CHAPTER 14:

WOMEN AND WORK IN THE

PHILIPPINES
 WOMEN IN THE PRODUCTIVE SPHERE
 The saying “a woman’s work is never done” rings true given the current state of the world.
Women contribute to the economy in all forms.

 From those who work in productive sphere.

 To those who support workers in the reproductive sphere.

 The impact of women is present in development, specifically in terms of the economy:

“Women are key contributors to the economy and to combating poverty through both remunerated and
unremunerated work at home, in the community and in the workplace. Growing numbers of women have
achieved economic independence through gainful employment.”

 Despite this progress, women still face the same issues they did ten years ago which also affect men.
 The wage gap
 Poverty
 Lack of decent work opportunities

 Feminization is observed in some industries, while others impose exclusion of women.

 In addition, women experience:
 Limited career choices
 Lack of protection for the informal sector and domestics workers
 Tenuous social protection
 Limited monitoring on labor standards
 Unremitting promotion of labor export policy

THE RIGHT TO DECENT WORK

 The Magna Carta of Women states that women have the right to decent work.
 Specifically, Section 22 of the Magna Carta asserts that:
“The state shall progressively realize and ensure decent work standards for women that involve the creation
of jobs of acceptable quality in conditions of freedom, equity, security, and human dignity.”

 It adds that:
“Decent work involves opportunities for work that are productive and fairly remunerative as family living
wage, security in the workplace, and social protection for families, better prospects for personal
development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize, participate in
the decisions that affect their lives, and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and women.”

 Decent work for women entails support services that take into consideration their maternal functions,
family obligations, and work responsibilities.
 Decent work also involves the access to day-care services, breast-feeding stations, and maternity and
paternity leave access.
 T H E M U LT I P L E B U R D E N O F W O M E N
 Women joining the labor force still have to attend to their reproductive roles at home. Having both
reproductive and productive work is what feminists call the “DOUBLE DAY” or “MULTIPLE BURDEN”.
 Household chores include:
 Cooking
 Cleaning
 Washing the dishes
 Child Care
 Caring elderly or sick persons of their homes

 The perception of the multiple burden of women compels many employers to assume that women
cannot commit to their work.
 Though illegal, employers may also have certain preferences for single, unmarried women who have
no family obligations as they are more flexible in terms of the time they can devote to their job.
 Note that these issues are not considerations for hiring and promoting men.
 In fact, in countries with paternity leave and responsive caretaking policies, men still do half the work
women do in terms of care work.
 One option to mitigate this concern is to have gender-responsive policies in the workplace that allow
both women and men to fulfill their duties at home.
 Policies may include granting maternity and paternity leaves, and promoting men's participation in
reproductive work.

T H E VA L U AT I O N O F C A R E W O R K
 Care or reproductive work is the base of a society.
 The valuation of this traditionally gendered task must be given importance in order for true gender
justice to prevail.
 Women working in care industries must be valued both as workers and as women who are working to
support their own family.

W O M E N F R I E N D LY W O R K S P A C E S
 A gender-responsive organization gives importance to women's true gender needs.
 One method to incorporate care into systems of work is by adopting policies that:
 Allot time for parents to attend to their children's needs
 Paid activities that allow parents to do care work at home
 Accessible care work within the organization where the parents works for.

 Other concrete ways of implementing gender-responsive work spaces are as follows:

1. New laws that recognize the rights of paid or unpaid care workers;
2. Pro-reproductive sector tax reforms;
3. Gender-responsive public financial management reforms (gender budgets); and
4. Official statistical systems that are more sensitive to the care economy (e.g., through
collection of time-use data).
 T H E N AT U R E O F W O M E N ' S PA I D W O R K
 Women's lack of choices in work may force them to take dangerous jobs, assumes jobs that do not
offer job security, or migrate elsewhere for better work opportunities.
 Women also find themselves in part-time jobs to balance their reproductive needs. Others choose to
participate in informal labor.
 These types of work involve less job security; lower wages, and less social protection.

S E X - R O L E S T E R E O T Y P I N G AT W O R K
 Sex-role stereotyping pervades all aspects of society from what one assumes about men and women
to the types of jobs they can have.
 Men are predominantly employed in labor-intense jobs, such as:
 Agriculture
 Hunting
 Forestry
 Transportation and Storage
 Construction

 Women are likely to take on jobs that are related to their assumed traits:
 Patience
 Understanding
 Care

 Women are often found in “education, community and health care, wholesale and retail trade,
service activities, and manufacturing.”
 It appears that women and men tend to veer away from jobs that do not correspond to their
stereotyped role.
 Women workers are also less likely to be in top administrative roles.
 In fact, less than half of the executive positions in the Philippines are awarded to women through 67%
of the Filipino professionals are women.

