Filipinas fight multiform equal pay and the more recent campaigns on quotas and the fight against Paragraph 218.
The women trade-union activists do not spare the men in their own organizations, even if the IG Metall says nothing about the
PHILIPPINES women face sexual harassment that from their male coworkers union. It does, however,
THE WOMEN'S movement in the Philippines has started to take shape trade unionists against women only during the past five years despite the fact that various women's ployed by the union.
groups emerged earlier — in the 1970s. The movement crystallized in
In any case, it can be seen that response to the political and economic crises and their effects partiwomen are more and more on the cularly on women, more than around feminist issues themselves.
offensive in denouncing this sort of behavior.
dire effects of the worsening conditions on women and children
And in this, they are being supported pushed the women to organize themselves within the context of these by progressive instructors.
conditions. For instance, a group like the Concerned Women of already the subject of the Philippines, formed in 1978, brought women together on the issue a contribution to the OTV congress of rampant fraud in the first parliamentary elections.
This document demanded modifications of Paragraphs 177 and and sexual aggression) to get "every or forced rela-
(anal, oral, violence as a form of violence for purposes of sexual constraint punished;
and rape within marriage also pun ished "
The OTV also supports the demand that the practice of questioning rape victims about their sex lives be ended, not be and that rape by intimates
"lesser offense." These treated as a are demands that the women's movement has been putting forward for years.
It has been above all in connec tion with union training courses that we have seen the demand for organizing women in their own right come to the fore. The IG Metall women have demanded that in trade-union sessions the historical role training of women and the special treatment reserved for them under capitalism patriarchy be taken into and the consideration. Moreover, so that union women can participate in the union seminars, they are strongly demanding facilities for collective childcare by qualified personnel.
Even if the women in the unions are continuing to focus on the demand for equality and if they do not often talk about women's liberation, they nonetheless fix their sights more and more on their self-determination.
If we really want women to become the equals of men, the OTV women in Lower Saxony wrote in the union press in February 1985, "A bit more consideration has to be given to and men will have to occupy women, a bit less space."
From the January 9 issue of Was
Tun,' paper of the German section of the Fourth International
20
SONIA RUPON
As the political crisis continued and the murder of the opposition leader Benigno Aquino in August 1983, the women's movement developed and became more rooted. An unprecedented number of women, side by side with other mass organizajoined the "parliament of the streets" to manifest their anger at the Marcos regime. Two months after the assassination, on October 28, 1983, representing various groups launched an all-women's protest rally against the repressive nature of the regime and its policies of torture and murder to silence dissent. Women's produced by the GABRIELA women's organization]
La participation of 10,000 women at this rally.
Four months later, women's groups with a militant political orientation emerged. Women for the Ouster of Marcos and Boycott (WOMB) began as a forum for women who opted
La boycott of Pambansa (the parliament) elections in Kababaihang KANA — Organization of Free and United Women) started with a group of housewives in a squatters' munity and based itself in poor urban communities. Now, after two years, organization members in its 30 chapters and held a congress recently with the aim of promoting the understanding of the woman question in the context of Philippine social realities.
GABRIELA, coalition of politically active women's - groups was formed. Named after a woman fighter against Spanish colonization, the name also
The Integrity, Equality, Leadership and Action. Its organizers include diverse groups like SAMAKANA WOMEN
(artists), NOWRP and KAMAY (religious groups), KMK (workers) and research groups like with other militant mass organisations it has played a role in big mobilizations like labor rallies and peasant marches. Using the health and safety, it was participant in the campaign to disthe Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Last year, on October 28, after a week-long schedule of discussions and activities exploring women's issues economic-political conditions in the Philippines, GABRIELA led a march of 2,000 women. This day has now proclaimed women's Day of Protest, commemorating the first big women's rally after Aquino's death. workers - the Kilusan ng mga Manggagawang Kababaihan (KMK - Movement of Women Workers) and the Makabayang Kababaihan ng Masa (MAKAMASA - Nationalist women of The Masses) were the outgrowth of the attention focused on women workers in 1984 and 1985. Factory strikes in which women participated were numerous despite military and police repression at the picket line.
Bataan Export Processing Zone (BEPZ), where 80 per cent between the ages of 15 and 22 and where strikes are illegal and unionizaInternational Viewpoint 10 March 1986
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oppression
tion difficult, women continue to demand better wages and working
In the BEPZ factories, textiles and garments, electronics, equipment and leather goods are produced. Statistics for 1983 show garments and electronics women, a tenth of the total number of women employed in that year. It is also in these two sectors that 1984 earnings were respectively the lowest and second lowest in Asia - 30 cents per hour in electronics, and 17 cents per hour in garment.
