Migration and prostitution
Penny Duggan discusses overseas contract labour and sexploitation with four Filipina socialist feminists from the post-Communist Party left • Why do so many Philippine women go abroad to work? Fatima: Mindanao women are traditionally supposed to stay at home and take care of their houses, their backyard and their husbands. They are not allowed to conduct economic activities. But, because of the very hard life that they experience, many women are forced to leave the country. For example, Sarah Balabagan [sentenced to death after killing the UAE employer who raped her was only 15 years old when she was forced to go out and earn a living for her family. But they somehow transformed her birth certificate and she passed as a 28-year old. Lorena: The minimum wage is 2,700 pesos but the cost of living is more like 8,000 pesos. So over 70% of the population is below the poverty line. This explains why peasants, workers, the urban poor, and indigenous people can easily decide to go abroad to be domestic helpers or sex workers (prostitutes) to earn a living for their families.
In urban poor communities, about 50% of the population do not have regular jobs. Women are the hardest hit, because it is their job to ensure a whole education for the family. So in urban poor communities you can see even pregnant women and children working twelve to fourteen hours in dumpsites to be able to get food for their families. In peasant communities landlessness is a major problem. Because without land there is absolutely no livelihood. Peasants also face "development aggression": the slow demolition of peasant communities in the interest of government infrastructure projects. Luisa: And what about the implementation of neo-liberal policies like the "Philippines 2000" project of President Ramos? Last year more than 50,000 women were laid off in the garment, shoes and underwear industries. One can see the predicament of these women: the family livelihood depends on their wages, and at the same time they are unable to use their skills. Becoming an overseas contract worker (OCW) often seems the easiest way out. You can imagine that this is crowding the market for domestic helpers, and resulting in lower wages for everybody. Fatima: Workplace discrimination is still prevalent. Employers still only seek prospective male employees, because it will be less expensive to provide them with benefits. Because, as a result of past and current struggles, many women have the right to maternity leave and other specific benefits for women.
Since the time of Marcos, through the Cory Aquino period and now under Ramos, the regime has always espoused some kind of industrialisation. The whole Medium-Term Development Plan is based on a concept of fast-track industrialisation. This is basically import dependent, export-oriented and debtdriven. It relies very much on debt to make it work.
Agriculture has to be pushed aside, which will result in massive land conversion. Agricultural areas are being converted into tourist spots ОГ
Philippines * industrial, commercial or housing zones. The result is a haemorrhage of people from these rural communities to the cities, expecting to find work there. Women are doubly or triply victimised in this whole process. They are victimised by their own partners who are men. They are victimised in the society because they are women. And they are victimised by capitalists, because they can be used to promote something.
The expansion of the female workforce provides industry with the opportunity to blackmail us: "if you don't like your job, you can leave!" they say. Because there are so many people looking for work, and women are the last to be hired and the first to be fired. • What sort of work do they do overseas? Mila: Those women who leave the country to work end up in even more oppressive and exploitative work than they would have done inside the country. Most become domestic helpers with a very low wage, or join the sex industry: they go out of the country as "cultural workers" but actually end up as dancers in Japanese or European sex clubs. They are not given any protection by our government, or the government of their country of residence. Especially when they are "illegal". Which many of them are. • What about mail order brides? Mila: This is just another front of the sex industry. Our government is not doing anything serious about this problem. After all, the government promotes the export of cheap labour. It does not matter to them what will happen to these women once they leave the country.
There are of course some real marriages [where Westerners have contacted Philippine brides through agencies]. But many such women end up in sex clubs. In many cases their passports are confiscated or they are Penny Duggan of International Viewpoint talked to Fatima (People's Communist Party in Mindanao), Luisa and Mila (Revolutionary Workers" Party in Visayaz), and Lorena (Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Luzon).
