable migrant populations, but to be taken advantage
of by government personnel who capitalize on OFWs’ vulnerabilities abroad speaks volumes on the
deplorable conditions faced by OFWs. NGOs recently received reports from a domestic worker who
was sexually molested by a fellow Filipino employed at the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO)
employee in Al-Khobur, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, after helping her escape the sexual advances of her
Arab employer. There is also news on the alleged issuance of fake marriage licenses to unmarried
couples by embassy officials, also in Saudi Arabia, which is serving to promote prostitution among
migrant women workers.67

64
Carmelita G. Nuqui. “The Vulnerabilities of Filipino Women as Potential Trafficking Victims”. Development Action for Women Network (DAWN).
Paper prepared for the Conference on Human Trafficking in Asia. United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan. 23-24 June 2004.
65
Ibid.
66
Ibid.
67
Proceedings of the CEDAW Visayas Consultation. 29-30 May 2006, Cebu City
22
The law, for example, provides for selective deployment, that is, allowing deployment only to
receiving countries which have labor safeguards or with which the Philippine government has signed
bilateral labor agreements. The grim reality is that while the Philippines has bilateral labor
agreements with only 37 countries, OFWs are scattered in almost 187 nations. In the land-based
sector, where the majority of women OFWs are, only six agreements have been forged with five
economies, and only for technical, medical, information and communications technology fields.68
Moreover, the power to lift or impose a ban on deployment rests exclusively with the Executive,
based on its appreciation of the “national interest”. Dollar remittances are obviously a matter of
national interest since exceptions have been made even with regards countries notorious for the
maltreatment of OFWs.69

Philippine Police and Judicial System: Promoting VAW

By itself, the treatment of women and children’s bodies as merchandise is a transgression of

their autonomy as human beings. The violations though, do not stop here, but deepen and expand in
the hands of clients, pimps, even police personnel. These aspects are recognized by the Anti-
Prostitution Act of 2004 – an instrument drafted by women’s groups which, as it is titled, provides for
“addressing the system of prostitution, imposing penalties on its perpetrators, providing protective
measures and support services for its victims….” The Gender and Development Mainstreaming policy
of the Philippine Government also mandates gender sensitivity among all government employees and
gender responsiveness in government programs. But patriarchal norms and values remain ingrained in
the police and judicial systems, as well as local government and village officials, and continue to
manifest in various forms of VAW.

As inconsistencies in Philippine law would have it, provisions also exist in the Revised Penal Code
(RPC) which nullify what gains prostituted women and children may have won from the illegalization
of prostitution in the country. Article 202 of the RPC addresses the issue of prostitution in the
context of vagrancy, and defines “vagrants” so loosely as to allow arbitrary arrests of women and
discrimination against the poor. “Prostitutes” in the RPC are also derisively described as “...women
who, “for money or profit, habitually indulge in sexual intercourse or lascivious conduct”.70

The same contempt infects the way the law is actually enforced against prostitution. Raids on bars,
nightclubs, massage parlors, “prostitution dens” and other similar establishments have become
avenues for extorting money and sexual favors. Women caught in such circumstances also endure the
humiliation of being pushed around while still unclothed, ridiculed, verbally abused, and ogled by
police, TV camera men and bystanders. These are usual and continuing practices, unchanged from
nearly 10 years ago when the CEDAW Committee called government’s attention to the discriminatory
application of laws against prostituted women and not the men involved as patrons, establishment
owners, traffickers and pimps.

Since prostitution is criminalized, women so charged are subjected to all kinds of indignities, even
with laws that are supposed to protect them from violence under police custody. One of these is
Article 245 of the Revised Penal Code, which forbids public officers from making sexual advances
towards female detainees. Observed more in the breach, it is of little use to women who suffer
various sexual abuses en route to the police stations and are held under duress and without the
benefit of counsel. Some arrests are not even officially registered. They are also physically lumped

68
Jerome Ang. “DOLE: 42 labor pacts protecting OFWs worldwide”. Inquirer News Service 9 June 2006. Accessed at
http://www.inq7.net/globalnation/sec_new/2004/oct/23-01.htm 9 June 2006.
69
“Rating Government Protection for Overseas Filipino Workers”. NOVA. Undated
70
Leonor D. Boado. Notes and Cases on the Revised Penal Code, Book 2. Rex Printing Company, Philippines. 2001
23
together with male detainees because there are no separate quarters for men and women in many
police stations. This is a clear violation of Philippine regulations and the United Nations Standard
Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

The enactment of RA 9262 or the Anti-Violence against Women and Their Children Act of 2004 was a
step forward in implicitly recognizing gender-based violence, and the need for specific laws to
protect the rights of these vulnerable sectors. Specifically, the 30-day Temporary Protection Order
(TPO) immediately provides a way “to safeguard the victim from further harm, minimizing any
disruption in her daily life, to help her to independently regain control over her life,” while a
permanent protection order has not yet been issued. But reports, for example, of local officials
attempting to settle issues and reconcile parties surface a lack of understanding of RA 9262 and its
implementation. In one case, a man accusing his wife of abusing their child, was awarded a TPO and
succeeded in gaining custody; regardless of the truth of his charges, the TPO is not the mechanism to
apply in this case since RA 9262 only applies to women and children.71

There are admittedly efforts by government to raise gender awareness through human rights
education among the members of the judiciary, and these should be commended. However, there
should also be recognition that sexism in the judicial culture only reflects the larger sexist cultural
context in which it is entrenched, a patriarchal culture that promotes and benefits from VAW. This is
a necessary first step to put in context the fact that projects like the Gender Justice Awards which
give incentives to members of the judiciary for rendering gender-aware legal judgments, have their
limits and that the more decisive course to take would be the development and adoption of a
holistic, comprehensive framework addressing the deeply-embedded machismo culture and
patriarchal norms in the judiciary.

VAW and Women’s Security

The rape of a 22-year old woman reportedly by six US American marines in the City of
Olongapo, former host to the Subic Naval Base of the United States, has gripped the Philippines since
November 2005. Invoking the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the US Government is asserting
that it take custody of the alleged perpetrators. Philippine law, however, defines rape as a heinous
crime and should therefore be paramount over the VFA. Foreign policy, in this case, intersects with
VAW, and despite existing legal instruments, such as the Anti-Rape Law and Anti-VAWC, the state
through the Philippine Justice Department has unabashedly shown its malleability in the face of a
powerful country like the United States. Even prior to the formal arraignment, the Philippine Justice
Department of Justice (DOJ) was already unabashedly manifesting bias for the accused US military
personnel.

