Women empowerment

A woman I know left her husband and three children in the Visayas two decades ago to find work in Manila. A grade school dropout, she became a mother at 17, and the two other kids came within two years of each other.

She and the father, who had odd jobs in farming and construction, never put together enough money for a wedding; the kids simply had too many needs, and there was never enough money to go around.

So the woman mustered the courage to try her luck in Manila, where relatives helped her find work as a nanny. This was the age before social media and cell phones, and she missed her children tremendously. But she found solace in the company of the toddler in her care, who bawled her heart out when the woman moved to another employer to become a cook, with better pay.

The woman earned enough to be the main family breadwinner, and often fought long-distance with her husband she calls “Sam Milby, walang silbi” or useless, who often spent the money she sent for the household on gambling and alcohol.

As their eldest finished high school, the woman fretted that her daughter might become a teenage mother like her. So she told the daughter to join her in Manila. Instead of pursuing higher education or even a vocational course, the girl fell for a driver who already has a child with a partner.

But the girl was madly in love, and the guy left his partner and child. Amid the COVID lockdowns, they got married, with the girl showing a baby bulge. At 22, she was the mother of a bouncing baby girl.

Her husband is as shiftless as her father, and relies on the girl and her mother to take care of the child. The husband is suspected to be doing drugs. All this has not cooled the girl’s affection; she gave birth to a second daughter last year. Her mother, a grandmother twice over before turning 50, adores the grandchildren. But she is the one caring for the growing brood, advancing the money for child delivery fees and buying baby formula for the two kids.

Such stories are pretty common across the country. I know women with worse stories, but I’ve kept track longer of this one I’ve narrated. I think of these women and girls as International Women’s Day is marked today.

Their stories continue to proliferate alongside those of empowered Filipino women who are aware of their rights, who are financially independent and are in their chosen fields of endeavor. So many other Filipino women are being left behind.

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There’s one area where the Philippines ranks high in international surveys: gender equality.

In the 2020 Global Gender Gap Index drawn up by the World Economic Forum, the Philippines was at 16th place – way ahead of the rest of East and Southeast Asia. This is one index where regional overachiever Singapore ranks low. In the 2020 index, it was at 54th place after the US. In Southeast Asia, Laos came closest to the Philippines, at 43rd place. Thailand was at 75th place; Indonesia, 85th; Vietnam, 87th; Cambodia, 89th; Brunei, 95th; Malaysia, 104th; Myanmar, 114th, and Timor-Leste, 117th.

The rankings don’t present a good case for women empowerment and economic progress. Asia’s largest economies ranked low: China placed 106th; South Korea, 108th, and Japan, 121st.

But gender equality contributes to quality of life and the happiness index, if we consider the top 10 on the index: Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, Rwanda and Germany. Also ahead of the Philippines were Latvia, Namibia, Costa Rica, Denmark and France.

Our ranking went down from the best 10 in the past amid stiff opposition to the Reproductive Health Law, and we did not fully recover even after its passage, possibly because of the weakness of the implementation. But being in the top 20 is still good.

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A quick look will bear out the country’s high ranking in gender equality. Filipino women are active in all branches of government (two presidents, two vice presidents, two chief justices, two ombudsmen) as well as in local governments and in nearly all professions.

We have sweeping laws protecting women from domestic violence, discrimination and harassment in the workplace and even in the streets; wolf whistling is a criminal offense.

It is said that ours is a matriarchal society. A male colleague once lamented that they needed an International Men’s Day.

But on closer look, you can see that gender equality and women empowerment need a lot of work in this country. Millions of Filipino women, especially from low-income communities, are unaware of their rights under those numerous laws, whose enforcement – like most other laws in this country – is weak.

Women’s groups are the strongest advocates of divorce. The suspicion is that Congress, still dominated by men, are opposing the legalization of divorce not because of religious beliefs, but because the skinflint guys don’t want to pay alimony. They are also content with the status quo where they can keep multiple mistresses, with no pressure to divorce the legal wife.

Women also account for a large segment of overseas Filipino workers. And as we have seen, they are at highest risk of physical and other forms of abuse, and even murder overseas.

Addressing the crisis in education will open the doors for meaningful employment and livelihood opportunities for these women, so they need not leave their families behind for greener pastures abroad.

They will also know enough about their reproductive rights and the importance of quality of life, both for themselves and their children. Then perhaps there will be fewer stories similar to the one at the start of this article.