The Political Economy of Women:

Focusing on Women’s Political Participation and

its Economic Implications in the Philippines

Servida, Agatha Ana Jumelle R.

Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Service
IPEN11F (International Political Economy)

I. Introduction

Ever since the life began on Earth, gender roles have been taking shape in
daily life. With the passage of time, the concept of division of labor between sexes
evolved in human society. Gradually, ‘politics’ and ‘economics’ became the center
of survival, which gave a new meaning to the functions of daily life of both men
and women. Gender segregation is not something very uncommon in this
developed world. Nowadays, it is visible that women still suffer gender
discrimination in numerous fields. However, looking back all the way from the stone
age, it was already assumed that men have greater capacity for physical strength,
thus, better suited to act as hunters in a world full of massive beasts . Women, on
the other hand were assumed to control of the household chores .
 As times passed, and with the concept of division of labor has firmly
entrenched in society, specialized role, functions and duties of both genders began
to take form. Thus, it has become the woman’s duty to take responsibility for
cooking, sweeping, washing clothes, sewing and other requirements of the
household are exclusive for women.

During the late twentieth century, the issue of gender equality once again
became an issue on the global agenda. The UN Decade for women, which ended
in 1985, initiated the integration of women into development, triggering the
formation of thousands of women’s organizations and networking them across the
world.1 In 1993, the Vienna World Conference proclaimed that women’s rights
were human rights; in 1994, the Cairo International Conference on Population and
Development placed women’s empowerment and health at the center of
sustainable development programs. Two years later, the Beijing Fourth World
Conference on Women adopted a platform seeking to promote and protect the full
enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all women.2

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, the norms are still the same. Who
cooks dinner and does the dishes? Cleans the house? Put the kids to bed? Why
is that all the said activities are automatically associated with women’s household
roles? How is it that these activities are not valued in the same way as other types
of work? And, why is it that many middle-class households around the world have
come to rely on paid domestic workers – sometimes from overseas – to undertake
this work? And mostly, almost always preferably taking female workers to do the
job.

1
Mary K. Meyer and Elisabeth Prugl, Eds. 1999. Gender Politics and Global Governance. Lanham,
MD: Rowman and Littlefield; J. True and M. Mintrom. 2001. “Transnational networks and policy diffusion:
The case of gender mainstreaming.” International Studies Quarterly 45 (1): 27–57; L. Reanda. 1999.
“Engendering the United Nations – The changing international agenda.” European Journal of Women’s
Studies 6 (1): 49–61.
2
United Nations. Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace. Special session of the
General Assembly, June 5–9.

Agatha Ana Jumelle R. Servida

AB Foreign Service
 It is undeniable that there has been substantial progress toward gender
equality in the world, however, great disparities still persist. In many third world
countries, such as the Philippines, Brazil and Afghanistan, women’s lives are still
wretched. In the middle-east specifically, women are denied education, barred
from working, have limited healthcare and encounters of domestic violence.

Even though, some societies have experienced a mixture of progress and

regression, as new entrepreneurial opportunities arose for women following
market liberalization in post-Communist Europe, along with weakened social
safety nets for poorer families. By contrast, other countries have achieved major
gains in legal, economic, and political gender equality that are probably
irreversible. Sweden exemplifies a society where women experience the highest
level of parliamentary representation of any nation in the world, along with gender
parity in secondary schooling and paid employment and extensive parental rights
and childcare facilities.3

The main purpose of this paper is to examine whether differences in gender

lead to different career opportunities, the struggles that women face in their daily
lives. Also, to focus on the goal of gender equality and women's empowerment to
illustrate the limitations of opportunities being provided to women , specifically in
the third world countries.

As a window into these changes, the article gives primary attention to the
world’s increasing career opportunities, opportunities which are mostly available
to men and limited to women. Its relation to connections between poverty and
sexual inequality and struggles of being a career woman in this modern world . It
is very ironic that women are underrepresented in the world of political economy,
when the definition itself means management of the household based on laws of
the land.

3
Lauri Karvonen and Per Selle. 1995. Women in Nordic Politics. Aldershot: Dartmouth.

Agatha Ana Jumelle R. Servida

AB Foreign Service
 II. A. Statement of the Problem
1. To identify the struggles that women face in the Philippine political-economy
arena.
2. To expose the existence of gender inequality.
3. To destabilize the views held on women’s economic agencies.
4. To determine if there is really gender bias in the society.
5. To discuss the causes and roots of unequal gender representation.

B. Research Methodology

By ‘research methodology’, we mean the philosophy of the research

process. This includes the assumptions and values that serve as a rationale for
research, and the standards or criteria the research uses for collecting and then
interpreting data and reaching conclusions. Whereas by ‘method’ we simply mean
the techniques or tools used to gather data. Methodology for the collection of
empirical data for the current research was based upon qualitative research
method.