Another aspect of the VFA that is adding to internal displacement and VAW cases is the “Balikatan”
Joint Military Exercises between Philippine and American troops. These exercises have been
concentrated for several years now in Mindanao, contributing yet another complicating dimension to
the achievement of stability and peace in the region. At the height of one of these exercises in
January 2002, 35 cases of trafficked women and children from Davao to Zamboanga in Mindanao
were recorded by NGOs. Recruiters who obviously wanted to cash in on the presence of US troops,
sought out prostituted children and told them of dollar-paying customers awaiting them in
Zamboanga.72

71
Rina Jimenez-David. “Testing the limits of the law”. Philippine Daily Inquirer, 8 January 2006. Accessed at
http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=62302&col=79 7 June 2006.
72
Jean Enriquez. “Trafficking of Women and Children: Updates, Trends and Challenges”. Accessed at http://catw-ap.org/towc.htm 5 June 2006.
24
War has tremendous impacts on women. Vulnerability of internally displaced women and children to
VAW, prostitution and trafficking, exploitation, contemporary forms of slavery as a result of the
continuing conflict in Mindanao have been documented. Decades of civil war between the Philippine
government and Muslim communities have spawned layers of human rights violations particularly
discriminatory to Muslim women.

Moreover, the deprivation and hunger in evacuation camps adds to the difficulties in carrying out the
social reproductive burdens that women are already charged with. There are reports of women raped
in front of male kin. Economic livelihoods have been destroyed, health facilities closed and
education services halted in areas where “anti-terrorism” campaigns are being conducted.
Psychological distress and trauma is daily fare for women, children and the elderly in these sites.

Beyond De Jure Observance of the CEDAW

The government’s duplicitous way of signing on to many UN human rights covenants while
resisting social justice and redistributive programs that would have increased women’s defenses
against the violations and discriminations they face in their everyday lives, has brought it nowhere
near significantly changing women’s conditions. Willful disregard for the Women’s Convention is
more apt than non-compliance, considering the transgressions on a host of CEDAW provisions, from
Articles 2, 5, 11, 12 and 16, to the very explicit obligations laid down by sections of General
Recommendation 19 (XI). It can be argued that the policy environment is comparatively more
gender-sensitive today vis-à-vis VAW (owing in large part to advocacy and campaigning by women’s
organizations) but laws and regulations do not operate in a vacuum. Government must be taken to
task for its crucial role in maintaining a context where most women are prevented by exigencies of
daily survival from even realizing the fundamental notion that they, as human beings, have the right
to have rights.

VAW IN MINDANAO

In Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao Province, Mindanao, there are about 10 videoke bars that have as its regular patrons
members of the Philippine Army based in Camp Siongco, as well Marines stationed in Matanog and members of the Philippine
National Police in Parang. Working in these bars are some 50 women and children, originating from towns like Itulan and cities
like Marbel and Pagadian and other areas throughout Mindanao. Some of the children have been prostituted in the streets of
Cotabato City. Although local government had sent them back to their respective towns, they were found to be working in the
bars in Datu Odin Sinsuat. In January 2002, during the height of the joint Philippine-US military “Balikatan” exercises in
Western Mindanao, Talikala, Inc. recorded 35 cases of trafficking in women and children, some as young as 15, who came
from Zamboanga and as far as Davao. According to the victims, recruiters, who took great lengths to lure them from their
respective towns, offered payment in US dollars.

The trafficking of women from Zamboanga del Sur province in Mindanao to Malaysia is rampant, given the weekly ship
services linking Zamboanga City with Sandakan in Sabah. The so-called “backdoor trafficking” is however most prevalent in
Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, where leaving the country without proper documentation is easy. Pump boats from Bongao, the jump-off
point in the so-called “backdoor route,” can reach Malaysian shores in around four hours. Unlike using the 16 to 18 hour-long
Zamboanga to Sandakan route, leaving the country via the “backdoor route” does not require legal documents such as
passports. The lack of necessary travel papers complicates the situation for the women, particularly when caught by Malaysian
immigration police and agents.

Source: State Violence in the Philippines, An Alternative Report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, 2003.

25
 SSeexxuuaall aanndd RReepprroodduuccttiivvee H
Heeaalltthh RRiigghhttss

The Philippine government continues to pay no heed to the sexual and reproductive health
realities of Filipino women, and in so doing, gravely neglects a continuing concern of the Women’s
Convention that the many extensive forms of discrimination foisted upon women are made on the
basis of their sex and function in procreation. More than two decades have passed since the country
ratified CEDAW and yet, Filipino women are still without any national legislation on their
reproductive rights. This seriously impairs government’s capacity “…to eliminate discrimination
against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and
women, access to health care services, including those related to family planning”.73

In 1994, government again pledged at the Cairo International Conference on Population and
Development to provide universal access to reproductive and sexual health, only to prove all over
again the hollowness of its commitments. Beyond national and international policy instruments, it is
arguably realpolitik that defines government’s actual operating framework on sexual and
reproductive issues, which is to compromise, and even surrender women’s enjoyment of their rights
in order to accommodate such powerful and influential allies as the conservative Catholic Church.

The Influence of the Catholic Church

Only in November last year, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told the UN General Assembly
to “respect the deep Catholicism of the Filipino people” and horrifying many Philippine NGOs,
expressed belief in the effectiveness of natural family planning.74 She rejects the term “reproductive
health and rights”, and has openly stated her intent to block reproductive health care bills which she
deems pro-abortion.

This position is obviously supported by similarly conservative political allies. In the predominantly
Lower House, snail-paced deliberations over the Responsible Parenthood and Population Management
Act of 2005 (House Bill 3773) have already been overtaken by other bills certified urgent by the
President. As for the Senate, some members contributing to artificial family planning allegedly
shifted funds to purely natural family planning programs. Thus far, six bills on reproductive health
concerns have not gone beyond the first reading.

Government’s own figures paint an appalling picture of the reproductive health conditions of Filipino
women today. Sixty one percent of urban and rural women aged 15-49 were reported in 2003 to be
without any contraception method.75 Unmet needs for contraception is still over 50 percent.76
Induced abortions of nearly half a million women are estimated to occur each year, with tens of
thousands dying from complications.

Over-Privileging Natural Family Planning

The Philippines has one of the highest population growth rates in the world (2.36 by Asian
Development Bank estimates). This redounds to more than 5,000 people born daily. Married women
aged 15-49 in 1998 showed a significant 49 percent of births as unwanted or mistimed. The largest

73
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Art. 12 Sec
74
Johanna Son. “Philippines: ‘Church, a Goliath Against Reproductive Health’. Interpress Service News Agency, 20 November 2005. Accessed 20 May
2006 at http://www.ipsnews.net/news
75
2003 National Demographic and Health Survey Key Findings posted at http://www.doh.gov.ph/data_stat/html/keyindicator.htm#fp. Accessed 8 June 2006.
76
Christine F. Herrera. “Abortions on the rise---study”. Manila Standard Today, 1 December 2005. Accessed at
http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=politics06_dec01_2005 31 May 2006. Citing "The Incidence of Induced Abortion in the Philippines: Current
Level and Recent Trends". Study conducted from 2002-2005 by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and University of the Philippines.
26
increase in unplanned pregnancies from 1993 was in Central Mindanao (57 percent of recent births in
1998, or about twice the 29 percent in 1993).77 Still, government continues to strongly support
natural family planning (NFP), meaning abstinence and/or withdrawal, as the moral method of
choice, in flagrant violation of Art. 16 of the CEDAW which provides that it ensures the right of men
and women “…to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of heir children and to
have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights;”.78
The lip service respecting choice vis-à-vis the range of family planning methods has also effectively
strengthened religious prejudices against those who opt to choose artificial contraceptive methods.
Because of its gross deficiencies in providing family planning services, government has in fact
dampened modern contractive usage as indicated by trends from 1993-1998 showing an increase in
the use of traditional methods especially in the provinces.79 Various government sources report an
increase in the use of traditional methods from 13.8 percent in 2002 to 14.2 percent in 2004.80