International Viewpoint 21
* Philippines persuaded to take another name, which makes them "illegal". They cannot just return to the Philippines if they find problems in the new country, or with the men they were supposed to marry. • The government does nothing to protect the image and dignity of Philippine women? Fatima: The Philippine elite believe that we should welcome foreign investment with open arms and open legs. In other words, allowing not only investment in the Philippine economy but also in Philippine women. Investment here goes hand in hand with "tourism". So does the policy of sending contract workers abroad. Not only in the Middle East, but also in Japan. Many Philippine women go to Japan to work as entertainers in bars, clubs, and restaurants, entertaining Japanese men, particularly business executives. These clubs, in Japan's entertainment districts, are operated by the yakuzas (Japanese Mafia). Many women's organisations protested, because so many young Filipina women were being killed by the yakuzas. So the government was forced to stop sending Filipina women to Japan. But this ban only lasted a few months. Because many Filipinas really want to go to Japan, even if they realise the risks, because there is no opportunity to get a job in the Philippines. • How much can a woman earn abroad? Luisa: Domestic helpers earn from SUS 150 per month in Saudi Arabia to $600 in Israel. The average is about $200. For this, they do all kinds of domestic work. Some also sew. Fatima: In Taiwan domestic helpers earn about SUS 300 dollars per month, but they don't work for only one family: in one day a domestic helper could be working as much as 18 hours. There are many cases where Filipinas arrive in Taiwan and Singapore, but immediately want to come home once they see the miserable conditions. Some come home crazy, because they can no longer take the very hard life they experienced abroad.
"Entertainers" in Japan are supposed to work only for six months. But to get a contract they are supposed to have dance lessons, and pay a fee to the employment agencies. This means investing SUS 2,500, just to get a six month contract. Once they are in Japan, their legal job could bring them as much as · 60,000 a night, but they work as prostitutes 22 International Viewpoint to earn as much money as possible. At the end of their six month contract they hope to buy a house and land, and "invest" in the documents for a second contract in Japan. • Sexploitation of Filipina women is not just an overseas problem, is it? Mila: The US military bases have contributed enormously to the proliferation of female and male prostitution in the Philippines. Communities of prostitutes developed outside Subic Bay base. Almost as if they were officially employed by the base to "service the sexual needs of US servicemen". This process stopped when the base was closed down by volcanic activity. But it did not stop prostitution, because the prostitutes have no other work opportunities. They were not included in the official, US-financed programme for conversion of the local economy, because they were an unofficial part of the base system. Many prostitutes moved to Burokay, a beach resort in central Visayaz, Dabao, in the south of the Philippines, and many other tourist spots.
This not only promoted the culture of prostitution, but it also becomes the channel for drugs, because US bases are not inspected by Philippines customs.
This migration also became a new channel for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. AIDS is now rampant in the Philippines. We don't know how many people are really infected with AIDS but 80% of documented victims are women, and most of the others are gay men.
In August 1995 an Australian support group exposed sex tourism in the Philippines, particularly the flow of Australian men exploiting Filipino children as sex objects. This well-documented exposé has led to the investigation of some Australians' activities in the Philippines. It was a very positive initiative. But it created an uproar in the Philippines Senate, because these things are happening right under their noses, but they are not able to stop them. Our politicians are the unwitting culprits of all this sex tourism. • President Ramos has clashed with the Church over contraception and abortion Mila: The issue was certainly not the government's sincere recognition of women's rights to abortion or birth control! The church opposes the government's attitude to poverty. The state encourages artificial means of birth control as a "solution" to poverty. The Department of Health does not present the more important question of ensuring healthy foods for children who suffer from malnutrition or death from poverty!
When a Protestant like Ramos proposes contraception as a solution to poverty, it is a sort of challenge to the Catholic church. What developed was a political battle to win the support of the population on the question of artificial birth control and pro-life policies. Luisa: Though we mustn't forget that many active Catholic women openly criticised the church and other pro-life forces. This did not develop into a mass movement, but it was a real outcry against these conservative ideas. Most of these women are consciously feminist. • How justified is concern about "over-population? Mila: The government and Church concern with birth control really deviates from the main issue in the country. Even the National Economic Development Authority agrees that, if only we had a just society, with a more just distribution, the Philippines would be able to give a decent life to everybody. We have abundant natural resources that could provide food for everybody and we have many skilled workers and professionals who could give a push to a very high level of development of our country.
We are second from bottom in South East Asia in terms of poverty. Sustaining the growing population is, of course, a problem, but the real issue is who controls the natura. resources and the economy of a country in which more than 50 million people live below the poverty line? *