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EDITORIAL
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Friday, March 9, 2018
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WHEN the highest leader of the land mocks women and cracks a sex joke that degrades women, one is prompted to wonder if misogyny, the objectification and discrimination against women are now state-sanctioned. The current dispensation appears accustomed to demeaning and verbally assaulting women on live television and openly inciting violence against them. If this atmosphere prevails, do not expect any letup in the number of abuses on women.
In fact, according to the Center for Women’s Resources, from Jan. 1 to Feb. 23, 2018 there have been 796 reported cases of rape, translating to almost 15 cases per day. Domestic violence remains high, with a woman or child being battered every 15 minutes. These are still conservative numbers because many women prefer to be silent due to lack of societal support.
Yesterday as the world commemorated International Women’s Day, advocates of women’s rights and welfare again expressed solidarity against state repression and all forms of human rights violations and gender-based violence. The movement can be traced back to a hundred years ago. History teaches and inspires us how our foremothers, especially the working class women, had ignited the fire of protest and had changed the system. In 1917, the striking women of Russia marched to protest against food shortages and the imperialist World War I. That strike spread across Petrograd. And by October of the same year, Tsarist Russia was abolished and a new system of government of the working class – the proletariats – was in place.
As it was in the past, so it will be at present. The Filipino women must continue the vigor of our foremothers in calling for the uplifment of economic conditions as well as the achievement of social justice and peace. Joblessness continues to rise. Unemployed men and women reached 2.44 million in 2017.  Women are constantly counted low in the labor force, where only 46.2 percent have been tallied in 2017, which is a drop of 3.1 percent from the previous year. Most women are hired in labor-intensive, low-skilled, and low paid jobs. As jobs remain rare and wages hang low, poverty worsens.
Multiple burdens hound women – as mothers, wives, unpaid family workers, underpaid contractual employees and other forms of oppression that bind them in a cycle of poverty and disempowerment. It is thus imperative for women to build movements, aligned with other oppressed sectors in society. It is in the collective strength of women and the people that they have triumphed over dictators and patriarchal systems that have diminished them for a long time.
We take courage from the women who have lived, resisted and fought before; and march alongside those who continue to fight for a just society. We still have a long way to go.
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