Ironically, even government’s own Safe Pregnancy/Motherhood Programs offering information and
counseling on family planning services suffer setbacks due to such privileging of NFP. A Catholic
priest in one of the parishes of Bohol Province (Central Visayas, Region 7) denied communion to a
woman parishioner who also worked as a volunteer for the Ligtas Buntis (Safe Pregnancy) program.
Such discrimination may be prevalent than what has been reported considering that Bohol has a birth
rate higher than the national average.81

Local Governance Health Services and Reproductive Rights

In the absence of a comprehensive institutional framework on reproductive health, the

mutually reinforcing positions of Church and State with regards sexual and reproductive health have
alarmingly assumed the strength of law. This has been especially true among the Local Government
Units to which decisions on implementation and allocation of resources for reproductive health
services have been devolved. In their respective bailiwicks, conservative local executives also in awe
of the vote-swinging influence of the Church, reproduce the partiality towards NFP and the
prejudices against women using or opting for other contraception methods.

Article 12 of the CEDAW, as expounded by General Recommendation No. 24 is explicit that “it is
discriminatory for a State party to refuse to provide legally for the performance of certain
reproductive health services for women”.82 Further, States parties are obliged “…to refrain from
obstructing action taken by women in pursuit of their health goals” and “…should not restrict
women’s access to health services…on the ground that they do not have the authorization of
husbands, partners, parents or health authorities….”83 But in the prime city of Manila, Mayor Lito
Atienza has signed Executive Order 003 promoting traditional over modern methods of contraception
and condemning “criminal abortion”. Similarly Mayor Dennis Socrates of Puerto Princesa City,
Palawan Province, banned modern contraceptive methods. He advised his constituents not to fear a
possible rise in population and announced that the local health office would no longer be giving out
artificial contraceptives or perform family planning procedures, such as IUD insertion, vasectomy and
tubal ligation.84

77
Improving Reproductive Health in the Philippines. Accessed at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/rib/rib1-03.html 8 June 2006.
78
CEDAW, Art. 16e.
79
Improving Reproductive Health in the Philippines.
80
“Contraceptive prevalence rate (%)a 2002, 2003, 2004”. Sourced from NSO, Family Planning Survey , National Demographic
and Health Survey, DSWD and DOH (Based on currently married women 15-49 years). Philippines in Figures 2006. Republic of the Philippines, National
Statistics Office. Accessed at www.nso.gov.ph 6 June 2006.
81
Using CEDAW in the Philippines: Claiming our Place, Claiming our Rights. Proceedings of the Visayas Consultation for Women NGOs and Human
Rights Advocates, 26-30 April 2006, Cebu City, Philippines.
82
CEDAW, General Recommendation 24 (XX), No. 11.
83
CEDAW, General Recommendation 24 (XX), No. 14.
84
Reproductive Rights Resource Group-Philippines/3RG-Phils. Facts and Figures, October 2005.
27
Even with the devolution of health services, allocating resources to effective information
dissemination would have been a measure of the national government’s sincerity in abiding by the
national and international commitments it has made to promoting reproductive health. But the de
facto shunning of modern, artificial contraceptive methods and the moralistic promotion of NFP have
grossly restricted access to reproductive health information and services. Socially subordinated to
men, it is the women who end up bearing the differential impacts and the often irreversible
consequences of being deprived of the right to make truly informed decisions over their sexuality and
their reproductive roles.

Lack of Information and Education

The mere failure to widely distribute information materials on reproductive issues violates
CEDAW, which explicitly exhorts States Parties “to include advice on family planning in the education
process…and to have access to the information, education and means” to enable women to exercise
their reproductive rights in an informed manner. But the attitudes and positions of State and Church
towards artificial contraceptives and reproductive concerns continue to approximate paranoia.

Mere advertisements on artificial methods except condoms are banned by law, under Republic Act
4729. Moves to integrate sex education in school curricula (via House Bill 3773) have been met with
unbending opposition, especially from Church leaders who decry the increased premarital sex and
the moral degeneration that they are certain this will bring.85 Similarly, moralizing health providers
discourage adolescents from accessing information on their sexuality and reproductive health
concerns, ignoring the reality of an estimated sexually active five million youth aged 15-17.

Cultural norms cultivate ignorance on basic reproductive systems and functions, especially among
young people. Former Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit has himself admitted that a third of those who
are of sexual reproductive age are simply unaware of reproduction functions and family planning.86
Fifty-five percent of women surveyed in 2002 did not know that HIV/AIDS could be prevented by
using condoms or limiting sex to one uninfected partner. This lack of awareness so obviously breeds a
host of social problems from unwanted teenage pregnancies to the spread of HIV/AIDS and other
sexually transmitted diseases that the CEDAW asks States parties to address the lack of adequate
access to information and ensure gender-sensitive sexual and reproductive health education for both
female and male adolescents.87 Obviously playing to conservative sections of its political base,
government continues to sit on recommendations that sex education be institutionalized in school
curricula.

Constricted reproductive choices and induced abortions

Instead of enacting measures to give women more access to a wide range of contraceptive
options, government has consistently allowed its policy-making powers to be shaped by the Church.
In 2001, following an aggressive campaign by the Catholic Church, the widely accepted emergency
contraception drug Postinor was banned from the market based on arbitrary findings of the
Department of Health (DOH) on its abortifacient effects. Although the DoH is yet to reach a
definitive ruling, Postinor has not been re-listed.88

85
Jaime Pilapil. “How many virgins left?” The Manila Standard. 29 March 2005
86
Jaime Pilapil and Jherry Barinuevo. “Church demonizes DoH Drive”. The Manila Standard. 01 March 2005.
87
CEDAW, Article 12, General Recommendation 24 (XX), No. 18.
88 Clara Rita A. Padilla. “Relisting Postinor”. Centrer for Reproductive Rights, 23 October 2003. Accessed 21 May 2006 at http://www.crlp.org/pr_new_opeds_postinor.

