WITH JOBLESSNESS worsening (as disclosed by the most recent Social Weather Stations survey), many women would certainly fall victim to illegal recruiters and traffickers. Based on reported cases of trafficking, many of the victims would 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.
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.
The misogynistic attitude prevailing in the current Philippine society today – peddled by the President 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. People – both men and women – need to organize to dismantle the system that perpetuates such views. Take a stand against misogyny and the culture of gender-based violence that treat women merely as source of cheap labor, as sex commodities, or as mere properties.
