[asia-apec 19] Women's Forum Statement for the APEC Manila Process

[daga]

Women's Forum Statement for the APEC Manila Process
Philippine PO-NGO Summit on APEC
July 3, 1996

WE, WOMEN belonging to various NGOs, movements, and other organizations,
oppose the current Philippine development model that the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation  (APEC) likewise espouses. The government's push for a
market-led, growth-oriented development has translated into greater women's
impoverishment, marginalization and exploitation. Paradoxically, while
foreign investors, especially from the region, have made their way to our
shores in the hope of making big profits, Filipino women are leaving their
homes and the country en masse to survive.
              
APEC seeks to fortify the neoliberal economic order. It aims to hasten the
breakdown of national boundaries to facilitate the flow of goods, human
resources, and capital. In the Philippines, this objective is expressed in
the government's policy of trade liberalization, privatization, and
deregulation. Underpinning such policies is the thinking that less
government and more market will not only benefit capital but also labor,
purportedly to create more jobs.
              
Identifying itself with economies rather than nation-states, APEC would have
governments abdicate their role in ensuring the peoples' well-being.
Instead, it would hand over this responsibility to the market  because as
the Osaka Declaration claims--market-oriented economic reforms will serve to
unleash the region's citizens' creativity and energy while enhancing their
prosperity and living standards.
              
Filipino women's experiences, however, belie the market's touted
democratizing potentials. The current priority given to investments and,
with this, the development of industrial enclaves have led  to the massive
conversion of primary agricultural lands.(1) As is, agrarian reform is
losing out to land  speculation that has already displaced many rural
farnilies. Consequently, rural women have had to cope with land and food
insecurity. On the other hand, the demolition of urban poor homes to make
way for commercial centers and residential subdivisions has recently taken a
deadly turn with the deployment of the gun-toting police and military in
such "clean-up" operations. The market-driven  land use policy that has led
to the break up of communities and environmental degradation will have dire
consequences on those women who are their families' primary caregivers and
breadwinners.
             
The Philippine government's economic solution leaves out the women, already
largely invisible in the country's productive and political life. Because
government continues to use the gross national product as the sole standard
for development, women--whose labor  contributions remain either unpaid or
unaccounted for in the equation--are put in a more vulnerable position.
Growth fails miserably to reflect the conditions of women twice over: not
only does it ignore how development impacts on the poor and the environment,
it is completely blind to women's specific realities.
              
Thus, even as government continues to harp on the economy's relatively
strong showing, it has also diminished its budget for government services.
(2) Among those hardest hit by this ironic situation are the urban poor.
Government is passing on its responsibility for housing, a basic human
right, to the private sector so that it can meet other obligations. To date,
there are 77,000 homeless people when government's budget for debt service
in 1996 alone can house 200,000 families in Metro Manila!(3) In this light,
government's promise of financing a social welfare agenda to soften
globalization's adverse effects (4) rings hollow, and, without even the
latter, growth cannot but widen the social divide.

Women largely carry the burden of government's default on its responsibility
to provide adequate and quality basic social services. Traditionally
responsible for their families' nurturance, women have had to stretch the
household income to meet the latter's most basic needs (e.g., food, primary
health care, education, and sanitation). To support their families, many
poor women leave the home to the care oftheir oldest, married daughters.
Often younger children, many as young as eight years old, are forced to work
to contribute to the family income. During a budget crunch, women usually
sacrifice their personal needs, such as proper nutrition, to feed their
spouses and children. That five to six women die of pregnancy-related causes
every day (5) illustrates how widespread the problem of poor health is among
women, and how critical the absence of medical care and women's lack of
control over their own fertility are to their well-being.

No doubt, neoliberalism and the current development paradigm benefit from a
labor market structured along gender lines. Since men are generally regarded
as the breadwinners, women's participation in the labor force is given less
importance and thus more exploitable. On the average, Filipino women, for
instance, earn only 37 centavos for every peso (100 centavos) their male
counterparts make. (6) But women are not only a source of dirt-cheap labor,
by tradition and force of circumstance, they are also seen as a more pliant
workforce.

Similarly, the country's development strategy thrives on women's
marginalization. More and more businesses have resorted to subcontracting
women, mostly home-based, to avoid paying higher  taxes as well as workers'
compensation and benefits. Women are most vulnerable to the casualization
and "flexibilization" of labor. Due to their poverty and their socially
prescribed dominant role in reproduction, they tend to agree to work on a
piece-rate basis, without labor rights. Many more are involved in the
inforrnal sector and the flesh trade. It has been estimated that there are
six million womn engaged in the underground economy while 300,000 women and
75,000 children are in prostitution. (7)

On the other hand, government' s commitment to the so-called free flow of
labor translates into a virtual hands-off policy regarding the plight of our
overseas contract workers, especially women. The feminization of migration
may be gleaned from the fact that at least 60% of total overseas deployment
is composed of women and the jobs they assume are those that have
traditionally been associated with women e.g. domestic work, and
entertainment. These are jobs that are low in status and pay, subject to
restrictive immigration policies and excluded from the receiving country's
labor code. These render the women migrants vulnerable to various forms of
violence. From January to March 1996, at least 95 women migrant workers were
reported to have been victims of violence, the most common of which was
maltreatment. Government's snail-paced response to the call of NGOs and
migrant workers' groups for bilateral labor agreements with host countries
ignores this vulnerability  of our women migrant workers. Despite their
substantial contribution to the economy through OCW remittances--the
country's main source of dollars--women's lives remain at risk. 

