(Due to its timeliness, we yield this space to the statement of GABRIELA, the biggest alliance of women’s organizations in the Philippines. – Ed.)
THE INTERNATIONAL Working Women’s Day (IWWD), annually commemorated on the 8th of March, comes in the midst of dire crisis in the Philippines and across the world. The most pressing issue Filipino women face is depressed wages, lack of decent jobs, and massive rights violations.
This January alone, the Philippines recorded an 8.7% inflation rate – the highest in the last 14 years. Filipino workers’ wages are not able to keep up with the steep increases in the prices of basic commodities and services. In fact, the highest minimum wage across all regions is barely half of the Family Living Wage, which is now pegged at P1,165. Even this meager income, however, is denied from Filipino women as millions are either contractual employees or are forced into informal employment – both of which mean they have no benefits, job security, and are denied their basic right to unionize. According to IBON Foundation, seven out of 10 workers are informally employed. The 2018 data of the Philippine Statistics Authority, on the other hand, show that 15.68 million workers in the informal sector are women.
The growing informal sector is a direct result of the government’s failure to generate decent jobs. The jobs crisis, which exponentially worsened since the pandemic, also pushed Filipinos to find work abroad where they are subject to oftentimes more perilous working conditions.
The ever-insecure and worsening economic conditions of Filipino women make them more vulnerable to abuse. In the first half of 2022, the PNP received 5,339 reports of violence against women. Thousands more go unreported. The Anti-Violence against Women and their Children (Anti-VAWC) Law – while a victory gained by the Philippine women’s movement – still has many weaknesses that demand immediate review and resolution.
It also doesn’t help that the very forces mandated to serve and protect Filipino women are at the forefront the abuse, harassment, and rights violations of women – from women activists who are wantonly red-tagged, harassed, illegally imprisoned, and disappeared to intimate partners.
It is in this context that GABRIELA—the biggest alliance of women’s organizations in the Philippines—together with other women’s and children’s rights advocates commemorate IWWD. The rallying call of Filipino women is to unite for wage increase and regular jobs.
The militant tradition of IWWD was started in 1910 by Russian socialists and later adopted in the Philippines; hundreds of women protested against poverty, low wages, and inhumane conditions at work on March 8, 1971, under the Marcos Sr. regime.
Fifty-two years later, the dire socioeconomic conditions that warranted such political actions in the past continue to plague the lives of millions of Filipino women under yet another Marcos regime.
