The post-Nairobi years: Review and appraisal
Too few, too little: Sharing power and decision-making
Institutions and mechanisms to promote women's concerns
Awareness of and commitment to women's rights
The increasing burden of poverty on women
Access to and participation in the productive process
The years after the 1985 Nairobi Conference saw a spate of activities within both the women's movement and the NCRFW. The two streams came together with the coming to power of Corazon C. Aquino in 1986. Together with the government's planning body and different government line agencies, the NCRFW, various women's groups and NGOs, drafted the Philippine Development Plan for Women, 1989-92. It was to serve as a primary touchstone for government agencies, including the rural development departments of agriculture, agrarian reform, and the environment and natural resources, as they attempted to make their programs and services more gender-responsive, to minimize or eradicate discriminatory policies, procedures, and processes, and to strengthen women's claims to development resources.
For the 1995 Beijing Conference, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women listed the following as major critical areas of concern:
1. Inequality between women and men in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels;
2. Insufficient mechanisms at all levels to promote the advancement of women;
3. Lack of awareness of, and commitment to, internationally and nationally recognized women's human rights;
4. The persistent and growing burden of poverty on women;
5. Inequality in women's access to, and participation in, the definition of economic structures and policies and the productive process itself;
6. Inequality in access to education, health, employment and other means of maximizing the use of women's capacities;
7. Violence against women; and
8. Effects of continuing national and international armed or other kinds of conflict on women.
These concerns inform the review of the post-Nairobi experiences of women in agricultural and other primary sectors.
The election of Corazon C. Aquino as Philippine president appeared to foster women's active role in politics. There had always been women politicians, but between the elections of 1987/88 and 1992, not only did more women run for office, relatively more women were also voted into office, a pattern that held for both national and local executive and legislative positions (Table 2). The greater visibility of women in Congress seemed to have heightened legislators' interests in women's concerns. It is interesting to note that many of the pro-women bills presented were authored by male legislators.
Women's claims to the highest appointive positions in central government has been shakier. In 1986, President Aquino appointed three women to the Cabinet, namely: the first ever female planning secretary, concurrently the Director General of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the Secretary of the Department of Culture and Sports (DECS), and the secretary of the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD), which had always been headed by a woman. During the last two years of the Aquino Administration, however, only one woman remained in the Cabinet. The number had since increased to two, with the naming of a woman to head the Department of Labour and Employment (DOLE).
Despite gains in both elective and appointive political offices, men continue to hold sway, although there are no legal impediments to women's holding power in the public realm. The same could be said of the top decision-makers in the Philippine government bureaucracy. In 1993, only 27 of all career executives in the government were female, an increase from 16 percent in 1984. The figures for rural development departments in 1993 are as follows: environment and natural resources, 5 percent; agrarian reform, 10 percent; and agriculture, 16 percent (Table 3). In contrast, the trade and industry department had women in 50 percent of its executive positions, while 88 percent of the career executives in social welfare and development were women. While women decision-makers may be attuned to the needs and concerns of rural women, their low participation in bureaucracies that plan for and oversee rural and agricultural development programs does not improve the chances that rural women would get substantial and effective assistance from government.
Even at the barangay (village) level, office bearers in rural organizations are predominantly male. This applies to the barangay (village) council, to rural cooperatives, and to farmers' groups organized by government technicians (Table 4). In community-type cooperatives, which are open to community members interested to join, women constitute the majority of the membership. However, leadership positions are held by men (Illo and Uy 1992). Women's opportunities to exercise leadership continue to lie in women's organizations.
Within the home, as outside it, power and authority tend to rest on men, but the women have their own areas of authority (Tables 5 and 6). Women decide on how their children will be raised and educated, how earnings will be allocated, when and how much of their crop harvest will be sold, and what to feed their families. In contrast, men have greater say in such matters as investment, loans, and even the choice of contraceptive method (Uy 1991). But in some lowland Christian communities, women claim that even investments and loans are decided jointly by them and their spouses. Among rural households, however, women's decision-making power is almost nonexistent as there is very little chance for the children to stay in school, or very little earnings to be budgeted. Among some cultural groups in the Philippines, not even the children or the budget are considered as women's domain (Table 6). Indeed, for women of these groups, there are too few opportunities for sharing power and too little decisions to be made. Information from group interviews conducted by the author in March 1994 suggests that part of the problem is women's ignorance about their legal rights, a concern overshadowed by the day-to-day anxieties of basic survival.