SMALL AND MEDIUM-SCALE ENTERPRISE

 A notable industry that has active female participation in the Philippines is the micro, small, and
medium enterprises (MSMEs).
 Globally, the Philippines is the second country with the most active women in MSMEs, next to Peru.
 In 2015, around 45% microenterprise owners were women.
 A MSMEs is a small enterprise which may consist only of the owner as the employee with a business
capital below PHP10.000.
 Most MSMEs are in the form of food stalls, retail services, or personal services for women.
 The government has installed numerous economic support programs to assist women regarding
requests for loans and availment of funds in launching their businesses.
 These efforts are among the many capacity-building schemes being pursued by the government to
change women's “survival” mindset to an “entrepreneurial mindset” one.
 Projects that cover marginalized women in the labor sector include the Gender-Responsive Economic
Actions for the Transportation of Women (GREAT Women Project), a gender-responsive initiative
specifically set up for women in microenterprises.
 The Advancing Philippine Competitiveness (COMPLETE) project is another endeavor that supports
small and medium enterprises. It is funded by the United States.

W O M E N I N T H E R U R A L / A G R I C U LT U R E S E C T O R
 Agriculture is fundamental as it is a major contributor to a nation's food production and industries, as
well as to the national economy as a whole.
 In the Philippines, women-farmers and rural women in general play an important role in agriculture at
all levels.
 The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recognizes rural women as active economic actors being
among the landless workers, traders of agricultural and fishery products, and agents in micro-
manufacturing enterprises.
 According to a 2004 FAO report, 27% of the total 10.4 million Filipino workforce in the sectors of
agriculture, hunting, and forestry were women.
 In 2015, 39% to 49% of the farming households in the Philippines hired women in land preparation,
planning, planting, and harvesting activities.
 The Asian Development Bank cites agriculture as the second largest sector for women's employment in
the Philippines.
 Specifically, 64% of workers in the rice and corn subsector and 60% of the workers in the fisheries
sector were women.
 However, few women farmers have access to high-quality production inputs, credit, information on
farming techniques, and markets.

 They also have to face the challenges of:

 Unpaid domestic work and care burden
 Limited access to resources such as:
1. Credit and financial services
2. Inadequate education
3. Government services
4. Disadvantages in social protection
5. Discrimination in most aspects of work in the Philippine labor context.

 Limited access to property and decision making also hinder the progress of women in the agricultural
sector.
 Philippine government data in 2012 show that only 29% of the 2.3 million agrarian reform beneficiaries
who were granted certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) were women. This disparity can be
attributed to the prevailing socio-cultural structures in rural communities.
 The recognition of male adults as heads of the household in rural communities makes women less
regarded as farmers or agricultural holders, and consequently reducing their position in decision
making.
 Legal entitlements such as CLOA or land titles awarded to their names would have provided women
with formal and legal rights that could improve their access to financing and credit facilities among
others.

MIGRANT WOMEN
 Many Filipinos, including the younger generations, aspire to go abroad as overseas Filipino workers
(OFWs) in such territories as the Middle East, Europe, or the U.S.
 More than 10.4 million Filipinos or greater than 10% of the national population are based abroad.
 The Philippines deployed some 2.2 million OFWs in 2012 alone, almost 50% of which were women.
 Sending Filipino workers abroad was originally a stop-gap measure against the unemployment crisis in
the 1970s.
 However, what starred as a trend became a main form of employment for many Filipinos.
 Forty-three percent of OFWs deployed in 2012 worked in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and
Singapore.
 Most of them came from Luzon, specifically from CALABARZON (Region IV-A) and Central Luzon
(Region III).
 More than 60% of these OFWs were women and majority were involved in domestic or care work.
 Thus, more women OFWs were employed as laborers and “unskilled” workers than their male
counterparts who worked as plant and machine operators and assemblers under trade-related works.
 This observation mirrors the findings of the United Nations Women Committee that women OFWs are
predominantly service workers whereas male OFWs are mainly production workers.
 Women OFWs are often reported to experience various challenges due to their low skill and low
education level.
 These women are susceptible to abuse and exploitation, illegal recruitment, contract substation, and
debt bondage.
 Other women become victims of human trafficking or sex trafficking because they were offered jobs
which were actually a front for an illegal recruitment scheme.
 Some women also experience violations of their sexual and reproductive health due to various
discriminatory laws in countries where they work.
 The Women’s EDGE Plan also identifies the de-skilling of professionals as an issue. Due to the need for
caregivers overseas, professionals who wish to go abroad may take on these jobs.
 The OFWs are a great resource to the country. Their hand work and sacrifice must not be romanticized
but rewarded with gender-responsive government projects.
 One such project is the Balik Pinay! Balik-Hanapbuhay! Project (Return Filipina! Return to
Livelihood!). It aims to assist in the reintegration of women overseas workers in terms of skills training
in entrepreneurship and other business-related topics once they return to the Philippines.

