EDITORIAL - Women’s Month

This is a land of contradictions. Often described as a matriarchal society, it is also a place where womanizers are elected to the nation’s highest office. But despite chauvinists in their midst, women are distinguishing themselves in public office. The country was one of the first in this part of the world to install a woman as president. The current occupant of Malacañang is the second woman to assume the presidency. There are women in the Cabinet, Congress, the Supreme Court and the rest of the judiciary. We have women cops, soldiers, even public utility drivers. There’s a law against sexual harassment in the workplace, and more and more women are invading corporate boardrooms or setting up their own enterprises.

Women are empowered, but this is true only among the educated. Millions of impoverished women are deprived of proper education and health care. Many end up as battered wives. Prostitution remains a major problem, with girls being forced to enter the flesh trade at a tender age because of poverty.

As the world celebrates March as Women’s Month, governments are focusing on a problem that bedevils developing countries: trafficking in women. Records show that the Philippines is one of the developing countries notorious for mail order brides, the others being Fiji, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Apart from transnational organized crime groups, those who profit from trafficking in women are recruitment agencies, marriage bureaus and pimps. The victims are mostly aged between 16 and 24; they come from large, poor families, according to the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

With advances in technology, another problem has emerged: e-mail order brides. The country passed a law against mail order brides in 1990, but there is no law against brides sold by electronic mail. The DSWD reports that as of 1999, less than 100 of about 300 Internet service providers were registered with the National Telecommunications Office, making it harder to regulate the e-mail order bride business.

The DSWD has noted that 18 Filipino women who went to Australia as mail order brides either met violent deaths or mysteriously disappeared. One Filipina was forced into prostitution by her Australian husband. Filipinas have been turning up at crisis centers in that country or at refugee centers for counseling. 

There is much to celebrate this Women’s Month. But there is still a great deal of work ahead to promote women’s rights and welfare, not only in this country but in many parts of the world. Rapid developments in technology and society are creating new problems for women that must also be quickly addressed.