[asia-apec 249] On the Manila Senior Women Leaders Meeting on APEC, 04 October 1996

[GABRIELA-Philippines]

Information Release
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	ON THE MANILA SENIOR WOMEN LEADERS MEETING ON APEC
				04 October 1996


	Members of the Kilusan ng Manggagawang Kababaihan or KMK (Women Workers'
Movement), and organization of women worker affiliated with the Philippine
women's alliance of GABRIELA, led a picket in front of the Manila Diamond
Hotel in Manila on the last day of the Manila Senior Women Leaders Meeting
on APEC.  The rallyists criticized what it called the meeting's
"cosmeticization" of APEC.

	Nanette Miranda, a former industrial worker and now Secretary-General of
KMK, said that the so-called "globalization" process now happening under
the "era of GATT-WTO and for which APEC was established, is inherently
anti-poor, anti-women, and anti-worker."  APEC was established to ensure
the rather unified implementation of GATT-related policies in the
Asia-Pacific region.

	"Globalization, for which the APEC exists, is depriving impoverished women
of their land, homes, and jobs.  The Philippines, being one of the rabid
implementers of globalization in the region, is a classic case in point. 
Labor flexibilization schemes, sanctioned by the state through anti-labor
laws, enable capitalists to hire and dismiss women workers as they please. 
This has not only phenomenally worsened job insecurity for women who are
employed but has meant women's actual loss of jobs on an unprecedented
scale.  The costs in terms of emotional, mental, and physical stress on
women certainly goes beyond their threshold.  Those who manage to remain in
their jobs are battered by violations of their most basic labor rights, "
Miranda said.

	She cited as a recent example the case of seventeen (17) women workers of
Precision Garments who were arrested  in September while they were on
strike over wages and management violations of collective bargaining
agreement provisions.  The management has since changed the name of the
company to evade its responsibilities to the predominantly women work force
of Precision.

	As more and more women are driven out of the formal wage economy and even
those engaging in so-called self-employment or underground economies are
driven out of business by the flooding of foreign goods in the domestic
market, only two options virtually remain for women:  prostitution or
overseas employment, both of which put women in a high-risk situation.

	A speaker from GABRIELA, on the other hand, criticized the Meeting for
using the issues of gender equality to "cosmeticize" APEC.  Liza
Largoza-Maza, Secretary-General of the women's alliance, said that
representatives of the Ramos government  "mouth critical analyses of the
impact of APEC on women but stops short of proposing critical reforms both
at the level of its national policies and international trade relations to
substantially  address the issue of women's poverty and gender equality and
put forward instead palliative measures that only peddle the illusion that
there is the possibility of softening the impact of the crisis imposed on
impoverished and working women everywhere.

	"Likewise, by paying lip service to women's issues, they hide their own
culpability and that of global institutions such as the IMF and WTO, in
implementing policies inimical to women's interests," she concluded.