28
The sheer lack of options can and has turned fatal for thousands of women who resort to clandestine,
unsafe abortions to terminate unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. It is in fact the fourth leading
cause of maternal deaths among Filipino women.89

Abortion remains illegal in the country, and is a criminal offense under the Revised Penal Code
Articles (256-259) and the 1987 Constitution. Despite the risk of imprisonment, infection and possibly
death, the number of induced abortions carried out annually is already reaching the half-million
mark and steadily rising. Studies show that the annual number of induced abortions has jumped by
18.19 percent from 400,515 in 1994 to 473,408 in 2000. This translates to an annual abortion rate of
27 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 or about 1,297 women resorting to induced abortion daily. Of this
figure, roughly 80,000 women die of complications.90

The suffering from a botched abortion goes beyond the physical. Prejudicial attitudes by medical
personnel and other services providers towards those seeking medical assistance due to
complications caused by infections from unsafe abortions and incomplete abortions are well-known.
Counseling is almost unheard of; neither are there guidelines, whether informal or institutional, on
the care of induced-abortion patients. Medical students“[perceive] abortion as a crime that they
would rather not talk about. They [deem] women who underwent abortions had questionable
morality and therefore should be made to realize the moral gravity of their actions and should
undergo counseling.”91

De-Prioritization of General Health Needs

The neglect, even determined suppression of women’s sexual and reproductive health rights
becomes even more deplorable when seen alongside other health issues that women have to endure
in the general context of government’s deprioritization of its people’s health needs. Basic social
services such as health do not enjoy the top-priority status that government awards to debt
payments, and have suffered the biggest cuts through several years now of deficit spending. The
impacts are harshest on excluded and marginalized groups, among them lesbians, ethnic/indigenous
and rural women.

The heterosexist bias manifested in the invisibility of lesbian rights and health in government
programs predictably trickles down the public health bureaucracy. There is still no anti-
discriminatory legislation protecting lesbians, who at one time were pejoratively called an “anomaly
of nature” by the government film and television classification body. Judgmental attitudes of health
care providers are thus also experienced by lesbians (“lesbians are not women”). While lesbians are
mentioned in the government’s “10 Elements of the Reproductive Health Package” (1998), no
implementing measures have ever been operationalized. Monitoring and assessing lesbian health
conditions and needs remains difficult because of low levels of awareness and the proliferation of
misconceptions attached to lesbian identities. In turn, this impairs access to and availability of
appropriate health care services.

Many rural health centers have closed down or are barely operational and qualified health
professionals are joining the migrant labor force in ever-increasing numbers. More than 90,000 nurses

89
National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women citing the Department of Health.
90
"The Incidence of Induced Abortion in the Philippines: Current Level and Recent Trends". Study conducted from 2002-2005 by the Alan Guttmacher
Institute and University of the Philippines.
91
From an input by Dr. Marita VT Reyes, Chancellor, University of the Philippines – Manila “Abortion in the Current Health and Health Education
Systems: Problems and Possibilities”. Proceedings: National Abortion Rights Advocacy Consultation, What should be a humane and just response to
induced abortion in the Philippines? 16-18 January 2003, QC. Publication of Linangan ng Kababaihan, Inc./LIKHAAN.
29
left the country in the last 10 years, followed by some 3,500 doctors who left in the last four years to
also work abroad as nurses. Almost 10 percent of 2,500 health facilities in the country have gone out
of operation in the past three years.92 There are only 800 public and 1,000 private facilities servicing
an estimated 300,000 women experiencing major obstetric complications requiring hospitalization
yearly.93

Family planning is dismal, as with almost all other human development indicators in the Autonomous
Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). It is not surprising that health indicators are much poorer than
national averages. For example, only 48 percent of women in the ARMM benefits from the
recommended number of pre-natal check-ups as compared to 85 percent of Metro Manila-based
women.94 Infant mortality was recorded at 63 per 1,000 live births in 1995 as compared to 49 for the
whole Philippines. Maternal mortality was also higher at 320 per 100,000 live births as compared to
the national average of 180. Modern contraceptives prevalence is barely more than a tenth at 11.6
percent, while unmet needs for family planning stands at 27.4 as compared to 17.3 percent for the
country average.95 Nothing has been done, even by way of acknowledging the problem, in connection
with the commitment to “…ensure that adequate protection and health services, including trauma
treatment and counseling, are provided for women in especially difficult circumstances, such as
those trapped in situations of armed conflict and women refugees”.96

Political Will: Moving from Policy to Action

The Philippine government -- in its opportunistic collusion with and accommodation of the
Catholic Church’s interventions; its failure to translate national and international commitments into
action; its inability to provide adequate health programs; its rejection of diversity; its purposeful
pursuit of development strategies that least prioritize life-and-death needs -- reinforces a situation
that discriminates against women. Twice over, women are deprived of their overall well-being, and
denied of their sexual and reproductive health rights.

While a wider, more effective and pro-women delivery of services, appropriate and coherent policy
legislation and stronger and more consistent program implementation are desirable, the GOP should
develop a holistic, integrated and rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health rights.
More importantly, a government that commits to gender-responsiveness should be able to decisively
put such comprehensive reproductive health agenda into force.

92
Center for Women’s Resources
93
State of Filipino Women’s Reproductive Rights”. LIKHAAN, Undated.
94
Using Cedaw in the Philippines: Claiming Our Place, Claiming Our Rights, Proceedings of the Luzon Consultation Workshop For Women NGOs and
Human Rights Advocates. University Hotel, UP Diliman, Quezon City, 20-21 March 2006; Rainbow Rights: “CEDAW and its Relevance to Lesbian Rights:
A Situationer/ Analysis”, 2005; also see “Hidden Health” by LEAP, Inc.
95
Human Development in ARMM, World Bank, 2003, and 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey, National Statistic Office.
96
CEDAW, General Recommendation 24 (XX), No. 16.

30
 Women’s Participation in Public Life

For a government that ratified the CEDAW 25 years ago, and instituted several other legal
measures to complement it, one might expect at least some significant movement towards de facto
equality in terms of participation in public life. This has not happened, and is not likely to happen
anytime in the future with the skewing of national directions away from resolving grave asymmetries
in the distribution of resources. Only socially and economically privileged elites have been able to
maximize legislative gains for greater women’s political participation, indicating little progress on
Article 7 of the CEDAW which obliges States parties to take all pertinent steps to eliminate
discrimination against women in political and public life and to ensure their involvement in
formulating and implementing government policy. The greater majority of grassroots women remain
distant and little heard, without the right to a say, even as they bear the harshest consequences of
decisions made on their behalf.

Yet again, this underscores what has frequently been stressed in this report, that legislative agenda
should also resonate with genuine development programs and goals. Women’s advances, modest as
they are, will not be able to establish a foothold, much less gain ground in a structurally unjust,
male-dominated context. Building a policy environment that affirmatively addresses the gender
inequalities women are born into and inevitably live by is important, but a government – especially
one that has ratified the Women’s Convention and many other human rights accords – reneges on its
commitments by failing to ensure beyond legislation requisites for enabling women to fully
participate in public life and for developing their sense of self as autonomous citizens are not too
sorely absent.