Since 1985, the government has introduced legislation, mechanisms, and processes for the advancement of women and for the eradication of discriminatory forces in the field of employment, training, access to resources, and the like. Outside the government, women's organizations have flourished and NGOs, have experimented with ways of operationalizing and institutionalizing its commitment to gender and development. Among these organizations was AMIHAN, a militant multi-sectoral federation of peasant women founded in October 1986. Unlike many women's groups, AMIHAN, does not cultivate broad working relations with government agencies, believing that it should be self-reliant and independent of the state (Illo and Pineda-Ofreneo 1989: 17).
As noted in the NCRFW report for the Beijing Conference, there has been a shift in the perspective of working for and with women, as many government agencies and NGOs, opted for the gender and development or GAD framework over women in development or WID (NCRFW 1994:25-26). In many instances, GAD, which considers the inequalities in gender relations, has been promoted simply as "for women and men"; hence, it is generally considered as less threatening than the woman focus of WID.
Plan for women. One of the achievements of the post-Nairobi years was the drafting and adoption of the Philippine Development Plan for Women (PDP-W) in 1989. The enterprise involved the mobilization of different women's groups and individual experts. Begun in 1987, preparatory activities took the form of a series of consultations with, and workshops on, different sectors and issues. The Plan was adopted in 1989 with the signing of Executive Order (EO) No. 348 by then President Aquino. Of the 17 chapters of the PDP-W, two were devoted to concerns in agriculture and agrarian reform (Chapter 2) and to environment and natural resources (Chapter 3). The remaining chapters conflated the issues faced by rural women with those of urban women.
A sequel document to the PDP-W is the Philippine Plan for Gender-Responsive Development, 1995-2025 (PPGD), the preparation of which is being spearheaded by the NCRFW in coordination with NEDA. The PPGD is intended to lay down the totality of GAD concerns that need to be addressed in the long run. It shall also spell out gender-related goals and objectives, and set forth comprehensive policies, strategies, and program areas for implementation, mainly by the government over a 30-year period.
Focal points. Mandated by EO No. 348, NCRFW formed WID/GAD focal points in various line agencies, among which were the Department of Agriculture (DA), the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). These groups developed in slightly different ways (see section on "Programs, Projects, and Initiatives" for details). DAR and DENR set up coordination committees composed of representatives from various divisions, bureaus and attached agencies. DAR called its group the National Steering Technical Committee; DENR, the Technical Working Committee on Women. DA had no steering committee, but instead identified focal points in its different bureaus, attached offices, and regional offices. Its focal point was first based at the Office of the Secretary, but in 1993, it was moved to the planning and monitoring office to facilitate the mainstreaming of gender in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of agricultural programs.
Focal points were also identified at the regional and provincial levels. In some of the DA regional offices, ad hoc committees, composed of planning and other technical staff, were formed to facilitate coordination of planning, monitoring and evaluation of women's involvement in rural or agricultural development interventions. Under DENR, a Technical Working Group on Women was created not only in the regional offices, but also in six of DENR'S bureaus. At DAR, the effort had been to strengthen the DAR Ladies' Association (DARLA) network at the national, regional and provincial office levels to promote women employees' participation in outreach productive activities and in advocacy, in order to make the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) more gender-responsive.
Accreditation of women's groups. In connection with the selection of women's sectoral representatives at various legislative bodies, two organizations - the National Accreditation Committee for Women's Organizations (NACWO) and the Local Accreditation Committee for Women's Organizations (LACWO) - were formed to accredit voters, among whom were rural women's groups. Meanwhile, to better prepare rural women for participation in the political process, KaBaPa (which had 26,000 members by 1993) launched a program to increase women's electoral literacy by using a voters' educational manual that it had produced and translated into various Philippine languages and dialects.
