Women's work

As opinion editor of The Evening Paper from 1995-96, I also wrote a twice-weekly nameless column. Nameless because, in the late Nonoy Marcelo's creative template for the editorial pages (his special favor for me, a townmate, high-schoolmate, and family friend), the editorial columns were not going to carry column titles, only the names of those who write them and the titles of their postings.

As I had just moved then from editing a 3-edition, 120+-page global trade magazine, most of my columns dealt with economic development. But I had an expansive view of development, embracing both hard and soft issues.

Personally, I never equated development with gender. To me, the disadvantaged need the benefits of enlightened development, whether they be men or women. The feminist movement, at peak strength when I went in 1971 to the United States as an exchange visitor of the Department of State and the American Women in Radio & Television, attempted to enlist my appearance at some of their campaign events. I was, however, more interested then--aside from my work in the field that qualified me to be there--in the US civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the future of political dissent, the last perhaps understandably, as many times I was asked by Fil-Ams how I could still want to come back to the Philippines, given the regime prevalent in the country at the time.

However, it was also to recognize a valid economic companion issue that I wrote this gender piece more than two decades later.

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Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 17 August 1995

On Tuesday, I mentioned how this week had me so focused on significant international news about women that, much as I always swore by my personal stand that development and trade were issues best freed from the clutches of gender hysteria, I felt I had to touch on the new World Bank micro-lending package for the poorest of the poor, and the connected experiences of five empowered women--four from Jordan, one from India.

Today, let me deal with two major reports that will soon enough fill up newspaper space and broadcast airtime, especially as the world warms up for next month's Fourth World Conference on Women, to be held in China.

The first, the Human Development Report commissioned by the United Nations Development Program, went through a particularly caustic exercise: it placed a price on the largely "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" work performed by women, both at home and in the community, in 31 countries of the world. The 31 countries were picked to provide a credible cross-section of the world's industrial, developing, and transition economies.

Its conclusion should put women through an emotional wringer. The study revealed the price of women's "unpaid" work during one year in 31 countries: $11 trillion!

To appreciate this figure, place it against the background of other statistics. The annual global economic output has been estimated at roughly $23 trillion. The combined GNPs of the world's three largest economies--the United States ($6.3 trillion), Japan ($3.7 trillion), and Germany ($1.8 trillion)--total $11.8 trillion.

In fact, according to the UNDP report, women work longer hours than men in nearly every country in the world. Most of that work, unfortunately, is unpaid--household, food production (especially in rural Africa), nursing and caregiving.

If we can only translate one-half of women's efforts and energies devoted--sometimes from force of pitiful circumstances--to such "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" work to actual paid, recognized, valued, and economically productive labor, and then get the world's men to do the other unpaid half, imagine how much wealthier all families will be!

According to the report, South Korean men spend about 44 percent of their time on unpaid work. And look how vibrant the South Korean economy is today!

Simplistic? Well, then, turn to another landmark report, one prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based agricultural research group. "Women: The Key to Food Security," which strikes at a very topical concern, especially for the Philippines, concludes that gender equity in the countryside will be critical in meeting the food needs of the rapidly growing populations of developing countries.

The report strongly advocates reforms in these countries on a variety of fronts--education, training, land ownership. "If women were given the same resources as men, developing countries would see significant increases in agricultural productivity," Agnes Quisumbing, IFPRI fellow and lead author of the report, said.

Working on a flood of data from 15 developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the report detailed agricultural areas where women farmers have always had less compared to the men: agricultural extension programs, machinery that is often also inappropriate for women's needs, research data, access to agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and technologies, and qualifications for obtaining credit.

Yet, women's strengths in the countryside--their indigenous knowledge about seeds and growing systems, their openness to environmentally sustainable agricultural practices, their hope and often irrepressible enthusiasm, their eternal willingness to learn (these last two are my own additions)--are undeniable.

Sometimes, all it needs is a force to bond women together toward maximum accomplishment, whether in the countryside or the urban community. Blunting the edges of "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" women's anger was precisely the triumph of the women whose stories, as recounted in my Tuesday column, began with a micro-lending truth: that women are often better at paying their loans than men!

-- NBT