A RECENT survey of Thomas Reuters Foundation ranked the Philippines as one of the 10 most dangerous nations in terms of human trafficking. Our country is in the league of other developing and war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, Thailand, India, and Russia.
This is not surprising. According to the Center for Women’s Resources, a 35-year-old research women’s organization, the perennial deprivation of economic opportunities to Filipino women makes them vulnerable to human traffickers. The number of women in precarious employment remains high. In 2015, 2.3 million women were employed short-term, seasonal or in casual work where they were poorly paid and unprotected.
Women’s participation in the labor force is also constantly low; only 46.2 percent of them tallied in 2017, a drop of 3.1 percent from the previous year. While both men and women registered a lower number of participation in 2017 compared to 2016, the count of women’s participation is still 30 percent lower than men’s participation. Generally, unemployed men and women increased by 78,000 in 2017.
The lack of job opportunities is aggravated by the continuous price increases. As prices rise, women and their families toil to live. Families also start cutting the number of times they eat in a day, from three intakes to two or even one intake per day.
As poverty worsens, many women fall victims to illegal recruiters and traffickers. Based on recently reported cases of trafficking, many of the victims come from far-flung provinces where poverty is widespread. Traffickers take advantage of women’s desperation to escape from extreme poverty. With the desire for a better life for themselves and their families, poor women are lured to work in cities. Unknowingly, when they are already in the cities, women are forced into prostitution.
The misogynistic attitude prevailing in the current Philippine society today – peddled by President Duterte himself – makes it harder to uplift women’s condition. Misogyny or the contempt for or ingrained prejudice against women reinforces inequality not simply between men and women but more on between the powerful and the powerless. It works to keep women conform to standards and to make them feel inadequate. The troubling part is the tolerance of its practice by society that makes violence against women built into the system.
As the culture of gender-based violence continues, women remain treated as source of cheap labor, as sex commodities, or as mere properties. To make a real difference to women’s lives, concerned citizens must take a stand against misogyny and violence against women. People – both men and women – need to organize to dismantle the system that perpetuates such views.
