Perils for Women and Children 
Sexual Abuse, Child Labor and Women Unemployment Rise

As the world observes International Women’s Day, it is wise and timely to look at the following figures: everyday all over the Philippines, an average of 14 women and children are raped and battered or one every two hours; five women or children get sexually harassed or one in every five hours; and six children are beaten up or one in every four hours. 

BY AUBREY SC MAKILAN
Bulatlat.com 

This is how the Center for Women's Resources (CWR) interpreted the figures from the latest report of the Philippine National Police (PNP) covering the last quarter of 2002. 

Beyond the soap operas and movies, which according to the PNP may have led to these incidents of violence, CWR study stressed that poverty, traditional feudal-patriarchal orientation, and the various loopholes among existing gender laws are the leading cause of violence against women and children.

It pointed out how incidents of rape, acts of lasciviousness, wife and child battering have increased compared to previous years. Of the 4,964 rape cases recorded in 2002, 72% of the victims were children while the 5,058 cases of wife battering recorded a 10.5% increase from 2001. 

"With less food on the table and no jobs to fall back on, arguments between spouses erupt that lead to fatal domestic abuse,” Gertrudes Ranjo-Libang, CWR executive director, says. “And as long as the views on women and children remain as properties that could be at the disposal of the patriarch's whim, respect for them as persons stays nil."  

Libang cites laws like the Anti-Rape Law or Republic Act 8353 that “fail to recognize other sexual abusive acts as rape unless there is penetration.”  She further complained “it even allows the case to be dismissed when the rapist offers marriage to the victim which not only discards the gravity of the crime but helps perpetuate abuses to other women.”

Women unemployment

A separate study by CWR, which is based in Quezon City, meanwhile shows how ironic “women power” is under a woman-led government -- 105 women losing their jobs everyday with hardly any hope for finding a new one afterwards.

The study stated that women comprise 44% of the 51,895 laid off workers. National Statistics Office (NSO) records affirm that women are the first ones to be fired as well as the last one to be hired, with only 15% of them included in the labor force by the end of 2002. 

Contrary to Malacañang’s reported economic leap, more than 2,000 companies have declared bankruptcy by October last year due to “economic crunch.”  This affected the women sector with a 10.3% increase in unemployment.

On the other hand, only 46,000 females were added to the labor force last October compared to 1.44 million females employed for the same period in 2001 and to the 269,000 males added in the labor force in the same period in 2002.

The practice of contractual hiring for three to five months has also contributed to the decreasing number of women employment. “There are less regular paying jobs for women so they either end up in an irregular low paying jobs or they stop looking for work at all and just try whatever income generating activity is possible,” says Libang. “This practice is especially rampant in the wholesale and retail trade and in the manufacturing industries where majority of the employees are women.”

Libang adds that almost 65% of women employed in the wholesale and retail trade are own-account or self-employed workers. Women resort to various economic activities like selling homemade sweets or trinkets, imported used clothing, or mobile phone cards just to earn.

Child labor

Meanwhile, a CWR study using NSO figures shows that almost half of the four million child laborers are aged 10-14 years old, while almost 250,000 are aged five to nine years old.  They sell sampaguita, cigarettes or rags in the streets, serve as domestics, or till the land together with their family. 

But according to CWR, only 45% of the working children are within the government's defined working age of 15-17.  The center finds the bracketing disturbing. It said that the increase in the number of children forced to leave their childhood and work to survive indicate a bankrupt economy.

“Five to nine year-old children are still in their crucial period, in need of all the mental and physical nurturing that they could get. Instead of going to school, they work in lowly unskilled jobs that pay them very little or nothing at all," Libang argues.

Libang adds that 66% or 2.6 million of children toil as laborers and unskilled workers in dangerous workplaces like sweatshops, firecracker factories, or in mines in the Cordilleras or Mindanao.  

Only 6.3% of the children workers get a monthly wage. A million working children receive their pay irregularly while about 2.5 million are unpaid workers.

With inflation that erodes the purchasing power of peso to 59 centavos, a parent who works with a minimum income of P280 in the National Capital Region (NCR) could only meet 52% of the needed P533 daily cost of living. This condition is forcing many children to work to augment their family’s income. Bulatlat.com

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