Along with very low wages, the women suffer from inhuman treatment and appalling working conditions. In the electronics industry for instance, women are forced to work in an assembly line eight hours or more a day in rhythm with the machines. They are not allowed to talk and are forced to meet high quotas. The industry is a highly dangerous one because of the hazards of exposure to chemical substances, and cancer have already been On the average, workers last only for three years; they complain of dizziness, poor vision, mental strain. They are regarded as too old and are discarded to make way for younger and faster sick leave, vacation and maternity benefits do not exist. This is part package promoted by the governcompanies to invest in the zone.
Job security and promotions are not assured as women are never hired on a permanent basis, and supervisory positions are always given to men even in female-dominated industries. To even keep their jobs, women have to face sexual harrassment by their male supervisors - the lay-down or lay-off threat.
Workers trying to organize union activities within the zone are intimidated and threatened with job suspensions and even physical violence and murder. Because of these repressive measures it has not been easy to attract women workers to the trade union. The pressures of the other tasks they have to deal with at home also act as a deterrent. Despite these constraints, however, one still hears of women leading militant unions participating regions in the country women workers are beginning to study the principles of unionism, and certain studies show that exposure to workers' education focusing on women workers' problems have encouraged women workers to be more active and militant. Interviews with women workers have also shown militant responses like the belief that
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986 the strike is the main weapon to force management to give in, and that slowing down can alleviate difficult work conditions. Women strike
The public-school teachers' mass walkouts in September of last year were also significant. Public school teachers have been among the most poorly paid public servants and protest from this sector was to be expected. On the primary and secondary levels 85 percent of teachers, and 53 per cent of the teachers on the tertiary level, are women. They complain of overwork - they are not only assigned other tasks not related to teaching elections and attending government rallies. And because of their low pay, which averages 1,700 pesos or 100 US dollars a month, many are forced to sell all sorts of goods to their students to augment their income. Their demands — primarily an increase wages to 3,000 pesos -however met with the suspension of their leaders from work and intimidation. For many of these teachers to improve their economic condition has emigrate and suffer the consequences of landing in domestic work in for a salary they would never be able to earn in their own
Rural women, who comprise 59 per cent of the female population (1984 wage basis than their urban counterparts. They do both farming and nonfarming jobs, but most among them are the landless rural poor who work on other people's land or on plantations, preparing the ground, weeding and planting. The official wages for agricultural workers - 34.42 pesos a day for plantations and 25.90 pesos for nonplantations - places their earnings estimated by the World Bank at 2613.12 pesos a month. What is more, this wage scale is usually not implemmuch less and usually are able to work only three to six months of the year. Poor as the pay is, however, many rural women are haunted by the fear of displacement from these jobs and the loss of this income supplementing what their husbands and children earn. In the present crisis in agriculture in the Philippines - the mechanization of farming and the conversion of many rice lands into residential and children are of course the first to go. When there is no work in the fields, women resort to street vending or doing the laundry for other households.
There is also now a growing number of women who work at home doing sewing and embroidery and producing handicrafts. This is an even more exploitative situation for those at the bottom of the subcontracting scheme. To illustrate, a baby dress sewn by a village worker would sell for 15 US dollars in a department store in the United States while the worker was paid less than ten cents for it! Prostitution
Extreme poverty and the unavailability of jobs have compelled women to go into prostitution. always been prostitution particularly in the red-light district and the area surrounding US military bases, but the problem has now reached acute proportions. There are 100,000 prostitutes in Metro-Manila around the bases there are another 16,000. Child prostitution has also increased these past few years. Studies prostitutes in Metro-Manila, ranging in age from 7 to 15. These women and children usually come from income families, peasant and fishing families, slum dwellers and migrants from the provinces. Parents are said to have sold off their children for lack of any alternative to survive.
The government not only tolerates, but has promoted the institutionalization of prostitution. Rest and recreation centers, which include a network restaurants, hotels, sauna baths, massage clinics and other places of entertainment, have been legalized in keeping with government policy the most of its tourism industry. Tourism is the third largest source of foreign exchange, which the government banks on to ease the pay-
One form of prostitution that has received much official support is the sex tours. Groups of Japanese as well as Europeans, Australians and Americans take advantage of these holiday package tours, which include everything from sight-seeing to women.
such as the one held on the occasion of the Japanese prime minister's visit to Manila, have reduced number of foreign visitors some time, industry goes on nonetheless - with to lessen publicity and change its form.
Part of the flesh trade is the export of women to other countries. Migrant workers, promised good jobs, have
in many instances ended up as pros-
INDIA titutes.
With retreat cut off - their passports are often kept by the agents who recruited them - they are forced dancing, striptease and into topless