Women's paradise?

PINOY KASI


Women’s paradise?
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:13am (Mla time) 03/07/2007

Last year, newspapers all over the world noted that among the top 10 countries with the smallest “gender gap,” the only developing country was the Philippines, which came in sixth.

In case you missed the news items last year, the top 10, out of a total of 115 countries, were: Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Germany, the Philippines, New Zealand, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The Gender Gap Index, compiled by the World Economic Forum, was mainly based on a review of female-to-male ratios in four areas: (a) economic participation and opportunity, (b) educational attainment, (c) health and survival and (d) political empowerment. Besides these four areas, the index considered data on maternity and childbearing, education and training, employment and earnings, and basic rights and social institutions.

Given our high ranking, are we now to believe the Philippines is a paradise for women? I visited the World Economic Forum site and downloaded several of the country reports, but never got around to writing about it. Today being International Women’s Day, I thought it’d be a good time to revisit this index.

No. 1

The Gender Gap Index is useful because it allows a more concrete and comprehensive view of gender equity.

One glance at the data sheet for the Philippines and I could see why we did so well in the overall global rankings. We ranked 1st worldwide for female-to-male ratios in 7 out of 14 main indicators: (a) legislators, senior officials and managers; (b) professional and technical workers; (c) literacy rate; (d) enrollment in primary education; (d) enrollment in secondary education; (e) enrollment in tertiary education; (f) sex ratio at birth; (g) life expectancy.

I would agree with those rankings. Women are very visible in both the domestic and international labor force and women do make it to fairly high positions here. In the area of education, our women are more literate and, yes, the boys tend to drop out from school in large numbers, at all levels.

The sex ratio at birth indicator may have intrigued some of you, so let me explain what that involves. Our female to male ratio at birth is 0.95, which means 95 females are born for every 100 males. This is the expected “natural” figure, and eventually evens out because the death rates for males tend to be higher than females. (Yes, we are the weaker sex, biologically speaking.) In cultures with very strong biases against females, female fetuses may be aborted at high rates, thus skewing the sex ratio to produce many more males than females. China’s female-to-male ratio at birth, for example, is only 0.89.

“Healthy life expectancy” is another good indicator because it incorporates the quality of life aspect. For the Philippines, females can expect, on average, 61.5 years of healthy life while males come in only with 57.1. (Do I hear male readers gasping in despair?)

Contexts

We can be proud of how we’ve fared with the indicators I just described. But many of those statistics have to be looked at in context, and in relation to each other.

We may do well with female participation in the labor force, but in terms of wage equality, the World Economic Forum’s survey found women only got 73 percent of what men did for similar work. Even more glaring is income, which includes non-wage sources, for example, small businesses. For the Philippines, women’s income was only 59 percent of what men were getting. We see that all around us: our women have to work so hard doing laundry, small-scale buying and selling, and yet they earn so very little.

We know, too, how our women are often doubly oppressed, having to work outside the home while bearing the bulk of domestic responsibilities. That isn’t measured in any of the Gender Gap Index indicators except for two, which both belong to “additional data” rather than the main indices. The two indicators are length of paid maternity leave, which is 60 days in the Philippines, and the leave benefits, which is 100 percent of wages in the Philippines. Compare that with Sweden, which pays 80 percent of wages for 390 days and another 90 days of a flat rate.

I am not advocating such generous maternity benefits for the Philippines; that would bankrupt all our business firms. The Swedish government has a hard time encouraging their citizens to have more babies while here, we’re dealing with a completely different kind of problem, one which relates to the gender gap. The Gender Gap Index only looks at the current contraceptive prevalence rate (percent of married women on family planning). It would have been useful if they incorporated unmet need, which would be the percent of women who want family planning, but can’t, whether because of opposition from their spouse, or because mayors like Manila’s Lito Atienza ban contraceptives from government health facilities.

There are some intriguing indicators in the Gender Gap Index’s “additional data” which deserve more attention. For “polygamy,” our rating is 0, which means it is supposed to be absent, a plus point for gender equality. But tell that to the many Filipinas who suffer because their husbands believe polygamy is a right.

Another indicator used by the World Economic Forum is that of paternal versus maternal authority, with the Philippines scoring 0.10, 1 being the worst possible score and 0 being the best. What does “maternal authority” mean, and does that necessarily translate to enhanced women’s welfare? For example, I’ve wondered at times if maternal authority is used only to further reinforce patriarchal rules.

It’s the same question I have about another area where we supposedly did quite well for gender equity. Globally, we ranked seventh with the indicator “years with female head of state (last 50)” but I have to ask, just how pro-women were our two women presidents? We’ve been moving backwards in terms of women’s health during the Arroyo presidency because of her stubborn opposition to family planning.

I will reiterate that the Gender Gap Index is an excellent resource, but we should go beyond rankings and look at the finer details of the report, looking at what each indicator means. For example, do we educate our daughters only so we can export them, in larger numbers now than men, as overseas workers? Is that something we should be proud of, or should we see this as another way of exploiting our women?

With elections coming around, the Gender Gap Index reminds us of the importance of political representation. The World Economic Forum reported that women make up 20 percent of the outgoing Congress, and a third of the Cabinet. Both opposition and administration senatorial slates are glaring in their weak women’s representation, but let’s try to make up for that by going after all candidates, women or men, and at all levels, to ask them about their positions on women’s issues.