A Culture of Corruption

The ever-increasing imbalances in entitlements and access to resources provide fertile ground
for corruption in Philippine politics to flourish, which in turn, compound the difficulties stacked
against women’s participation in public life. Estimates of the UN Development Program in 2004 cited
resources of up to $1.8 billion lost to corruption yearly97. Other studies point to a widely held view in
the country and abroad that corruption has increased in depth and breadth, infecting more branches
and agencies of government, including the judiciary.98 The Philippines’ ranking has consistently been
slipping downwards in the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International, ranking 65 in
2001 (out of 91 countries) to 117 in 2005 (out of 159). Political parties and the legislature ranked
next to the police as institutions most tainted by corruption. 99 As of last count by TI, seven out of
ten Filipinos see government corruption as growing worse in the last three years, and further
worsening in the future.100

While it has vowed to stop corruption, the current administration is itself accused of manipulating
public funds for purposes of vote-swinging in the 2004 presidential polls. Even public health services
have been used for vote-buying, as evidenced for example by local executives who stock medicines
without proper storage and only release them to achieve maximum impact for their political
ambitions.101 A former Cabinet official attested to government’s distribution of national health

97
Seth Mydans. “Corruption harmful to Philippines’ Health”. International Herald Tribune, 31 May 2006.
98
World Bank, Combating Corruption in the Philippines. May 3, 2000. Accessed at
http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/eap/eap.nsf/Attachments/Combating+Corruption+Summary/$File/combating+corruption+summary.pdf 4 June 2006.
99
Countering Corruption. Accessed at www.philippinebusiness.com.ph 9 June 2006.
100
From Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer 2004. Accessed at
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/gcb/2004__1/press_release_gcb_2004 3 June 2006.
101
Seth Mydans
31
insurance cards bearing President Arroyo’s image as politically motivated.102 It turns out that OFW
contributions had been used for the purpose. Other social services, such as the construction of
hospitals, roads and schools – all vital to women and children’s health and well-being have been used
as political pork by local officials, extended in areas where they win and withheld where they lose.
The constriction of democratic spaces becomes even more apparent in Philippine elections. Only last
year, scandal broke out, implicating Virgilio Garcillano, chair of the Commission on Elections and
President Arroyo herself in election fraud. The issue remains unresolved to this day and continues to
fuel popular protest. Electoral processes are supposedly a mechanism for ensuring people’s
representation and widening democratic participation, but in the Philippines these have become
known as the political intramurals of local elites who routinely capitalize on the economic
vulnerabilities of the poor to ensure election outcomes in their favor. Predictably, the legislature
that these electoral exercises have produced continues to provide an arena for their horse trading,
church and big business interests included, with little space for the voices of the basic sectors to be
heard. Congress, too, has failed to enact laws to prohibit political dynasties in government.103

Women in Governance

It is not surprising that women are still under-represented in government. Members of the
House of Representatives in 2004 counted 178 men and only 32 women. There are only 3 women in
the 24-member Senate. These figures are stark if one recalls that there are usually more women who
participate in the electoral process than men, not just as voters but as members of electoral bodies
who assist in the election process itself. If said constitutional amendments push through, these
figures (minus the Senate) will remain for another three to five years.

Even then, the women who do get to the Senate or the Lower House usually come from elite clans,
backed by the privilege of money and bestowed with connections through a flourishing system of
male-dominated patronage politics. Women members of the Lower House alone are either the wives
or daughters of former politicians whose terms have ended.

Although women dominate the bureaucracy at 57.6 percent of the total 1.31 million government
personnel, they seem unable to break the so-called glass ceiling. They are to be found mostly in the
technical or second-levels and men are likely to be clerks or managers and executives. In the
judiciary, 17.7 percent of incumbent judges in 1999 were women, increasing to 23.4 percent in 2002.
Sharia courts, special courts for Muslim law, remain all-male, except in 1996 when there was one
woman in the Shari’a Circuit Court. There are currently five women justices in the Supreme Court,
which is headed by a male.104

Women’s Representation at the Local Levels

Women’s local sectoral representation can best be described as superficial gestures of

government’s commitment to gender mainstreaming and gender-responsive governance. In practice,
the government performs exclusionary activities and arbitrarily exercises its political discretion, such
that women belonging to or have connections to local influential clans are privileged over grassroots
women. Bureaucratic red tape has either slowed down or diminished women’s ability and opportunity
to be represented in various government bodies. There are certain areas in the country where
enabling mechanisms for women’s representations have been created, such as in the province of
Cebu; in many cases, however, only a few people are qualified to manage them and they become
non-functional over time.

102
Katherine Adranedy and Aurea Calica. “CCTA trial: Dinky testifies Philhealth cards used to get votes”. Philippine Headline News Online, 17 November
2005. Accessed at http://www.newsflash.org/2004/02/hl/hl103207.htm 30 May 2006.
103
Julio Teehankee. Electoral Politics in the Philippines.
104
National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women
32
 • The Local Government Code provides for local sectoral representation of women in the Sangguniang Bayan
(municipal councils). However, only 30 percent of local bodies has been constituted and can be considered
functional. Government attributes these violations to the unfulfilled need for an enabling law.
• Women are able to lobby and secure seats in Fisheries and Agrarian Reform Management Councils and in tripartite
councils affecting mining issues, but this is more the exception than the rule. Lobby for representation is usually
successful where there are strong local organizations partnering with NGOs in community-based development
interventions.
• The male-dominated Regional Development Councils have generally placed women on the social issue component,
thus replicating gender bias. There is a need to allocate seats for women in local development councils.
• Women’s commissions have been established in some parts of the country, but those appointed are often wives or
relatives of local officials.
• Fourteen basic sectors are supposed to be represented in the National Anti-Poverty Commission by different
people’s organizations and NGOs. As these have not been filled, several marginalized sectors including women
continue to be disenfranchised of their say in supposedly poverty-alleviating projects and programs.
• Ten percent of the composition of the Philippine National Police (PNP) is allocated to women. While there are
women’s desks, as the law prescribes, in nearly all police stations. However, in several studies, it was found out
that women’s desks are not appropriately funded and are always under-resourced. There are also women police
officers who are victims/survivors of VAW.

Laws and Human Rights of Women

The respect and promotion of women’s human rights are a requisite for women’s political
participation, thus the push by civil society organizations to have a Magna Carta for Women enacted.
Government has yet to take action on this but similar to the Local Sectoral Representative Bill and
other women’s empowerment bills they face an uncertain future as the present political crisis of the
Arroyo administration runs its course.

On the other hand, laws passed that should otherwise have made inroads in protecting and promoting
women’s human rights suffer from weaknesses in enforcement and implementation. For example,
local officials have shown ignorance on the protection order mechanism, the most defined feature of
Republic Act 9262 or the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004. It offers relief
from harm on the very day that it is applied for, and provides for the filing of appropriate charges in
court. Still, local barangay officials have been known violate RA 9262 by continuing the practice of
facilitating the settling of VAWC disputes between victims and offenders.

The issue may be one of raising the low level of awareness and understanding among enforcing and
judicial systems, particularly in the local government units, and among women themselves who have
internalized values of submissiveness and accepted their oppression. But human rights education
proceeds at a slow pace, and while there is an existing Commission on Human Rights (CHR), it is
limited to investigative and recommendatory powers. Many cases of women’s human rights have
been filed before the CHR, only to meet a blank wall outside the Commission.

As though these patriarchal values and norms are not heavy impediments enough, the financial costs
of accessing justice in the Philippines adds another disincentive for women to seek relief and
redress. Poor women who are income-poor, and often do not have access to their own income, may
not even be able to afford the filing fees for the Temporary Protection Order provided for under RA
9262.

