Filipino women call for militant struggle on IWD
Published Mar 2, 2008 5:40 PM
Following is a statement from GABRIELA Philippines, a national
alliance of more than 200 women’s organizations.
On March 8, 2008, Filipino women once again call for a militant commemoration
of International Women’s Day to honor the day of working women.
Women’s militancy to demand change and fight for their rights roots back
from the historical condition of oppression and inequality of women. For
working-class women, this meant inhuman and slave-like conditions in the form
of feudal and capitalist exploitation.
One hundred years ago, on 8 March 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York
City to demand shorter work hours, just pay and the right to vote. In the same
year in Europe women also set up strikes, protested against welfare cuts and
campaigned for equal pay and unionization.
In the Philippines, women’s participation has always been significant in
the people’s historical struggle for sovereignty and against oppression
and exploitation. Filipinas first commemorated International Women’s Day
in 1971 at the onset of the dictatorial rule of Ferdinand Marcos. With the
establishment of GABRIELA in 1984, women under the alliance continued the
militant tradition of commemoration of IWD from then on, recognizing the
contribution of millions of working women’s struggles in the past.
Today, Filipino working women carry on the struggle at a time of worsening
economic and political crises under the seven-year Macapagal-Arroyo
regime—a regime most subservient to U.S. imperialist dictates, most
corrupt and tyrannical, and almost equaling the Marcos dictatorship in its
fascism.
The Arroyo regime boasts of a growing Philippine economy, citing the increase
in the country’s Gross National Product and the strengthening of the peso
against the U.S. dollar. The regime further claims that a diminishing hunger
incidence as shown in the last quarter of 2007 survey was due to her good
governance and the success of the hunger mitigation program that she started in
2005.
The concrete experiences of the majority of the Filipino people, especially
women who bear the brunt of hunger and poverty, prove the Arroyo regime’s
declaration of progress a lie. For the Filipino people, there has been no
meaningful development amidst the economy’s continuing
deterioration.
Sham program, corrupt governance
The government’s development programs such as the Hunger Mitigation
Program are nothing but mere attempts to cosmetize its utter failure to resolve
the fundamental problems of the Philippine economy.
The Arroyo government’s ever-ready compliance to policies of imperialist
globalization leads to the bankruptcy of the country’s industry and
agriculture, which in turn, causes the widespread dislocation of workers and
farmers. Even owners of small businesses bemoan the weight of the crisis and
its adverse effects on their businesses and investments.
Reality also runs counter to the Arroyo political clique’s propaganda of
good governance. Arroyo and her political clique are being hounded by unending
scandals of corruption and abuse of authority. Adding to these scandals
involving the president, her husband and their close allies are recent
revelations of corruption and kickback in the ZTE-NBN Broadband project and
cases of bribery in Malacañang and Congress coinciding with a move to
consolidate the administration block to ward off an impeachment case against
the president. Yet in all these corruption scandals and anomalies, not one of
those involved was ever tried, much less punished.
Worsening the modern day slavery of women in the seventh year of
the fake president
The worsening economic crisis leads to further deterioration of Filipino
women’s social status. Household work remains the woman’s
individual responsibility while the crisis further compels women to seek
livelihood to augment the family’s income. And yet feudal patriarchal
relations between men and women remain and society, in general, continues to
view women as inferior and second-class citizens. The number of women victims
of sexual abuse both in the country and abroad continues to rise.
The majority of poor women work as farmer tenants, seasonal plantation workers
or contract workers in the manufacturing industry and are burdened by low
wages, absence of benefits and job insecurity. As primary homemakers, women
resort to ingenious ways to earn extra income (providing laundry services,
vending food in the streets, etc.) or seek work overseas. In fact, the majority
of present-day Overseas Filipino Workers are women, who are in jobs most
vulnerable to abuse, such as domestic workers and entertainers.
The Arroyo regime’s much-touted low hunger incidence in the country in a
survey conducted during the last quarter of 2007 at 16.2 percent remains high
when compared to a hunger incidence batting at a slightly lower average of 11.9
percent over the last 10 years. This 16.2 percent hunger incidence can only be
appreciated as lower relative to a 21.5 percent (nominally equivalent to 3.8
million Filipino families) all-time high posed during the third quarter of
2007.