NGO support for rural women. NGOs, strove not only to plan, but also to define their own framework for action and assistance. In early 1991, WID advocates within the NGO movement came together to thresh out their GAD framework and strategy. This initiative was pursued by individual NGOs, or NGO coalitions, and resulted in gender planning activities and the formation of women's desks in some organizations, most of which had projects in rural areas and/or with rural women. (A few NGOs, have set up their desks in the late 1980s.)
In the case of one funding window that catered to NGOs working in rural and urban areas, the number of rural-oriented NGOs, granted financial assistance increased from an average of 33 to 34 in 1986 and 1987 to 45 in 1992. Similarly, the number of NGO projects concerned with food security and processing, and with livestock, forestry and fisheries, increased from 67 percent in the mid-1980s to 87 percent in 1992. Taking all projects together, the percentage of women to total beneficiaries likewise showed a rise from about 50 percent to 55 percent (Table 7). These women-biased projects, however, generally involved hog-raising, food and fish processing and vending, and other small-scale agricultural enterprises. Agricultural production loans continued to be given to male beneficiaries.
GO-NGO partnership. Unlike in the previous decade (1976-85), when very little coordination or cooperation existed between the NCRFW and the NGO community, the 1986-95 decade has seen the building of a critical partnership between the government and women's NGOs, In 1992, or two years after the First GO-NGO Congress, the collaboration was formalized as the Women GO-NGO Network. The preparation of the national report for the Beijing Conference and the present report on women in agriculture are further manifestations of this partnership.
Concern for women's rights to resources, livelihood, and social insurance is reflected in the legislation passed since the mid-1980s. The 1987 Constitution recognizes the fundamental equality of women and men before the law. The principle of gender equality is affirmed in new codes and legislation's. After intensive lobbying by different women's groups, the New Family Code stipulated, among others, women's right to own property and to contract employment and credit without their husband's consent (Table 8). Meanwhile, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) guarantees equal rights to ownership of land and its fruits, and equal representation in advisory or decision-making bodies under CARP. For its part, DENR'S Administrative Order No. 4, Series of 1991, grants the Integrated Social Forestry Program's certificates of stewardship contract (CSCs) to both spouses, making the husband and the wife co-stewards of the land. The most recent law that touches rural women's lives, the Women in Development and Nation Building Act, provides equal access to resources, including credit and training. It also requires the allocation a substantial portion of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to support programs and activities for women. In 1990, the Philippine Congress also passed the Republic Act (RA) 6972, which mandated the establishment of day care centres in every village to free women for other activities. This legislation, like the others, came into being after long lobbying by women's organizations.
These pro-women laws, however, have yet to be fully implemented. In the case of the Women in Development and Nation Building Act, mechanisms and systems have yet to be developed and installed for allocating ODA funds for women's projects and activities, and for monitoring compliance with the law. In the case of the CARL, a total of 1.07 million hectares have been distributed by DAR from 1987 to 1992. In 1992, 363,277 hectares were covered by Emancipation Patents (EPS), while 89,138 hectares were distributed with Certificate of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAS). About 87 percent of the redistributed land went to men, and 13 percent to women. The average land size awarded to women and men varied very slightly. In the decision-making bodies created under CARP, women's participation was generally very low. At the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) and the provincial committee levels, the ratio was 1 woman to 20 or 21 men. Female representation increased at the barangay level to almost 1 woman to 5 men.
In many instances, the low female representation in decision-making groups or positions, and the small share of land and other resources distributed to women, were attributed by the women consulted for this paper to the lack of awareness of women and men to women's rightful claims to resources or to membership in powerful bodies. This ignorance of rights seemed to be widespread (GI/M 1994; GI/l 1994; PC/M 1994), despite gender sensitization or awareness sessions conducted by NGOs, and women's organizations. This is probably because, with the exception of a few groups, the topic of awareness-raising activities does not deal with women's legal rights, particularly those pertinent to the rights of women in the agricultural sector.