Continuing Invisibility Women’s Contributions

It is ironic that while government recognizes women’s rights to a fair share in public decision-
making at all levels of governance, it ignores the social reproduction tasks which constrain women’s
time and prevent them from becoming more engaged in public life. This is indicated in the
continuing inability of government to make every effort to institutionalize a systematic way of
33
coordinating statistical bodies in the monitoring of women’s conditions, as obliged by General
Recommendation No. 9 (VIII). Questions of long-term sustainability must be raised considering that
efforts enumerated by government in this regard are outcomes of a six-year ODA-supported project
that ended four years ago. Currently, there is a lack of consistency among government line agencies
in providing disaggregated data.

Though not a solution, a significant step forward in asserting women’s equal right to a say, would
have been made had government been more decisive in responding to General Recommendation No.
17 (X) on the Measurement and Quantification of Unremunerated Domestic Activities of Women. The
government is yet to conduct a national survey to determine the distribution of paid and unpaid work
by gender. Pending this important step in surfacing how social reproduction contributes to society
and the economy, women and their work remain absent in national accounts and are likely to be
invisible as well in policy discussions and decisions made on the basis of gender-blind data. A
reduction in public expenditures on health for instance may be interpreted as a gain in economic
efficiency, but this actually translates to “a transfer of costs from the paid economy to the unpaid,
‘invisible’ economy”, to be shouldered by already income and time-poor women.105

The NCRFW and GAD funds

The National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) is not only mandated to
lead in these efforts of monitoring women’s conditions and advising government in the policy-
formulation, but also in monitoring the implementation of several legislation on various sources of
gender and development mainstreaming funds. These include the 1998 General Appropriations Act
(RA 8522) requiring line agencies and local government units to allot a minimum of five percent of
their budget for gender-mainstreaming programs, projects and activities. The Philippine Plan for
Gender-Responsive Development (1995-2025) provides for institutionalizing GAD in the whole
government budget, a task that is also NCRFW’s responsibility. Another is the Women in Development
and Nation-Building Act (RA 7192) which instructs government bodies to set aside up to 30 percent of
their ODA funds for GAD activities.

After 13 years, GAD mainstreaming has shown little impact on the lives of ordinary women.
Widespread reports of misuse and misallocation of these funds are instructive as to how little these
measures are understood and how easy it has been for government agencies to go around laws
targeted for GAD mainstreaming. Implementation has generally been haphazard and unmonitored,
characterized more by tokenism than by substance and strategic intent. The lack of stringent
sanctions for violators of the law has also emboldened many government units particularly at the
local levels, to continue to ignore these laws.

It has not helped that the lead agency for mainstreaming GAD in government does not have the
budget and the enforcing capacity proportionate to its roles and responsibilities. NCRFW hardly
comes close to what is described in General Recommendation No. 6 (VII) as an effective national
machinery, established at a high level of government, and with adequate resources and authority,
needed for the implementation of the CEDAW. It no longer enjoys a Cabinet position, following the
issuance of an executive order in 2005 that placed it under oversight functions of the Department of
Social Work and Development.106

105
Ma. Estela A. Varua, PhD . “Women’s Invisible Work: The Case of the Philippines”. Women’s Worlds 1999. A paper presented to the Seventh
International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, University of Tromso, N-9037 Tromso, Norway, June 20-26, 1999. School of Economics and Finance,
University of Western Sydney Nepean, Kingswood , NSW , Australia.
106
Executive Order No. 425 issued by President Arroyo in May 2005.
34
The Current Conjuncture

Today, the Filipino people find themselves under increasing pressure to submit to changing
the 1987 Constitution through a Constituent Assembly, supposedly as a means towards political
reform. While this might have been welcomed under different circumstances, the current push for
Charter Change is shadowed by suspicion and controversy because it comes at a time when charges
of election fraud and questions of legitimacy continue to hound the Arroyo presidency.

Calls for charter change have echoed loudest from among the majority of congress representatives
who are allied with the President’s party. Alarmingly, the proposed amendments107 imbue the “new”
parliament with term extensions and unsurpassed powers since Marcos’ time. Limitations on
commander-in-chief powers are lifted. Even the Party List system108, the mechanism for ensuring
some degree of representation by representatives of the marginalized sectors themselves is watered
down. Elite-privileging conditions are likely to continue in the near future since membership in the
first parliament that will be constituted will come from the same districts that the current
congressional representatives control and dominate.

Women’s groups together with civil society organizations have been staging protests to challenge
these moves and bring attention to greater impoverishment suffered particularly by women in the
grassroots. However, with disturbing consistency, government’s response has been vicious and
punitive. The Philippine National Police has turned on protesters with violent crowd dispersal
methods, harassing and beating women activists and other militant leaders in the process. The
frequency of killings and arrests are growing to such a degree that some political analysts fear a
return to martial law, or a form of constitutional authoritarianism.

A Blow to the CEDAW

These developments only spell the continued narrowing of already limited democratic spaces
and the further erosion of opportunities, especially for the most marginalized and excluded sections
of women, to participate in public life. The passage of laws like the revitalized Mining Law and the
Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act, and government’s dismantling of tariff protections, for
example, indicate clearest that the voices of women in indigenous and ethnic communities, in the
fisheries, in subsistence farming and vegetable production, etc., are not heard in decision-making
processes.

There is little or no indication that government has heeded in a substantial way Articles 7 and 14 of
the CEDAW, not to mention General Recommendation No. 24 (XVI), which contains far-reaching
obligations for States parties to ensure women’s participation in public life, particularly in the areas
of policy formulation and implementation. A more dangerous implication of its current actions,
however, is that these show no indication either of the CEDAW being seriously heeded in the future.

107
Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, SJ. “Sounding Board: A Parliamentary System?” Philippine Daily Inquirer. 6 February 2006.
“Constitutional Change in the Philippines”. Political Brief. Quarterly Journal of the Institute for Popular Democracy. Vol. 13 No. 1. First Quarter 2006.
The proposed Charter changes provide, among others, for: election of members of parliament from the same local political clans; increased terms from 3
years, without limit to the number of terms; lifting of the prohibition of appointing the President’s spouse and other close relatives to government positions;
removal of the need for concurrent of the Monetary Board before the President can contract or guarantee foreign loans; lifting of the prohibition on the
presence of foreign military forces; absence of constitutional rules over the use of public funds, specifically discretionary funds and what is left from special
funds; removal of restrictions on the entry of foreign investment.
108
The 1987 Constitution provides for the Party List system, which allots 20 percent of the 250-member legislature to fishers, farmers, indigenous peoples,
the disabled, women, etc. and other marginalized sectors.

35
On March 8, 2006, during the celebration of International Women’s Day, hundreds of police marched, ready to
disperse the rallyists. During the negotiations, one police officer told women leaders that they should not be out in
the streets but at home taking care of their children and husbands. Media caught the sexist remarks.

36
 OUR CONCLUSIONS

Women’s Economic Empowerment

• Evident among rural women, whether in fisheries or agriculture, is the non-valuation of their
work.