WOMEN IN THE INFORMAL SECTOR

 Members of the Informal Sector are classified as individuals that remain unemployed but are able to
create their own employment with or without access to training and credit.
 Members of the informal sector’s main goal are not to earn “extra income” but mostly to meet their
daily needs.
 Seventy percent of the jobs in the Philippines come from the informal sector.
 Workers in this sector usually belong to impoverished families as they lack the necessary skills, training
and education needed to secure formal work.
 Desperate at the chance to get opportunities concerning work, women often enter informal work that
lacks access to social protection and productive resources, exposes them to poor working conditions,
and limits their representation in many decision-making structures.
 Those engaged in the informal sector work on a much lower capital and productivity than their
counterparts in the formal sector. This observation means that women involved in the informal sector
continue to have less access to resources even if they are considered employed.
 The work hours are not fixed, with most employees working beyond eight hours. Thus, workers in this
sector are more exposed to physical, ergonomic, and chemical hazards, as well as illnesses and other
health issues.
 Women informal workers also experience gender inequality aggravated by their low levels of education
and business literacy, hence hindering their development.
 While some approaches have been formulated by various agencies to ease the issues of the informal
sector, women are underrepresented and are often excluded from policy processes. It is supported by
the common notion that men are more capable in matters of business and finance.

DOMESTIC WORK AND DO MESTIC WORKERS

 Domestic workers do care work, the very same tasks they assume in their own home. However, this
work is considered paid only when done in the home of another.
 In 2010, 84.5% of domestic workers in private homes were women, 92.1% of them were employed as
live-in domestic workers.
 Women dominated this industry, but they earned less per day (PHP 23.20 versus PHP 188.17 for male
domestic workers) despite rendering slightly more time per week than their male counterparts (52.1
versus 51.4 hours).
 Women in this type of work often have no fixed working hours. Their duties include:
 Cooking
 Cleaning
 Child Care
 General Housekeeping

 The services of a live-in domestic worker can be called any time and overtime work is not
compensated. There is no formal contract for the women who engage in this work, and most of them
are not educated, come from depressed areas, or have migrated from poor rural areas.
 The lack of education makes these workers susceptible to abuse and exploitation, specifically physical
and sexual abuse. Their lack of awareness and separation from the outside world often traps domestic
workers into this type of job.

THE SEX TRADE

 When talking about the sex industry, one usually refers to the reproduction activity called coitus or sex
in exchange for pay.
 The sex industry is viewed as a dominantly female issue because most sex workers are female and most
buyers are male.
 This notion of sex work was created by the historical shift in wage-labor relations.
 As the processing economies uprooted more women from private households to participate in the
production sphere, women became empowered, triggering a shift in sexual norms.
 This shift challenged the machismo attitude of men while women became more open to recreational
sex. And while this applies to both
 genders, recreational sex and sex outside marriage was only socially acceptable to men but not women.
This is termed the double standard of sex.
 Men subscribed to querida mentality or concubinage, whereas women were expected to express
their sexuality in marriage. Thus, for women, sexuality was tied for morality.
 Sex work was then rooted in the double standard of sexuality --- men were free to have sexual
relations outside marriage, women were not.
 Sex work or prostitution offers a higher pay than other, low-skill occupation.
 The appeal of the sex trade is obvious to women who have no other choice.
 This occupation, however, poses risks largely due to the fact that prostitution in the Philippines is illegal
and dangerous with little no protection for those who partake in this activity. Thus, a large part of a sex
worker’s pay goes to bribing policemen and paying their pimp.
 Filipino women who are involved who are involved in sex work are at high risk for abuse, trafficking
and sexual abuse.
 Nonetheless, the sex industry in the Philippines is thriving. Sex tours were popular in 1980s with
Japanese tourists visiting the Philippines to avail themselves of sex industry here.
 Currently, the high rate of migration in the Philippine and the lack of economic opportunities for
women make the poor and uneducated vulnerable to sex trafficking both here and abroad.
 Moreover, the cybersex industry is becoming dominant in the Philippines as a result of the advances in
information technology.