The crises reported in 1985 persist, although in muted form. Inflation continues at about 18.6 percent (vs. a high of 50.5 percent in 1984 and of 23.6 percent in 1985). Budget and trade deficits - from between $1.3 to $3.2 billion in the early 1980s, to $1.5 billion in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Illo 1991) - were primarily financed by both domestic and foreign loans. Foreign debt continued to pile up, rising from about $24 billion in the mid 1980s to $28.9 billion in 1990. At about the same time, the incidence of poverty, which declined between 1985 and 1988, again rose to 37 percent in urban areas and 56 percent in rural areas in 1991 (Table 9).
Deepening poverty in the countryside pushed families to move to urban centers where they could find odd jobs. Thus, while the total number of households increased by 18 percent between 1985 and 1991, with female-headed households increasing by one percentage point more than male-headed households, out-migration from rural areas resulted in a net decline in the number of female-headed households by 2.3 percent, and by 1.3 percent among male-headed households (Table 10). In 1990, 42 percent of all female-headed households lived in rural areas, which was lower than the 52 percent among all male-headed households (Table 11).
Households headed by women appeared to be as poor as, if not slightly better off than, those headed by men. Landlessness among female-headed households was lower (49 percent versus 56 percent among male-headed households; Table 12). In rural areas, their average income was just slightly lower (P40,051 versus P41,353; Table 13). This income differential is partly explained by the fact that rural women workers are often employed in agricultural operations (such as planting/transplanting or weeding) that are paid lower than male field tasks, although there seems to have been a slight closing of the wage gap in 1989 (Table 14). Across all rural occupations, female earnings were estimated to be about 35 percent of male earnings in 1980, 39 percent in 1985, and 36 percent in 1990 (NCRFW 1994:82). Gender-based earnings differentials were much more skewed in rural than in urban areas.
These figures are not surprising as women are generally considered as household heads only after the demise of their spouse. Hence, female-headed households tend to be older and have had more opportunities to accumulate land and other resources than male-headed units. However, this is not to say that female-headed rural households are not becoming impoverished because, in fact they are, and more so than rural households with male heads (Table 15). Being a female household head in rural areas, where the incidence of poverty in 1991 was 56 percent (Table 9), is definitely worse than in the urban areas, where the comparable figure was 37 percent and where informal sector activities abound.
The poverty figures translate to malnutrition or under-nutrition among young children. In 1989/90, 14 percent of children 6 years of age or under were considered as moderately to severely underweight, which was 3 percentage points lower than in 1982 or 1987 (Table 16). Compared with male children, 9.8 percent of whom were reportedly underweight, poor nutrition was particularly evident among female children, of whom 17 percent were considered as underweight (Table 17). It could be surmised that malnutrition is more severe in the rural areas, particularly among female preschoolers.
Women who reside and work in rural Philippines occupy many roles and engage in a multitude of small enterprises. They are, at the same time, household managers, farmers in their own right or partners of their spouses, home-workers, traders, petty food manufacturers, as well as mothers and wives. It is against these multiple production roles that their access to factors of production and their participation in defining economic structures and in the productive process must be considered.
It is widely observed that credit resources earmarked for farmers eventually are given out to male farmers (Illo and Veneracion 1988; Rivas, Uy, and Borlagdan 1991; PC/M 1994; PC/V 1994). This may be true to bank-managed credit programs, mainstream farming, or fishing credit programs (à la Masagana 99). In contrast, small loans disbursed under a social or microenterprise credit scheme, which tend to characterize many NGO credit projects, find their way to women. This, for instance, was true in Northern Samar, where the intended beneficiaries were the family health volunteers, in Negros Occidental, where the beneficiaries included sugarcane plantation workers, and in Laguna, where the clients consisted of the landless, marginal farmers, and other disadvantaged sectors. In these examples, loans released to women borrowers ranged from 78 to 94 percent.
Women's loans invariably underwrite the purchase of a piglet to be raised or a sow to be bred and/or the expansion of working capital for a variety (SARI-SARI) store, the trading of agricultural produce, or the operation of home industry. Sometimes the loan is used to cover farming expenses, but this seldom happens because very few women are considered, or consider themselves, as farmers or farm operators. In Central Luzon, for instance, female operators constitute only 10 percent of the total (Table 19), and relatively more of them are found among farmers with less than half an hectare.
