Feminized migration, gender-blind growth and Petrang Kabayo

Saturday, 05 March 2011 08:34

Written by Louie C. Montemar

Happy women's month to all, especially to our womenfolk who are overseas.

I saw this movie, Petrang Kabayo, years ago and I really wondered what was so endearing for some about that film. I may have found some leads to a possible answer in the national budget (and please, bear with me, I am being sarcastic).

After going through some figures on the Philippine national budget some years back, I realized that race horses in this country were far more privileged than Filipinas. This I saw—and one can still see—in comparing the annual budgetary allocation for the Philippine Racing Commission (Philracom) and the National Commission for the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW).

In fact, the combined budget (P85 million) for the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (P49 million) and the NCRFW (P36 million) is far less than the P102 million that Philracom is getting for the year 2011.

At that time, I quipped (pardon for this might sound sexist and very loaded to some), “Ang babae sa bayang ito'y para lamang kabayo.” What justifies such budgetary policy priority? Is it because, I then thought, horse racing earned huge monies for the local economy while women in general—if your economics and development perspective is gender-blind—are part of the non-productive sector?

Data alone on migrant labor migration will show that Filipinas are economically productive. But then at what great social cost. Labor migration has been feminized with more and more women migrating for overseas work (see Table 1 below).1 Moreover, it is those job sectors where women are more vulnerable to abuse that are becoming even more feminized (e.g., entertainment and other service work).

Table 1. Number of unskiled female migrant workers from
the Philippines and proportion of females in total outflows

The Filipina entertainer is nicknamed “Japayuki” and young girls have been heard unabashedly proclaiming that when they grow up, they would like to be Japayukis. This ambition is a tragically human and real side of what a paper published online by the United Nations has told us: that in Japan alone in 2001, 132,000 (84%) of the 157,000 Filipino migrants were women and “most of [them] were entertainers, had overstayed their short-term visas or married local citizens.”2 These girls merely want to escape poverty and they are seeing nothing but role models in their neighbors, siblings or mothers.

More recent data affirms the unsettling trend. As of 2008, about 3.62 million of the 8.18 million Filipinos overseas were temporary workers in more than 197 destinations. Majority of these temporary workers were employed in the Middle East at 2.144 million. According to Philippine government statistics, for the period 2004 to 2009 (except in 2008), service workers topped the list of major occupational categories from the POEA data of approved manpower requests. The demand for this occupational group had an annual average of 214,729 for the year 2004 to 2009.

It would seem that some set of data would show that percentage-wise less women are going out now (as suggested by the figures below).

Total Number and Percent Distribution of Filipinos Who Are Working or Had Worked Abroad
During the Past Six Months by Sex (April to September), 2006-2009 [In Thousands, except
percent; numbers may not add up due to rounding off; Source: http://bles.dole.gov.ph

But looking more closely at the data. More specifically, the trend is really a feminization of the lower paid occupations as one may glean from the table below.

Despite what its own data suggests, the government continues to allow the extensive migration of women in the name of national development – a kind of development which can only be called maldevelopment — a gender-blind growth masquerading as development.

However, a very recent report (dated February 9, 2011) by commendable members of the Philippine Congress has called for a halt on the deployment of Filipinos to the Middle East especially Saudi Arabia. Entitled “The Condition of Filipino Workers in Saudi Arabia,” the report features harrowing descriptions particularly of the cases of women in low-paying, highly vulnerable jobs who have been extremely maltreated and exploited.3

In that report, 11 other key recommendations were made aside from positing a decertification of Saudi as a place to send migrant workers to. One of the more telling ones for me is this: “Urge members of Congress to work with Local Government Units in launching information campaigns to dissuade people from going to Saudi to engage in domestic work and related occupations such as washers and beauticians.” We know how gender-colored these said occupations are.

This “final report” from a Congressional Committee should cast questions on the validity of the recommendations and other propositions of another “final report” released by a bureau of the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) in 2010. Entitled “Summary of Findings and Recommendations—Project Jobsfit: The DoLE 2020 Vision,” this 242-page report (the Congressional Committee Report was merely 56 pages long) suggests a gender-blindedness in its analyses. In fact, with its over 200 pages, it is striking to note how the report uses the word “women” only three times and the word “gender” only five times in the whole piece. Moreover, those five times of usage of “gender” were all mere reiterations of this lame recommendation: “Intensify career guidance in the 3rd year secondary level to include gender awareness, current work practices, and potential opportunities for both technical/vocational and degree courses to ensure effective career choices.”4 This proposition just had to be mentioned five times in the whole report as if repetition would suggest real gender concern.

With a woman at the helm of DoLE, hope may be higher that the Labor Department's efforts can be made more gender-sensitive. DoLE may start by taking a cue from the said Congressional report on the situation of our workers in Saudi.

On a broader plane, the sudden political changes in Egypt and Libya are not the only reasons why this government has to rethink its development view and policies on migrant work. Everyday, things worse than war are happening silently in those places that are tragically the home away from home of many of our people.

Now I think I know why Petrang Kabayo even had a remake. Indeed, horses have it better in this country. And the title drug mule for some accused women OFWs seems so apropos therefore.

1    Yamanaka, Keiko and Piper, Nicola. “Feminized Migration in East and Southeast Asia: Policies, Actions and Empowerment,” United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Occassional Paper 11, December 2005. Accessed 1 March 2011, at http://www.bnu.edu.cn
2    Ibid.
3    Final Report of the Investigating Mission of the Committee of Overseas Workers' Affairs (COWA) to Saudi Arabia, January 9-13, 2011. Accessed 1 March 2011 at http://www.scribd.com
4    Department of Labor and Employment, “Summary of Findings and Recommendations—Project Jobsfit: The DOLE 2020 Vision.” Downloaded 1 March 2011, from   http://www.mediafire.com

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