In order to satisfy the objectives of this research, the method selected is

basic qualitative research. The main characteristic of a basic qualitative research
could be of: interpretation is based on combination of research perspective and
data collected. By combining ethnographic, historical, and demographic
approaches, and focusing on sexuality in this modern period.

Agatha Ana Jumelle R. Servida

AB Foreign Service
III. Review of Related Literature

Women constitute slightly more than half of the world population. Their role in the
social, political and economic development of societies is also more than half as
compared to that of men by virtue of their dual roles in the productive and reproductive
spheres. They are an important part in the balance of power in the societies in all over
the world. Nowadays, all the decisions made in the world (economic, social, political,
educational and artistic) are made by both man and woman in an equal way but this was
not the reality years before.4
Early global writing on women’s empowerment is associated by many with the
analysis and advocacy work of various organizations. Empowerment is needed because
of the presence of unequal power relations, and includes the processes by which people
who have been denied the ability to exercise agency, autonomy or choices gain such
abilities (Batliwala, 1994; Sen, 1993; Kabeer, 1999; Bisnath and Elson, 1999; Sen and
Batliwala, 2000; Malhotra et al, 2002).
Overall, empowerment refers to those transformative forms of agency that not only
address immediate inequalities faced by women but also aid changes in consciousness
and agency that challenge patriarchal structures.
It is clear that women's empowerment requires agency along multiple dimensions-
-sexual, reproductive, economic including unpaid care, political, legal--and multiple
freedoms including, most importantly, from threats and violence.5 These dimensions are
interdependent in the sense in which the term is used in human rights discourse.
Women’s freedoms and agency can be promoted by tilting the unequal distribution of
resources - assets, rules and norms - in favor of women so that they can exercise a much
wider set of choices and autonomy. An improvement in women's economic capabilities
such as education and health may enable women to exercise agency in other spheres
such as holding a paid job, whether and when to have children, to have greater roles in
household decision-making, and may lower the risk of becoming victims of violence but
this is by no means assured.

4
Amina Ghorfat & Rabha Medini, Feminism and It’s Impact On Woman in the Modern Society.
5
Gita Sen and Avanti Mukherjee. No Empowerment without Rights, No Rights without Politics:
Gender-Equality, MDGs and the post 2015 Development Agenda, p.9.

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 Gender became the latest feminist tool to be used to attempt to unravel the
persistence of women’s secondary treatment and status in contemporary societies. As
the concept evolved it benefited from many new currents in feminist theorizing. Jane Flax
conceptualized gender both as a thought construct or category that helped us to
comprehend particular social worlds and histories, and as a central social relation that
partially shapes all other social relations and activities (Flax 1990a: 45).
Another discourse also perpetuates a ‘women as saviours’ narrative, which
assumes that increasing women’s representation in finance will improve risk-awareness
and prevent the recurrence of a global financial crisis. This is used in other ways too, for
example in assuming that women as workers and consumers more broadly are (to quote
a CNN headline) ‘saviours of the world economy’.6
According to Adrienne Roberts, In the US, for instance, it has been found that
women (particularly single women with children) face discrimination when taking out
mortgage loans - as do people of minority racial or ethnic backgrounds. In a somewhat
different manifestation of gender bias, women-owned businesses are also less likely to
receive financial investment.
On the other hand, The Philippines is known for its very liberal and progressive
Constitution that was formulated during the euphoria of People Power Revolution in 1986.
Gender equality is a key element of this Charter and as enshrined in Article II Section 14
of the 1987 Constitution, “the State recognizes the role of women in nation-building and
shall ensure the fundamental equality before the law of women and men.”7

6
Kevin Voigt, ‘Women: Saviors of the world economy?’, CNN.com: http://
edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/25/intl.women.global.economy/, accessed 8 January 2015).
7
Mylene Hega, Secretary General of MAKALAYA (Women Workers Network) for the Friedrich-
Ebert-Stiftung Philippine Office

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 In the Philippines alone, statistics show high quantity of jobs that Filipino women
have in politics and management. The statistics show high quantity of jobs that Filipino
women have in politics and management, which promotes the Southeast Asian state in
female education (Strother 2013)8. And on the political side alone, according to the Inter-
Parliamentary Union, based on information provided by national parliaments by 1th
February 2016, the Philippines is classified as the 53rd country by descending order of
the 4 percentage of women in the House of Representatives. They have 290 seats in the
House of Representatives with 79 women, which represent 27.2%. And in the Senate,
the Philippines have 24 seats with 6 women, which constitute 25%.
The Philippines has had two female presidents. The first female president Corazon
Aquino struggled to address her country's economic problems and restored democracy
to the Philippines. The second president was Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who sponsored
new laws such as the indigenous people’s rights law and the anti-sexual harassment law.
Both presidents came from powerful political families and contributed little to advance
women's situation in the country. (Philippines presidents 2006)
Impressively, Philippines has a relatively high percentage of women in the
parliament. The Inter Parliamentary Union (2017) claims, that the Philippine has a
relatively high percentage of women in the national parliaments with 29.5% compared to
most Asian countries. Even though Philippine has the highest percentage of women in
parliament in Asia continent, there still are variety of articles which lift the problem about
quality of women’s representation in politics. These articles point out that even though the
county has high percentage of women in politics, not all of these women represent
women’s issues.
There are many researches that describe the issue about women's representation
and presence in politics, also that women are underrepresented and not prioritized in
politics compared to men. Although the Philippine has 29.5% of women in the parliament,
they are still not represented equally, in number and quality, as men in politics. This
problem also means that women's interests and issues are not priorities as much as
men´s. Politicians are citizens elected representatives for a democratic system, and their
mission is to represent the voters. It is more difficult for female politicians to obtain political
influence, and with this background we considered this issue a democracy problem.

