Women’s Month, marked annually in March, is coming to a close. But it doesn’t mean all efforts for women to be seen, to be nurtured, or to be empowered will also end. Women’s issues are issues faced each day and all of us — who have sisters, aunts, mothers, and grandmothers — must be aware of the importance to talk, discuss, and learn about gender equality.
Women’s Month is highlighted by an International Women’s Day, which takes place every March 8. In our country, the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) leads the annual National Women’s Month Celebration. The month allows organizations both private and public to recognize women’s role and contribution in nation-building and as agents of national development.
The Women’s Month celebration in our country has a six-year theme “We Make Change Work for Women,” which highlights the empowerment of women as agents of change. To cap the recurring theme, 2022 focused on the sub-theme: “Agenda ng Kababaihan, Tungo sa Kaunlaran (Agenda of Women, Toward Progress).” According to a statement from the PCW, this sub-theme is a “celebration of women exercising their choices, taking chances to make their voices heard, and benefitting from trailblazing changes. It is a celebration of Filipino women’s power to take the narrative, raise priority issues that matter to them, and call for concrete actions.”
Amid all these efforts, issues such as discrimination, harassment, and pay disparity continue to haunt women. The early months of the global health pandemic also saw a rise in cases of gender-related violence and drop in the number of women who access reproductive services. To be fair to the government, a lot of actions were implemented to address these issues such as empowering Gender and Development (GAD) offices of LGUs, barangays, and the police force.
Based on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021, the Philippines still remains as the top performing country in Asia in terms of gender equality. “The country closed 78.4 percent of its overall gender gap to date and ranked 17th out of 156 countries in the report, which is one notch lower compared to its previous standing. However, it is the second best in the whole East Asia and Pacific region, after New Zealand. In addition, it is the only Asian country in the top 20 tier, followed by Lao PDR which placed 36th from its previous 43rd ranking.”
The report noted, however, that the country is still “lagging in terms of political empowerment, with only 36.2 percent of the gap being closed so far, recording only a slight improvement from the 35.3 percent score in the previous report.” “Despite having a woman as head of state for over 15 of the past 50 years, there are still too few seats in the parliament held by women (28 percent) and even fewer women among ministers (13 percent),” the report said.
Looking at this data, it seemed that the trend would not change soon. There is only one female candidate for both the presidency and vice presidency, respectively. Looking at the list of 64 senatoriables, only 11 are women and majority of them are not faring well in surveys. Though this may be a discouraging sign, this situation must be transformed into an eye-opener that the future can become stronger and brighter with women at equal footing with men when it comes to politics and legislation.
To use the words of PCW Executive Director Atty. Kristine Rosary Yuzon-Chaves, “we shall continue to enable and empower women, in an aim to achieve gender equality in this country. Given our score in political empowerment, we must strengthen our campaign to increase women’s political participation and representation. As to economic and labor participation, we will further work with government agencies in engaging women, providing fair and equal wage, establishing viable working conditions, and promoting deserving women to leadership roles.”