The concept of farming as involving an individual rather than a household as the operator underlies the distribution of land and the design and delivery of agricultural extension services (PC/M, PC/V, GI/L). Rural women's contact tends to be limited to agricultural technicians who were formerly known as home management technicians. They, together with female technicians whose basic training is in fisheries, livestock, and agriculture, account for 47 to 58 percent of all the technicians in four provinces for which data was available (Table 20).
The classification of "housewives" or as "RIC" (Rural Improvement Club, an all women organization) as intended participants in the training activities conducted by the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI), suggests that activities for other adults (farmers or fishers) are assumed to be attended mainly, if not exclusively, by men. Of the adult participants in ATI activities in 1993, about 6 percent were women. The figure was highest (15 percent) for day training, and lowest for on-farm research (3 percent; Table 21). These estimates, however, are necessarily minimum figures since some women who are classified by technicians as "farmers' wives" attend farmers' training in lieu of, or along with, their spouse.
To improve their chances of gaining access to productive resources and controlling the productive process, rural women have resorted to organizing themselves. In most instances, they are organized by DA technicians into RICs. But, in some areas, women have formed themselves into alternative peasant women's organizations. An example of the latter is A AMIHAN, another KaBaPa, which has gone into political education. Another organization, formed in 1993, is made up of home-workers. Called the Pambansang Tagapag-ugnay ng mga Manggagawa sa Bahay (PATAMABA), or the National Network of Homeworkers, the group receives support in the form of credit, marketing, training, and technical assistance from the International Labour Organization (ILO). PATAMABA has some 3,000 home-worker members and contacts in 24 provinces. The members have organized themselves into 15 cooperatives, and the organization dreams of putting up a bank someday.
Employment. The primary sector consists of agriculture, animal husbandry, and forest workers, fishers and hunters. It absorbs a large portion of the Philippine population but, overall, its share has declined steadily from 51.1 percent in 1981 to 48.9 percent in 1985 and to 45.2 percent in 1990. Nonetheless, in regions with larger rural populations, agriculture continues to employ between 54 and 63 percent (NCSB 1991: 11.6-11.7). In 1991, the only regions where agricultural workers were outnumbered were the National Capital Region, which includes Metro Manila; Regions 3 and 4, which include the provinces around Metro Manila; and Region 7, which has Cebu as its hub.
It is worth noting that from 1980 to 1990, the rural labour force increased by about 3 million: 1.6 million males, and 1.4 million females (Table 22). The rural work force, however, shrunk between 1990 and 1992 by about 1.5 million - 1 million males and 0.5 million females - connoting higher out-migration of working-aged men. Reflecting the economic crisis that faced the Philippines in the mid-1980s, rural unemployment jumped by 4.1 percentage points, while underemployment rose by 4.9 percentage points; the comparable figures for the whole economy were 6.1 and 2.2 percentage points, respectively. Unemployment and underemployment rates were particularly high among rural male workers. Nevertheless, between 1985 and 1992 the rural employment situation eased (Table 23).
Rural women have been increasingly taking over men in agriculture, although relatively more were going into livestock and poultry production than agricultural production (Table 24). Among men, the percentage engaged in agricultural production dropped from 66 percent in 1980 to about 60 percent in the early 1990s, while the proportion of male workers in livestock/poultry production in fisheries rose by a total of 4 percentage points.
Of the rural primary-sector workers, the women have been consistently reported as unpaid family workers, while men have been reported as own-account workers. In agricultural production, this means that the men are considered the farmers, and women as their unremunerated helpers. However, between 1980 and 1992, there has been a shift among women to establish their own enterprises (from 19.5 to 30.8 percent) or to seek wage employment (12.3 to 17.4 percent). Among men, the movement has been from unpaid farm work to wage jobs (Table 25). These macro figures barely capture the increasing burden home by the rural populace - and women in particular - as their livelihood base has been consistently eroded. When family workers leave for the city or overseas, those left behind have to share the same workload. Given the higher out-migration among men, more and more women are taking over the farm, adding this to housework and their own enterprises.