• Embedded as women are in unvalorized social reproduction roles and tasks, they inescapably take
up the slack and fill in the gaps by default, expending longer, unpaid labor hours when
government withdraws from services like water, child and health care, or when private providers
prove too expensive for average households to afford.

• The relentless spread of the market economy coupled with environmental degradation and the
loss of the ancestral territories have been particularly disastrous for the indigenous peoples.
From autonomous producers, many landless IP women have become agricultural wage workers or
contractual laborers in the service sectors. Knowledge of indigenous women healers on medicinal
herbs has also been laid open for bio-piracy by giant transnational companies.

Violence Against Women

• Patriarchal views, values and practices are still very much the norm in Philippine society, and are
reproduced in countless ways and in varying degrees by different institutions, among them the
conservative Catholic Church, fundamentalist Christian and Muslim religious groups, the largely
consumerist media, schools and government itself. The implications of these constructions are
oppressive, and doubly so, when women are caught in disempowering conditions of poverty,
illiteracy and cultural marginalization and exclusion.

• Though figures remain difficult to ascertain, what undeniably persists are the push and pull
factors widening the net for women and girls’ recruitment into the prostitution industry, which
include the impacts of sex/gender-based discrimination, poverty and globalization that have not
been decisively addressed by government and are deeper than before.

Women and their Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights

• It is arguably realpolitik that defines government’s actual operating framework on sexual and
reproductive issues, which is to compromise, and even surrender women’s enjoyment of their
rights in order to accommodate such powerful and influential allies as the conservative Catholic
Church.

• In the absence of a comprehensive institutional framework on reproductive health, the mutually

reinforcing positions of Church and State with regards sexual and reproductive health have
alarmingly assumed the strength of law.
• Basic social services such as health do not enjoy the top-priority status that government awards
to debt servicing, and have suffered the biggest cuts through several years now of deficit

36
 spending. The impacts are harshest on excluded and marginalized groups, among them lesbians,
Muslim and other ethnic/indigenous and rural women.

Women and the Environment

• It has been women’s knowledge of biodiversity as a source of water, food, medicines and
livelihood, which covers for what government has unsuccessfully or is increasingly failing to
provide. Yet, even this is under threat from government’s pursuit of a market-driven economic
development paradigm hinged on further opening up the country’s resources to foreign
investments and capital. The persistence of mass poverty and deprivation, and the general
worsening of many other human development indicators more than two decades hence, have had
little influence on shifting policy away from deregulation, privatization and liberalization in trade
and investments.

• For indigenous women and Muslim women, the environment is linked not only to their economic
sustenance; it is entwined in their cultural, social and spiritual life as a people. This reality,
however, is unrecognized by a government disdainful of those women’s cultural rights. Philippine
laws disregard for one the issue of ancestral domain and the view of indigenous peoples and
ethnic minorities on the sacredness of land and why it cannot be commoditized or subjected to
purchase, sale, ownership or lease.

Women and Participation in Public Life

• Only socially and economically privileged elites have been able to maximize legislative gains for
greater women’s political participation. The greater majority of grassroots women remain distant
and little heard, without the right to a say, even as they bear the harshest consequences of
decisions made on their behalf.

• Women’s local sectoral representation can best be described as superficial gestures of

government’s commitment to gender mainstreaming and gender-responsive governance. In
practice, the government performs exclusionary activities and arbitrarily exercises its political
discretion, such that women belonging to or have connections to local influential clans are
privileged over grassroots women.

• It is ironic that while government recognizes women’s rights to a fair share in public decision-
making at all levels of governance, it ignores the social reproduction tasks which constrain
women’s time and prevent them from becoming more engaged in public life. This is indicated in
the continuing inability of government to make every effort to institutionalize a systematic way
of coordinating statistical bodies in the monitoring of women’s conditions, as obliged by the
CEDAW.

• The heightening of political repression under the current administration forebodes the continued
narrowing of already limited democratic spaces and the further erosion of opportunities,
especially for the most marginalized and excluded sections of women, to participate in public
life. There is little or no indication that government has heeded CEDAW’s far-reaching obligations
for States parties to ensure women’s participation in public life, particularly in the areas of
policy formulation and implementation. Nor is there any indication from its current actions that
the CEDAW will be seriously heeded in the future.

37
Building an Environment Enabling of CEDAW

• A government – particularly one that has ratified CEDAW – must also be proactive in ensuring that
the requirements for enabling especially grassroots women to fully participate in public life and
for developing their sense of self as autonomous citizens are not too sorely absent.

• Legislative agenda cannot be divorced from development agenda. Laws and policies are only as
good as the social and political conditions that effectively and promptly allow the dismantling of
layer upon layer of discrimination against women.

• The intractability of poverty-related problems in the country emphasizes that structural

inequalities and inequities are still well-entrenched and pose the biggest obstacles to any project
aiming for poverty reduction and economic empowerment. It is clear that while government’s
goals of “promoting women’s economic empowerment through access to capital, markets,
training, information, technology and technical assistance…” are important, they are not the
strategic and substantive interventions that a decisive move on realizing women’s economic
empowerment would require.

38
 Recommendations

To ensure de facto not merely de jure compliance with substantive equality (addressing both
direct and indirect discrimination against women), and advocating a development paradigm
responsive to gender-specific rights, cultural contexts and needs, and environmental sustainability,
the following recommendations are put forward with Article 3 of the CEDAW in mind:

On Legislation

Ensure that laws and bills, particularly laws on family and persons, property, violence against
women and children, prostitution and trafficking, the regulation of migrant work, customary law,
etc. are consistent with CEDAW and women’s rights.

Review the process of law-making to ensure that implementing rules and regulations are integral to
the drafts passed in legislation and not mere afterthoughts that become justifications for the
incomplete compliance with laws.

Effectively advocate for the passage of pending bills ensuring women’s rights such as the
reproductive health bill and the Magna Carta for Women, and to make legislative bodies account for
the excruciatingly slow passage of these bills.

Repeal laws and administrative orders that authorize the automatic appropriation from the budget of
debt service payments over and above any other public expenditure; set a ceiling on allocations for
interest payments.

Investigate and audit all outstanding debts in order to have a clear basis for repayment/non-
repayment; prosecute corrupt government officials who privately benefited from public transactions.

Women’s Participation in Policy-Making

Review the impact and functionality of various political mechanisms that purportedly
facilitate poor women’s political visibility and participation, particularly in local governance, peace
and the ARMM communities as well as other indigenous communities, and poverty and economic
development bodies.

Ensure the representation of poor women - rural poor women farmers and fishers, indigenous women
and Muslim women, migrant women, and urban poor women - in all governance bodies, from the
local to international levels, as provided by law; and their meaningful participation in policy
discussions and decision-making processes.

Civil/Political Rights

Stop the suppression of legitimate dissent; uphold the Bill of Rights guaranteeing the people’s
democratic rights to free speech and assembly, freedom of mobility and to be secure in their
persons.

Dismantle all underground, illegal military apparatuses and operatives linked to killings and
disappearances; vigorously prosecute all found guilty and responsible for these rights violations as
well as those involved in tortures, arbitrary arrest and detention.

