Gender equality and women empowerment

The 2016 Olympics has ended in Rio. Tokyo, Japan will host the next Olympics in 2020 with their first ever elected female governor, former defense minister Yuriko Koike. In a gender equality-challenged Japan, women in politics is still at a very low level. This is not the case, however, in our country.

The Philippines is the only country in Asia among the top 10 countries in the world that ranked high in terms of gender equality, according to the 2015 Global Gap Report.

Our women are empowered and continue to be on the move, within and outside their homes, actively participating in the work force, in the other sectors: education, politics and as migrants locally and globally.

The gender equality and women empowerment situation, however, is still far from perfect. So much more still have to be done, especially among the vulnerable groups not equally benefitted by the gains enjoyed by other women locally and globally.

Millennium Development Goal No. 3 aimed to promote global gender equality and empowering of women. While significant achievements have been attained, gender equality and women empowerment continue as one of the present Sustainable Development Goals from this year onward.

As women move further from home, to study, to work, across local or global distance, much remain to be achieved for women empowerment and gender equality. For example, while parity in primary education has been achieved in 2015, there still remains "a high 54 percent of girls in the out-of-school population, many are still in need of more access to health services and health information, they are still not at par with males in terms of control of resources, work, income and up to one in three women worldwide will experience violence at some point in her life, which can lead to unwanted pregnancy and abortion, among other things."

Across the world and within communities and societies, the positive changes for gender equality and women empowerment have not been uniform for women and men, diverse among women, across geographical locations, between and within countries, across ages, classes, cultures and physical abilities or disabilities.

Our country and the rest of the world have to move more vigorously to attain the Sustainable Development Goal of gender equality. As we have already written previously, the present economic system has to recognize and reward the labor of women within their homes. Their reproductive labor, giving birth, taking care of children, their husbands and the elderly, doing household chores within their nuclear and extended households have to be seriously considered as labor as important as productive labor rendered outside the homes, rendered for the formal economy.

A very significant step to take for gender equality is to appropriately acknowledge that reproductive labor is valuable labor rendered by women within their homes and this reproductive labor has to be adequately rewarded like other productive labor out in factories, out in offices and other work areas locally and globally.

While the Philippines ranks high in gender equality, so much more has to be done for better work-life balance involving our males and females.Work availability and income levels are still higher for males than females. Shared household work also needs to be practiced by more males.

Also, while our working women are, by law, to be provided a paid maternity leave, the period of maternity leave is shorter than other countries lower down in the Global Gender Gap ranking. This is also one clear area needing revision. We need to provide our women more time to rest and adjust after giving birth and taking care of their newly born.

So much more as well have to be cleared in the minds and hearts of our people about women. We have witnessed recently the accusation hurled at Senator Leila de Lima for "being immoral, in an adulterous affair with her driver." Contrast this with a male leader who brags about having several girlfriends and mistresses whose act is considered naturally macho.

Many families still favor male children to go to school, to be given more support than females. In other countries, female infanticide is high because male children are considered more valuable and useful than female children.

During disasters, women and girls are exposed to more danger and there have been more deaths among them than their male counterparts. We have also explained before how society and cultural norms expect women to take care of their household members during ordinary and especially during emergency situation. You have probably read the story where, during a strong typhoon, a parent had to let go of the daughter to the rushing floods, saving the son instead because of the accepted cultural norm that male children are more valuable than females.

So much have been done in the past. However, so much more remain to be done and achieved at present and for the future for gender equality and women empowerment in our country and all throughout the world.

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