The multitude of tasks in crop farming, animal raising, and fishery, as shown in Table 26, indicates that rural work is fairly distributed between males and females, although in some systems women bear the greater burden of farm work. The data also suggests some flexibility in task assignment as there is really no operation exclusively for men or for women, except possibly in sugarcane plantations where tasks are generally distributed along gender lines.
The total work burden of rural women may be quantified in terms of hours spent in various production activities. In rainfed farming systems, where households can rarely depend on any one crop, women work 37 hours per week (versus the men's 43 hours), which is much longer than what women in irrigated farms seem to be keeping (8.6 hours; Table 27). It can even compete fairly well with the work week of the men. Regardless of the system, however, women keep much longer total working hours than do men, because in addition to producing food or earning wages or profit, the women have yet to contend with time-intensive housework. Any relief from housework is usually given by other females -daughters, mothers, or mothers-in-law.
Education and health. The Philippines takes pride in the high literacy rates of its population, and particularly in the 10 percentage point improvement from about 83 percent in 1980 to 93 percent in 1990 (Table 28). The decline in the incidence of illiteracy is evident in urban as well as in rural areas, and across all ages. These figures mask the literacy problems in the countryside, particularly among women and among people 45 years and above. In 1990, as in 1980, the higher illiteracy in the rural areas as compared with the urban areas connotes a higher number of dropouts in the former before completion of the 4-year primary, if not the 6 year elementary course (Table 29). It would be safe to surmise that after elementary education, rural school leavers continue to outnumber their urban counterparts. Thus, the drastic drop in net enrolment at the secondary level might well be caused by the withdrawal of rural children from school to farm full-time (among boys), to work as domestic servants (among girls), or to hire themselves out whenever wage jobs in the farms were available (Illo and Polo 1990).
While there are rural-urban differences in literacy and school attendance, the dropout rates for boys and girls are nearly the same. Licuanan (1991) notes that there is no significant difference in the school participation rates of males and females at the elementary and secondary levels. In fact, at the tertiary level, women tend to outnumber men. All told, therefore, females share with males the advantages of education. Gender bias in educating children has been noted to work either way. Parents have been known to prefer keeping daughters in school because they are more diligent and more interested in studying. In some areas, parents view education as their bequest to their daughters, while they leave the land to the sons (Quisumbing 1990). Other parents, however, choose to educate their sons over their daughters because the former are expected to provide for their own families, whereas the latter will likely be supported by their spouse.
Despite higher female malnutrition rates, females tend to survive longer than males. Infant mortality rates are higher for males (30 per 1000 live births) than for females (24/1000). For children aged one to four years, the comparable figures are 3.8 and 3.4 years (NCRFW 1994:68-69). Maternal mortality rates have been steady at about 10 to 11 per 1,000 live births (Table 30). Life expectancy is estimated at 64.9 years for males and 70.2 years for females (Table 31).
There is very little data on rural women in regard to these areas of concern. This does not imply, however, that no violence against women exists, or that rural women are not affected by armed conflict. In fact, the March 1994 group interviews suggested that some women are regularly beaten by their spouses, often for very petty reasons and more often when the men were drunk. In most places, no succor is available for the women. However, at least in one site in Mindanao, the women were offered some relief after an NGO held a gender sensitization session for couples in the village. The men who attended the session began to keep their drinking to a minimum and to help around the house.
In other sites, mentions were made about armed conflicts in their areas in the 1970s and 1980s. Families from nearby hills or mountains evacuated to safer places in the lowlands, leaving standing crops behind. In the evacuation areas, women often scrounged around for food and for activities that could earn them some food or income. Meanwhile, men periodically visited their farms but made sure to return to their evacuation base before nightfall. In recent years, however, peace has returned to the communities visited in March 1994. Nonetheless, some of the evacuee-families have stayed put, fearing future outbreaks in hostilities between government and rebel forces.
