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“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to
be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not
difficult.”—Charlotte Whitton, Canada Month, June
1963
“People are more violently opposed to fur than leather
because it’s safer to harass rich women than motorcycle
gangs.”—Unknown
FOR the
second year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked
the Philippines No. 6 in its annual Gender-Gap Index, an
indication that our country is one of the most
“women-friendly” in the world. And what company we
have—among the top are countries like Sweden, Norway,
Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland and
Spain.
The
gender-gap index examines four critical areas of
inequality between men and women. These areas are
economic participation and opportunity, which measures
the outcomes on salaries; participation levels and
access to high-skilled employment; educational
attainment, outcomes on access to basic- and
higher-level education; political empowerment, outcomes
on representation in decision-making structures; and
health and survival, outcomes on life expectancy and sex
ratio.
According to the report, the
Philippines
ranked second in the subindex on economic participation
and opportunity for women and 14th in political
empowerment. The country also ranked first in
educational attainment, along with Australia, Belgium,
Belize, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, France, the
Honduras, Ireland, Jamaica, Lesotho, Luxembourg, the
Maldives, Poland and the United Kingdom.
The
Philippines also shared first place in health and
survival with Angola, Argentina, Austria, Belize,
Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland,
France, the Gambia, Guatemala, the Honduras, the Kyrgyz
Republic, Latvia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritania,
Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Panama, Paraguay, Slovakia,
Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay,
Venezuela and Yemen.
In Asia,
the WEF said the Philippines and Sri Lanka, which is at
15th place, remain the only countries included in the
top 20.
“The
Philippines is, once again, the only country in Asia to
have closed the gender gap on both education and health,
and is one of only six in the world to have done so,”
said the WEF. “The Philippines’ scores on political
empowerment improved further, as did some of its
economic indicators, such as estimated income,
labor-force participation and income equality for
similar work.”
Congratulations, therefore, are in order for all the
women: our mothers, daughters and sisters! And
certainly, the entire society deserves credit as well.
That ranking indicates that culturally, the Philippines
has come a long way from a feudal past when parents
thought society should not invest in women’s education
and personal advancement because they were going to be
married off anyway and will stay in the homes of their
husbands. These days we are increasingly seeing the
influential roles being played by women in Philippine
society, be it in civil-society organizations, business
or politics.
Indeed,
it’s a fitting tribute to women in a society that is
increasingly relying on its women to move the economy
forward. If we look deeper into the numbers, it’s
obvious that our new growth drivers—outsourcing,
electronics and overseas labor migration—are mostly
“manned” by women. Increasingly, we are sending more
skilled professionals going abroad. They are mostly
medical professionals, caregivers and artists who are
predominantly women. We are increasingly sending abroad
information-technology professionals, many of whom are
women.
But on
hindsight, some of these trends are not necessarily
favorable to women and society as a whole. For one, it
means we are increasingly sending abroad women who are
sorely needed to give motherly care for our own
children. The fathers and relatives could probably
supplant the mothers, but reality—or at least the common
anecdotal evidence in our immediate community—seems to
indicate that households with single parents are not
always the best environment within which children should
grow up in. Horror stories about teenage pregnancy,
alcoholism and drug abuse, even incest, among OFW
families are too common to ignore.
That
many of the women have to go beyond the borders to
become breadwinners indicate that, increasingly, women
are disproportionately bearing the burden imposed by a
flawed economic strategy that traces its roots to the
1970s. Nothing is wrong with labor migration per se,
but if it’s the only thing that keeps the economy
afloat, as is the case of the Philippines lately,
something must be wrong somewhere.
It means
women are being forced to take roles and so much risk
they probably wouldn’t want to take if only there were
more options within the country. We are specifically
referring to caregivers and domestic help, mostly women,
who are prone to abuse in alien cultures. Isn’t that
another form of oppression?
A recent
episode in the multiawarded TV documentary Probe Team
dwelt on human trafficking, and the stats were
appalling, bearing out what we just had a hunch about
all this time, i.e., that the Philippines ranks also
among the top five countries from where originate
victims of human trafficking, especially young women.
This shouldn’t be surprising. For many decades, it had
been quite easy for unscrupulous recruiters and the
network of traffickers to ship out young, unsuspecting,
unsophisticated poor women from the countryside,
promising them jobs in the Middle East or some Southeast
Asian destination (usually Malaysia or Indonesia), only
for them to find themselves stranded in some brothel,
broke and broken, their documents all tampered with or
forged, and thus no good for any decent job.
Until
recently, it wasn’t surprising to find queuing up at the
Naia an illiterate woman bound for
Kuwait
or some similar destination, there to work as a
domestic.
The
government early this year bucked massive protests by
setting a floor wage of $400 for domestics, at the risk
of losing a big chunk of the overseas market to
nationalities that will bite at cheaper rates.
Policymakers justified this by saying it was one way of
discouraging a surge of OFWs in such low-end positions,
which attract the more vulnerable types, anyway, and
encouraging deployment of better skilled—hence, more
educated and less risky to abuse—workers. Last time we
checked, the controversial policy seems to be working in
this wise, although the recruiters are complaining
because the deployment is declining.
To be
fair, the government may be right after all on this
score, but until then, it should keep pursuing the line
that one can’t build an economy on the backs of its
women, especially those prone to all forms of abuse,
while tearing, because of their absence, the social
fabric back home. Let’s hope next year’s gender index
will show even better results. |
