Misery and resilience

This March, the country observes “Women’s Role in History” month, as it has done every year since 1988. This observance is an offshoot of International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8, in honor of the 140 women workers who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911. It’s a day designated by the United Nations as a “celebration of achievements of all women around the world and [to] propel change in terms of gender equality,” said the Philippine Commission on Women.

At no other time, and perhaps at no other place, is the observance of IWD more important or relevant than in the Philippines, given all the challenges that confront Filipino women in these perilous times. The designated theme for this year’s observance—“Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World”—is particularly on point, because the impact of the pandemic has indeed been decidedly unequal, with women bearing the brunt of the burdens created by this scourge.

For one thing, the disease has added to the already heavy load borne by women in the family: as primary caregivers, as overseers on the domestic front (even if they also carry part of the economic load), as home-schooling teachers, and especially onerous, as victims of an escalation of domestic violence and sexual abuse, locked in as they are with jobless, restless, despondent abusers.

In addition, COVID-19 has also hit women in the gut. Because of the lockdowns imposed in the last year, the rolls of the suddenly unemployed ballooned to alarming levels. About 4.5 million Filipinos lost their jobs, with the unemployment rate rising to 10.3 percent, the highest in 15 years.

According to the Center for Women’s Resources, the number of “economically insecure” women has increased from 16 million in 2019 to an estimated 19.54 million in 2020. Even those who escaped joblessness were affected: Per a Bulatlat.com report, with the shutdown of at least 700 factories nationwide, retained workers were given rotational shifts of limited days per week that halved their usual take-home pay, and workers in the high-end business process outsourcing sector were also hit hard, as some companies forced their work-from-home employees to buy their own laptops and upgrade their internet connection at their own expense.

Couple this dismal employment picture with the battering that the informal economy, dominated by women vendors, home-based workers, manicurists and beauticians including masseuses, has had to endure. Add to this list of woes the hardships of women, who are mostly unpaid, in agriculture and related fields, which are struggling with livestock diseases such as African swine fever and the unchecked entry of rice and other produce. You get the picture: misery all around.

And yet… despite standing under the cloud of COVID-19, and enduring the taunting, hectoring, and belittling words from the mouths of the President and his minions on the capacity of women to lead, women are proving to be as, if not more, resilient and courageous than their male counterparts.

The world is by now familiar with the performance of women leaders in their countries besieged by the pandemic. Women heads of state in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Germany, Slovakia, and Taiwan have shown how a quick response to the arrival of the disease and a careful, deliberate implementation of scientists’ recommended safety measures can keep COVID-19 numbers down by preventing transmission and infection. Some observers, in fact, attribute the women’s success to a singular focus on battling the disease while avoiding typical male ego-tripping tricks like political jousting and pissing contests.

“The story of women through the COVID-19 pandemic,” noted U.S. News, “will be told by historians as one of peril, resilience and great strength.”

This is evident even in the private sector. In his March 9 column on IWD, Raul Palabrica, this paper’s board chair, highlighted the rising prominence of women in middle market businesses, citing the findings of global consultancy firm Grant Thornton that “the Philippines has the most number of women holding senior leadership positions in midmarket businesses among 29 other economies.”

The increasing numbers of women in high corporate positions “may be attributed to the wide opportunities for education and training by women in work positions that were once considered ‘reserved’ for male Filipinos,” wrote Palabrica. But, quoting Grant Thornton, he stressed that much work remains to be done to boost women up the ranks of the corporate ladder: “Businesses that want to reap the benefits of a better gender balance must continue to take action to enable women to realize their ambitions.” Advice that should go as well for the government and the rest of the country.