39
Minority/Indigenous People’s Rights

Recognize and promote viable practices of indigenous and rural women on natural resource
management and development; and the contribution of women’s social reproduction to society and
the economy.

Uphold the indigenous peoples’ rights to their ancestral lands and natural resources and prosecute
transgressors of the IPRA provision on securing their Free and Prior Informed Consent.

The Economy and Social Services

Install temporary special measures to respond to the grievous effects of corporate

globalization on poor women, especially migrant women, Muslim and indigenous women and their
communities.

Put in place mechanisms to ensure that resources freed from debt service goes to the delivery of
basic services badly needed by the people, especially poor and marginalized women.

Secure life, position and property of women especially those displaced by conflict and disasters by
providing full safety and social services in temporary sites/shelters including food, water, sanitation,
health provisions and livelihoods for the limited time that they spend in these areas.

Without prejudice, promote and protect women’s equal right to work and decent livelihoods.

Planning and Monitoring for Impact

Emplace open, credible and accountable monitoring mechanisms to track results and impact
of truly government’s own initiatives and varying measures addressing women’s rights especially
social services covering health, education, and infrastructure especially impact on grassroots, poor
communities.

Separately monitor the results and impact of the passage of laws on women’s rights identifying gaps
and continuing challenges to the complete implementation of these laws.

For government to put in place in their planning strategies the timeframe by which they would be
held accountable for measures they committed themselves to, on top of their commitments to the
Millennium Development Goals.

Ensure that social impact assessments of government projects on environment and ecological
preservation meticulously consider impact on culture and participation of and effect on women.

Education/Information Dissemination

Ensure government’s principal role and responsibility in widely disseminating knowledge and
information on CEDAW and in educating the public, especially grassroots women on their rights.

To aid critical decision-making and ensure accountability, for government to uphold the law on the
right of the people to access public documents at all levels of government and among the various
line agencies.

40
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43
 LIST OF PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
IN THE CONSULTATION-WORKSHOPS ON USING CEDAW IN THE PHILIPPINES
A NATIONAL TRAINING
VISAYAS MINDANAO
FOR WOMEN NGOS & LUZON CONSULTATION-
CONSULTATION- CONSULTATION-
HUMAN RIGHTS WORKSHOP
WORKSHOP WORKSHOP
ADVOCATES
OCTOBER 17-21, 2006 MARCH 20-21, APRIL 27-28, 2006 APRIL 3-5, 2006
UNIVERSITY HOTEL
Alternative Forum for
Holy Spirit School Center Alternative Law Groups
Antonia de Oviedo Center Research in Mindanaw
for WINGS (ALG)
(AFRIM)
Al-Mujadilah Amihan National Al-Mujadilah
Cebu City United
Development Foundation, Federation of Peasant Development Foundation,
Vendors Association
Inc. (AMDF) Women Inc.
Kanlungan Center Cebu People’s Multi- Bathaluman Crisis Center
CAPP-SIAD Inc.
Foundation, Inc. Purpose Cooperative Foundation, Inc.
Center for Women's Center for Participatory Bangsamoro Women
Karapatan
Resources Governance Sooldarity Forum, Inc.
Centro Saka Inc. (Phil
Children’s Legal Bureau, Bangsamoro Women
DAWN Foundation, Inc. Center for Rural Devt
Inc. Solidarity Forum, Inc
Studies)
WAND - Sorsogon Crusade Against Center for Overseas
Engenderights
Women's Network Violence Workers Foundation, Inc.
Federation of Free Development Through
Consortium of
Women's Legal Bureau Workers' Women's Active Women
Bangsamoro Civil Society
Network Networking Foundation
Federation of United
Feed the Children Phils,
LIKHAAN GABRIELA Mindanawan
Inc.
Bangsamoro Women
Dr. Emilio B. Espinosa Sr.
Memorial State College
Fellowship For
ofnAgriculture and INNABUYOG GABRIELA – Davao
Organizing Endeavors
Technology
(DEBESMSCAT)
Kanlungan Center Good Shepherd
SARILAYA Group Foundation, Inc.
Foundation Sisters/Balay Isidora
Institute of Primary Health
Ateneo Human Rights
LIKHAAN GWAVE Care Davao Medical
Center
School Foundation
Justice, Peace, and
Pambansang Kanayunan
Integrity of Creation,
PATAMABA ng Kababaihan sa Lawig Bubai
Integrated Development
Kanayunan
Center
Sentro ng Alternatibong
Pambansang Kalipunan Kabalaka Development
Lingap Panligal Link Davao Incorporated
ng mga Manggagawang Foundation, Inc.
(SALIGAN)
Women Working
Together to Stop
Legal Alternatives for Lumah Ma Dilaut Center
Violence Against Women PATAMABA
Women Center, Inc. for Living Traditions
/ Amnesty International
Pilipinas
Life’s Essence for Manggagawang
Center for Women's
Piglas Kababaihan Achievement and Kababaihang Mithi ay
Resources
Development, Inc. Paglaya (MAKALAYA)

44
 METSA FoundATION,
Inc. for the upliftment of
Rainbow Rights Project, Mag-uumad Foundation, moral, economic,
Talikala, Incorporated
(R-Rights) Inc. Inc. technological, socio-
spiritual aspirations of
persons
Malhiao Resource Mindanao Working Group
Ranbow Rights Project, Reproductive Rights
Management Multi- on Repro-Health, Gender
Inc. (R-Rights) Resource Group - Phils
Purpose Cooperative and Sexuality
Task Force Detainees of Muslin Women
Alternative Law Groups Nazareth Children Center
the Phils Association in Basilan
Third World Movement
Womenlead Foundation,
Against the Exploitation Process SAMAKAMA- Davao
Inc.
of Women
Center for Asia Pacific
Trade Union Congess of Samahan ng Maralitang
Women's in Politics SIDLAK
the Philippines (TUCP) Kababaihang Nagkakaisa
(CAPWIP)
University of the Sentro ng Alternatibong
Womenlead Foundation,
Philippines - Philippine Simag Fundation Inc. Lingao Panligal
Inc.
General (SALIGAN) – Mindanaw
Women and Gender SOS Children’s Village
Hospital Women's Desk SIDLAKAN
Institute (WAGI) Cebu, Inc.

Womenlead Foundation, Tambuyog Development

UNIFEM - CEDAWSEAP TALIKALA, Inc.
Inc Center, Inc.
Pambansang Kongreso
Third World Movement
ng Kababaihan sa Women's Action Network Tingog sa Kasanag Org.
Against the Exploitation
Kanayunan / FIAN for Development (TISAKA)
of Women
Philippines
Pilipina Legal Resources Women’s Resource United Youth for Peace
Women's Crisis Center
Center, Inc (PLRC) Center Cebu and Development

Unlad Kabayan Migrant

Women's Feature Service Woman Health
Services Foundation, Inc.
Ranbow Rights Project,
Women’s Feature Service
Inc. (R-Rights)
Lihok Pilipina Foundation,
Women’s Forum 10
Inc.
WMSU-Center for Peace
and Development
Zamboanga City

45