Lying at the western margin of the Pacific Ocean, the Philippines forms a string of 7,107 islands and islets, which are traditionally clustered into three island groups: Luzon, Visayas? and Mindanao. It is largely a mountainous mass extending from north to south (FAPE 1975). It covers a total land and water area of about 1,800,000 sq. km., with the land area measuring only 300,000 million sq. km.
Its tropical and maritime climate is marked by relatively high temperature, high humidity, and abundant rainfall. Rainfall distribution varies from one region to another, depending upon the direction of the moisture-bearing winds and the location of the mountain system. Despite these differences, the Philippine climate can be divided into three seasons: rainy, which extends from June to November; cool dry, which occurs from December to February; and hot dry, which falls from March to May.
The Philippines is vulnerable to typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. While typhoons devastate different parts of the country every year, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have been less frequent. In the early 1990s, however, an earthquake destroyed parts of Central and Northern Luzon, while volcanic eruptions (Mount Pinatubo in 1991 and Mayon Volcano in 1993) disrupted lives in other parts of Luzon.
In 1990, about 60.6 million people inhabited the Philippine Islands (Table 1). Of these, 31.1 million (or 51 percent) resided in rural areas. Less than half (49 percent) of the rural population were female. Roughly 63 percent of the total rural population were potential workers (that is, 15 years old or older). About 85 percent of the male workers was deemed labour force members; among the women, only 48 percent was similarly classified (NCRFW 1994:77). In 1991, the primary sector (agriculture, fisheries, and forestry) was the biggest employer of male workers (53 percent). It likewise competed with trade and community, social, and personal services as an employer of female labour (NCSB 1991).
Outside urban areas, the major systems are coastal fishing, lowland irrigated farming, rainfed farming, and upland. Yet another system covers riverine and lake fishing systems, which usually combine fishery capture or fish farming with cultivation of crops. This contrasts sharply with coastal areas that lie between the sea and hill/mountain. There, crop farming is rarely practiced as the trek up the hill or the mountain can be time-intensive. In both systems, households generally raise a brood of chicken, ducks and/or geese, and one or two pigs. In crop farming systems, cow and/or carabao (water buffalo) are among the other animals households keep.
Irrigated farming systems mainly grow rice and sugarcane, while coconut, corn, and cassava are the major crops raised in rainfed areas. In both systems, females and males play distinct, but not necessarily rigid, roles. This holds in small or big farms, family-operated plots or plantations. Specific roles and responsibilities often vary by crop or by activity. In areas growing cash crops, like coconut and sugarcane, planting and weeding is done by women, while harvesting and processing (milling or copra production) is usually assigned to men (Illo and Veneracion 1988; IPC 1993a, 1993b). In cassava-producing areas, harvesting and post-harvest activities (including peeling, cutting the cassava into flakes, and drying) involve females and males, adult and children (IPC 1993c, GI/M 1994). With the exception of land preparation, fertilizer application, chemical spraying, mechanized threshing, and rice and corn production, harvest and post-harvest tasks heavily involve female labour.
The substitutability between male and female labour in farming primarily depends upon the technology employed and/or availability of funds for hiring workers. Thus, land clearing and preparation are generally the responsibility of adult males, although women usually undertake land preparation when minimum tillage is required. Planting and weeding is done by women and children, although male members of farming families sometimes help with the tasks to minimize hired labour cost.
In fishing communities, fishery capture is a predominantly male activity, but women have been known to join their spouse so as to save on cost or to get the entire catch (Illo and Polo 1990). Repair of nets and boats is also a male task. As in other systems, processing and selling of the produce is the women's domain. Hauling, however, is mainly done by male family members or by hired male labour. Nonetheless, improved transport facilities to upland areas has shifted the responsibility of selling the produce to the women (Rives, Uy, and Borlagdan 1991).
To feed their families, women engage principally in the cultivation of kitchen gardens and subsistence crops, especially rootcrops. They also take responsibility for growing vegetables, although the men often take over the enterprise once vegetable production has become the household's major cash crop (GI/M 1994).
Over the past ten years, life in rural Philippines has been affected by several local and international changes. Of the events that included peace-making efforts in the Middle East and South Africa, the breakdown of communism in Eastern Europe, and the continuing armed conflicts in Kuwait, Somalia, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia, the Gulf War has had the most direct impact on hundreds of thousands of Filipino families. During that time, more than 300,000 workers were in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. About 70,000 of these workers were women, many of whom were employed as domestic helpers (NSO/NCRFW 1992:101-102). Stories of rape reached the country, and families worried over their relatives' safety. Dollar remittances, which supported many a household, were disrupted, and oil prices tripled during the period of conflict.
The economic crisis of the early 1980s - marked by a huge foreign debt, fiscal and trade deficits, and balance of payments imbalances - continued to haunt the Philippines (NSO 1992). Prolonged recession in industrialized countries, among which were the Philippines' major trading partners, made matters worse. The structural adjustment programs prescribed to correct distortions in prices, taxation, land ownership, and production priorities took its toll on the rural population. The servicing of the country's debt, which in 1987 reached as much as 45 percent of the national budget (Illo 1992), siphoned resources away from social services, physical infrastructure, and investment.
Life in rural Philippines worsened owing to the occurrence of droughts, floods caused by overlooking in many areas, particularly strong typhoons that devastated property, crops and livestock, and the sporadic volcanic activities of Mount Pinatubo. In upland areas, environmental degradation reportedly caused water sources to dry up. In some places, women claimed that they had to walk longer distances to get drinking water, or even water supply for their domestic needs (GI/L 1994; GI/M 1994).
Faced with economic and natural disasters, women and men were pushed to work longer, but with women continuing to bear a double burden of market and home work (Illo 1992). To beat rising prices of basic goods and their rapidly declining profit from their agricultural products, women's food crops, generally small scale and low valued, gained greater importance. Moreover, women's sideline occupations, such as trading or home-based manufacturing, became the household's mainline livelihood (IPC 1993a, GI/L 1994, GI/M 1994). As job opportunities became scarce and real wages continued to fall (NSO 1992), an increasing number of women also left to work as domestic servants. And as community health programs were initiated to fill the gap left by public health agencies, rural women tended to be recruited to serve as unpaid health volunteers (Uy 1991, GI/V 1994).
While the Philippines struggled to regain its economic footing after the end of the Marcos regime in 1986, neighbouring Asian economies soared and grew into "newly industrializing countries" (NIC). To attain "NIC-hood", the Philippine government has been developing industrial estates or "industrial corridors". The schemes have been viewed as threatening not only the livelihood of local communities as rice land gives way to factories, but also endangering the environment as industries befoul the air and pollute nearby waterways (IPC 1993c, PC/M 1994).
Not all the changes have dire effects or prospects. Many of the democratic institutions and processes have been re-established. Inflation is being slowly checked. Peace has returned to many areas GI/L 1994, GI/M 1994). And however flawed, an agrarian reform program is in place.