WOMEN AND THE DOMESTIC SPHERE

 The sex-gender system that was defined by Eviota highlights the divide between the reproductive
sphere and the productive sphere.
 As previously mentioned, the reproductive sphere is the woman’s place, where she is said to have
power and authority.
 However, this glorification of women who are delegated to the domestic sphere is mere tokenism. It
ignores the fact that domestic women are dependent on men for their income.
 The spending power of women is limited to their husband’s salary or the money that their husbands
provide them.
 After all, not all husbands give their whole salary to their wives. Some may even spend their on such
expenses as alcohol, cigarettes and other luxuries.
 What is delegated to the women who must find ways to stretch said amount.
 The current model of Philippine economy places value on monetary income and devalues care work.
 It also isolates women from the public sphere and public participation.
 This separation of the private and public spheres is an excuse for men to dismiss their role as
caregivers, using their earnings as a method to avoid the responsibility for framework and child care.
 Men, therefore, hold the resources that women need to survive --- INCOME. Thus, men may exercise
direct power over women.

 In order to address this problem, policies that seek to empower women in the economic sphere have
been formulated. These are as follows:
 R.A. 9501 or the Magna Carta for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). This law
hopes to create policies that will assist women entrepreneurs in various stages of development.
 R.A. 10151 or an Act Allowing the Employment of Night Workers of 2011. It is a respond to
Article 130 and 131 of the Labor Code of the Philippines. The two articles prohibit women from
working the night shift due to their reproductive roles. As a result, the opportunities of women
became severely limited, especially those who worked in the BPO industry. The act aims to
expand women’s employment or work options.
 R.A. 10361 or the Domestic Workers Act of 2013 (Batas Kasambahay). The kasambahay
(domestic worker) Law defines the labor rights of domestic household workers, majority of
which are women, increases their minimum wage, and provides regular employment and social
protection benefits.

The following are laws that cover women in the labor and livelihood sector:
 LAW SHORT TITLE APPROVED DATE

Republic Act No. 10361 Domestic Workers Act or Batas Kasambahay January 18, 2013

Magna Carta for Micro, Small and Medium

Republic Act No. 9501 May 5, 2008
Enterprises (MSMEs)

Barangay Micro Business Enterprises (BMBEs)

Republic Act No. 9178 November 13, 2002
Act of 2002

Republic Act No. 8425 Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act June 30, 1998

Republic Act No. 8424 The Tax Reform Act of 1997 December 11, 1997

Republic Act No. 1105 National Rural Women’s Day October 15, 1997
The Government Service Insurance System Act
Republic Act No. 8291 May 30, 1997
of 1997
Republic Act No. 8289 Magna Carta for Small Enterprises May 6, 1997

Republic Act No. 976 Declaring 1997 as Anti-Migrant Trafficking Year February 25, 1997

Republic Act No. 8187 Paternity Leave Act of 1996 June 11, 1996
Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of
Republic Act No. 8042 June 7, 1995
1995
Provision of Assistance to Women Engaging in
Republic Act No. 7882 Micro and Cottage Business Enterprises, and February 20, 1995
for Other Purposes
Republic Act No. 7877 Anti-Sexual Harassment Act of 1995 February 14, 1995

Republic Act No. 7699 The Portability Law May 1, 1994

An Act Increasing the Minimum Wage of
Househelpers, Amending for the Purpose
Republic Act No. 7655 August 19, 1993
Article 143 of Presidential Decree No. 442, As
Amended
Special Program for Employment of Students
Republic Act No. 7323 March 30, 1992
(SPES)
Republic Act No. 7305 Magna Carta of Public Health Workers March 26, 1992
Increasing Maternity Benefits in Favor of
Republic Act No. 7322 March 3, 1992
Women Workers in the Private Sectors
Barangay-level Total Development and
Republic Act No. 6972 November 23, 1990
Protection of Children Act
Republic Act No. 6938 Cooperative Code of the Philippines March 10, 1990