The Philippines: A Land of Contrasts

For many visitors, there would be no escaping the view of a country marked by islands of natural wealth surrounded by lives of poverty.    

A trip down the traffic-congested EDSA (Epifanio Delos Santos Ave., the main highway from the airport to Quezon City) will readily give you a clear view of the country’s inequalities.  Coming to your hotel, you already passed by several cities.  In Makati, you passed by Ayala Center, our own version of Wall Street, headquarters of major banks and financial companies.  The center is owned by the Ayala family, part of the so-called 1% of the country – the old rich.  Surrounding the rich enclave are informal settlers, where just two months ago, 1 was killed and 2 were hurt during a demolition of the urban poor areas.

From Makati, you move down to Mandaluyong and to your right, you found one of Asia’s biggest malls, and it is called the Ortigas Center, again owned by the landed elite of the country.  Both Ayala and Ortigas were Spanish descendants who profited from the encomienda system.   

You then reached Quezon City and to your right, you saw the Araneta Center which is owned by another landed family, an heir of whom ran for Vice Presidency together with the current President, and lost. In its dark alleys are prostituted women who grow in number each day as the financial crisis worsens.

One percent (1%) of our population owns 30% of the national income, while the bottom 50% are scrambling over the 20%.  This income inequality is the product of historical injustice. The long era of colonialism engendered an elite class that has cornered the vast amounts of the country’s wealth.  Until today, huge tracks of the country’s arable lands remain under the control of a few landlords who have consistently succeeded in defeating all efforts towards genuine agrarian reform.  Almost 1.161 million hectares of agricultural lands are still undistributed, including that of the current President. These are private agricultural lands above 24 hectares, where relations between the tenants and landlords continue to be highly feudal and exploitative.   

Recently, we saw the approval and endorsement of 247 mining applications and permits by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.  Mining investments in the Philippines reached $955.85 million in 2010, of which more than 90% were invested after President Benigno S. Aquino III came to power.

Meanwhile, the country’s dependence on the US, its lack of sovereignty, locked our economy – and politics – to the dictates of the Empire.  

But more importantly, income inequality is the result of failed policies:  the lack of asset reforms;  the country’s decades-long flirtation with market-oriented policies – neoliberal policies of privatization, deregulation and liberalization; export-oriented industrialization.  The market-oriented policies created a regime of jobless growth of income inequality.  In other words, the working people in the country are paying for the mistakes of our economic and political elites.

Only 1,008,558 jobs were created in 2010, which is hardly enough to absorb new entrants to the labor force numbering to 1,010,757.  In absolute terms, both unemployment and underemployment increased in 2010.  Underutilization of labor (unemployed and underemployed) remains at 26%.  Those employed in the formal sector have to make do with contractual labor.  Low wage employment is 46% higher among women than men. This greatly affects the gender pay gap where the monthly wages of women represent only about 75% of men’s average monthly wages.

Low wages, unemployment, landlessness and development aggression result in hunger, sickness, lack of shelter, lack of quality education, vulnerability to forced migration and sex trafficking.  Forty percent of the population is dependent on overseas Filipinos.  Of overseas workers, more than half are women, who are usually younger than the male overseas workers and are in precarious jobs such as domestic work or are undocumented.

Economic inequality sustains the continued hold of the elites over political power. Embedded in a situation where there is a wide gap between rich and poor, the elites could easily capture political power and maintain it. Studies have shown that only 1% of Filipino families dominate national elections! Thus what we have in this country is elite democracy.   Women comprise 21.6% of the legislature as of 2010 elections.

Being subservient to the US, the Philippine government agreed to a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which allowed American military unhampered access to our environment for their ports, training facilities and logistical bases for their continuing participation, occupation of and war activities in different parts of the world. Such militarization in the country worsened conflict in Mindano and resulted in continuing sexual exploitation and abuse of women, such as the case of rape in Subic.

One in ten women aged 15-49 experienced sexual violence.  One in seven ever-married women experienced physical violence by their husbands.  The number of violence against women reported to the police increased by 59.2% in 2010.  Eleven women die everydaydue to reproductive and maternal health complications. The majority of these 4,000 annual deaths are unnecessary and preventable, but the Catholic Church lobbyists continue to oppose the passage of the reproductive health bill.  Prostitution as a capitalist and patriarchal enterprise has become the catchbasin for women who were abused and has lost all economic options.

Over and above these, the country’s 7,100 islands experience an average of 20 typhoons per year, a fact that is aggravated by the effects of global warming which impacts more on women and other marginalized sectors.   

World March of Women – Pilipinas will continue to be part of the broad social movement in the Philippines fighting for structural changes –  for asset distribution, access to commons, genuine peace and democracy, sovereignty.  It will highlight the role of women in this social transformation, to make feminist analyses central to the critique of capitalist and patriarchal structures that are at the roots of the above inequalities and women’s suffering.  It shall seek to eliminate all forms of violence against women and oppression through stronger organizing, alliance-building, public education and popular struggles.

References:

Various Articles of WMW-Pilipinas members

Mata, Josua. Stark Realities in a Land of Contrast, 2011

Philippine Commission on Women