No amount of propaganda or manipulated statistics can conceal the intensifying
poverty of the Filipino people. And women bear the brunt of the severity of
this crisis.
The effects of a plummeting economy and livelihood push urban poor families
towards further misery. While they suffer from the uncertainty of irregular
sources of livelihood, their homes and communities are being demolished to give
way to so-called urban development projects for the benefit of merely a few.
Rather than a social service, the government’s housing project is, in
fact, a profit-making endeavor. The government has also turned its back on
providing needed social services, like health services, to the people.
Intensifying political repression
Meanwhile, repression of civil liberties and violation of human rights persist.
The state claims even pregnant women, elders and children as victims. By 2008,
reported human rights violations in the country have involved 889 victims of
political killings, which include 98 women victims and 58 children. Among 179
cases of enforced disappearances are 29 women. Recently the military massacred
eight civilians, including two children and three women, one of whom was
pregnant.
Currently, there are 23 women who languish in jail for political reasons; the
most recent illegally arrested and detained was Elizabeth Principe, a peace
advocate and staunch supporter of the welfare of farmers and indigenous peoples
in the countryside. There are also eight women victims of rape by the military.
The list of human rights violations continue, as these figures and cases have
yet to include thousands of women and children victims of forcible evacuation
due to massive militarization in the countryside. They experienced hunger,
trauma and various forms of sexual abuse.
The military’s policy of rape and sexual abuse against women in captivity
is indeed enraging. The spine-chilling torture and rape the military committed
against missing students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan, and the sexual
abuse experienced by 64-year-old Angie Ipong in the hands of her military
captors cannot and shall not go unpunished.
As the economic and political crisis escalates, coupled with the further
intensification of the people’s protest, we can only expect—caution
and condemnation notwithstanding—heightened attacks by the Arroyo
government against progressive organizations like GABRIELA.
Intensifying women’s resistance
Our 8 March 2008 campaign is the persistence of the historic struggle and
victory of the women’s movement as our own contribution to the
intensifying struggle of the Filipino people. We will unleash a strong mass
struggle of women against dire poverty, corruption and the tyranny of the
Arroyo regime.
We will give particular emphasis to exposing the grave condition of the masses
of women and the various forms of violence women experience in the form of
poverty and VAW [violence against women—ed.], as we also criticize and
expose the Arroyo government’s hunger mitigation program for what it
really is: a fake program by a fake President.
This March 8, we will conduct actions with the widest participation of masses
of women to fight for their right to livelihood, housing and social services,
for the future of their children and their families, and for their right
against violence, especially state violence. We will unleash widespread and
militant actions by women and the people against the Arroyo regime’s
desperate grip on power.
Women are aware that only through their militant struggle, together with the
rest of the people and under the aegis of a national democratic struggle, can
the recurring and worsening crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal
Philippine society meet its decisive end.
On this International Women’s Day, let us vow to bring tens of thousands
of working women in a militant action to contribute to the struggle of the
working women of the world. Let us organize and mobilize women in the unions
and factories, on farms, in urban poor communities, schools and offices around
their local issues and concerns. Let us involve women from numerous localities
through solid and extensive education, agitation, propaganda and local mass
struggle campaigns. Elevating local and sectoral issues to a political level is
an essential part of our endeavor. Our local, sectoral, national and regional
actions shall lead to massive and militant protest marches of women and
children on March 8 against the heightening exploitation and oppression of the
women of the world. This March 8 will also kick off GABRIELA’s
celebration of 25 years of struggle and triumphs next year.
Throughout the world, the struggle of working women against exploitation is the
key to our successful struggle against all forms of oppression. Only where
women are members of the working force and have collective power will they
learn to fight exploitation and oppression as women. We need to fight the
oppression of women towards our full participation in the economic, political
and socio-cultural life of our community. The struggle of organized
working-class women will end not only women’s oppression but
women’s exploitation as well.
Women unite! Struggle against oppression and exploitation!
Fight corruption and tyranny! Oust President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo!
Long live International Working Women’s Day!
Long live international solidarity!
GABRIELA Philippines
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