APEC's classification of peoples as mainly "human resources" glosses over
the grave social costs of  neoliberal economic growth. The growing
feminization of poverty is the latter's hidden cost. At its worst, the
unregulated flow of "human resources" has abetted the rise of sex
trafficking, second only to the drug trade as the region's booming
industries, and sex tourism to service men. In fact, prostitution has become
more intensive with the establishrnent of international ports and industrial
estates. Such appropriation of women' s sexuality and commodification of
their bodies are an affront to women's dignity and violate their personhood.

For women, therefore, the country's growth path begets untold sufferings.
Development that gives precedence to economic growth above human needs and
does not consider women's contribution to the country's productive life as
well as specific needs, only reinforces gender inequality and worsens
women's plight. In fact, it can be said that the dominant development
strategy, advanced by APEC and implemented in this country, is made possible
mainly through the subordination, exploitation, and oppression of women.

 In this light, we call for changing the current market-led, growth-oriented
development strategy to one that is equitable, sustainable, and empowering.
For development to truly serve women's strategic interests, women must be
given a significant role in shaping public policy and implementing
development programs and projects. Gender equity and equality must be made
integral to the country's and global developmem processes-only then will
peoples' interests be truly served.

Steps toward promoting women's empowerment in the public sphere must ensure
their equal and quality participation in economic and political
decision-making. Both in the public and private spheres, empowerment means
that women have control over their bodies, lives, and destinies.

In working out an alternative strategy of and new ethics for development, we
put forward the following:

1. We aspire for nothing less than total human and ecological development.
Development must not simply focus on economic gains, but also on its social,
political, ecological, and cultural dimensions.
 
2. Development must promote women's and peoples' human rights and be attuned
to its different impact  on women and men, factoring in sex, class,
ethnicity, race, sector, civil status, age, beliefs, sexual orientation, and
mental and physical abilities.
 
3. With women as active participants in the process, development must work
toward social integration,  food security, ecological balance, and advance
community control and management over their resources.
 
4. To arrest the feminization of poverty, there must be equitable access,
distribution, and control of  resources, economic benefits, agricultural
inputs, credit, and education. Similarly, the women's multiple burden must
be eliminated.
 
5. Women's existing sources of livelihood must be recognized and protected
while preventing new  forms of inequality that may arise from economic
restructuring.
 
WE CALL on government to carry out the following:

1. Ensure that national policies, prograrns, and practices comply with
international labor and human rights standards. Particularly, implement all
international hurnan rights instrurnents, including the UN Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), UN
Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families, and related
ILO Conventions. Government should actively work for the adoption of an
Optional Protocol to the Women's Convention that will provide for an
effective mechanism for complaints and investigation of violations by the state.
 
2. Increase government budget for social services  (e.g., health care,
education, sanitation, daycare centers, and housing).
 
3. Eliminate discriminatory laws on ownership and control over productive
assets.

4. Stop indiscriminate land conversion. Implement a genuine agrarian reform
prograrn which ensures community rights, including women's rights and access
to land, and environmental standards in rural  land use policies.
 
5. Stop demolition. Implement the repeal of P.D. 772 (the Anti-Squatting
Law), as adopted in the National Anti-Poverty Summit (March 1996). Implement
the IJrban and Housing Development Act  or R.A. 7279.
 
6. Stop all forms of gender discrimination in the workplace. Respect and
promote the rights of workers  to self-organization and collective bargaining.
 
7. Stop the trafficking in persons, of which women and children are most
affected.

8. Review existing labor laws to adequately address trends of
flexibilization, casualization, and  informalization of women's labor.
Extend and expand social protection, security, and services to domestic and
other home-based workers. and to child labor.
 
9. Safeguard the rights of the child. Eliminate child labor.

10. Eliminate socioeconomic conditions that necessitate the
institutionalization of labor export. Stop the  commodification of migrant
labor. In the interim, forge bilateral labor agreements, with receiving
countries, that protect our migrant overseas workers. Create sustainable
livelihoods for women and men.
 
11. Ensure, at all times, government's accountability and transparency
especially in the areas of human rights and foreign relations. Resist
blanket liberalization of trade and investments.
 
12. Stop all forrns of violence against women.

Toward working for the above agenda, we call on others in the peoples' and
citizens' movements, both here and in other parts of the region to forge
cooperation based on the promotion of peoples' democratic and human rights.
We can begin by documenting and monitoring the impact of globalization. More
important, let us share our experiences and launch common actions in
counteracting detrimental economic policies, highlighting our collective
aspiration for a sustainable, egalitarian, and socially just development.

NOTES AND REFERENCES
                               
1. According to the Department of Agrarian Reform, a total of 41,6454
hectares had been approved for conversion as of early last year. (LUCC
Secretariat, 25 January 1995) This is, however, a conservative figure,
especially in light of many cases of land grabbing nationwide.
            
2. As noted by Leonor Magtolis Briones, former Freedom from Debt Coalition
chair, in the first quarter  of 1994, government services constituted 5.20%
of GNP at constant prices. During the sarne period in 1995 and 1996, this
went down to 5.08% and 4.91 %, respectively. (Briones, "Promises in the Time
of Cholera," 19 June 1996, p. 3)
            
3. Ibon Facts & Figures, vol. 19, no. 8, 30 April 1996.
          
4. Briones.
          
5. National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women and the Asia
Development Bank, Filipino Women: Issues and Trends, October 1995, Metro Manila.
            
6. Isis International, "Comrnon Problems," Media Information Pack, September
1995.
          
7. Coalition Against Trafficking in Women - Asia Pacific, "Trafficking in
Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific," (no date), p.26.

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