The Women's Market: The threat of a good example

MANILA, Philippines - Weekend markets have become all the rage in Manila in recent years. These markets are branded “healthy” or “organic” and are popular to urbanites crazy about wheatgrass juice, sampaguita cologne, and yogurt ice cream. 

This gave a group of organizations calling for support to poor rural women’s livelihoods an idea – the Women’s Market, Manila’s first market of women’s products and ideas, which was mounted last March 24-25 at the Quezon City government hall covered walk.

Of the three out of 10 Filipino women who are poor, majority are from rural areas, according to the Pambansang Koalisyon ng mga Kababaihan sa Kanayunan (PKKK). One proposal to improve their lot is increased government investments in their livelihoods. But ordinary consumers can also do something to help ease the burden of rural women, who produce part of the country’s food and are therefore crucial in ensuring food security. By buying from the Women’s Market, consumers give poor rural women’s empowerment a thumbs-up. 

The Women’s Market which was held recently at the Quezon City government hall covered walk carried food and wellness products produced by poor women from La Union, Batangas, Balingasa, Bulacan, and Nueva Ecija. The market sold free-range chicken eggs, veggie bread, malunggay polvoron, fresh vegetables, organic rice, fruit jams, bath soaps and shampoo, boneless bangus, tilapia, and others. The market also featured cooking demonstrations of guilt-free peanut butter and budbud kabud, a veggie mix for baking bread; and a session on a healthy lifestyle.  

The market also became a space to learn more about those behind the products – the poor rural women farmers and fishers.

Compared to rural men, rural women work an additional three hours every day to manage households – a role still traditionally expected solely of them – and to look for food when rice harvests and fish catch are low or wiped out by disaster. Their experience of poverty also has another dimension – not having a voice in decisions made in the household and beyond.

A report on the status of poor Filipino rural women describes how decreasing agricultural productivity is eating into rural women’s meager earnings; how climate change will set back the small headway they’ve made in improving their lives; and how to include them in crafting national and local government policies.  

The Women’s Market was mounted by PKKK, Sarilaya, Wiseact, Patamaba, and Oxfam, with support from the local government of Quezon City, through the GAD-RCO. The project was part of the Palibhasa Babae, Bida Ka! campaign that recognizes the economic and social contributions of rural women to the country.