8
Jason Strother, Philippines Wins Accolades for Gender Equality; With Reservations

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AB Foreign Service
 A pleasing information from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
that despite the crucial development issue, gender equality is well advanced in the
Philippines. The country scores well on international gender equality measures and
indices, but more is needed to sustain the achievements and to overcome remaining
challenges. Despite a favorable policy environment – the Philippines is signatory to
international human rights instruments and has successfully enacted policies and laws
for the protection and promotion of women’s rights - the implementation of policies
appears uneven and slow.9 But is it really. On the contrary, In terms of leadership, the UN
said that "women have gained ground in parliamentary representation" in nearly 90% of
174 countries in the past 20 years. Unfortunately, the Philippines is not part of such
progress.The number of women in national positions increased in the past decade, but
still not enough women are in power, the NSCB revealed.10

Considering the unequal gender relations in our country, the Constitution further
provided for women representation (as one of the 9 marginalized sectors) in the
legislature through the party-list system (which should cover 20% of the lower house).
Finally, Article 13 Section 14 specifically mentioned that the “State shall protect working
women by providing safe and healthful working conditions, taking into account their
maternal functions, and such facilities and opportunities that will enhance their welfare
and enable them to realize their full potential in the service of the nation”.

9
UNDP Fast Facts (UNDP is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and
connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. In the
Philippines, UNDP fosters human development for peace and prosperity. Working with central and local
Governments as well as civil society, and building on global best practices, UNDP strengthens capacities
of women, men and institutions to empower them to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the
objectives of the Philippine Mid-term Development Plan.)
10
Fritzie Rodriguez, Rappler

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IV. Presentation, Interpretation and Analysis

To further understand women’s contribution to politics, production and the

economy, therefore, it is more useful to begin with her position in the home. As
most women remain invisible, their contribution to the family and their roles in the
making of a society also remains hidden. The term ‘domestic’ work refers here to
the work done at home for the household—work not recognized as part of the
economy because it does not generate any tangible income. Thus, women’s
domestic labor is not defined as work or considered as a sufficient contribution.
So, when women earn money through various activities, it is considered their direct
contribution to the household economy, whereas when they perform household
chores, which are unpaid, they contribute indirectly to the economy.

While the situation in all countries is quite different, there are women who
still face difficulties accessing the finance needed to start and expand businesses
or get jobs that should well compensate them for their credentials.

According to one estimate, in 2014, across 15 UK, European and US banks,

women made up 25.7 per cent of those on boards and 22.3 per cent of senior
managers.11 Looking beyond these data, it has also been distinguished that
women are still underrepresented among various categories of investors, ranging
from traditional investors in stocks and bonds, to private investors.

There is a so-called Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), which is a

joint initiative of the United Nations Global Compact and UN Women . What they
do specifically is to promote the development of a more ‘socially conscious’
capitalism. The Women’s Empowerment Principles operate as a voluntary set of
principles that aim to help businesses to empower women in the workplace ,
marketplace and community. Specifically, they are to:

11
Emma Dunkley, ‘Banks Tackled over Lack of Diversity’, Financial Times, 19th November 2015.

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AB Foreign Service
 (1) establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality; (2) treat all
women and men fairly at work – respect and support human rights non-
discrimination; (3) ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men
workers; (4) promote education, training and professional development for women;
(5) implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that
empower women; (6) promote equality through community initiatives and
advocacy; and (7) measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender
equality.

These discourses also perpetuate a ‘women as saviours’ narrative, which

assumes that increasing women’s representation in finance will improve risk-
awareness and prevent the recurrence of a global financial crisis

IV.1. Female Political Participation and Economic Growth

The improvement of female education has a vibrant impact on female
political participation. If the ratio of women who have received education increases,
the number of female politicians may be estimated to increase too. Figure1 shows
the relationship between these two variables: education and female political
participation.

Figure 1. Economic Growth and Female Political Participation, World

Source: World Development Indicator

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AB Foreign Service
 From the figure, with GDP per capita increasing, the proportion of seats held by
women in parliament is increasing accordingly. The rising range of female political
participation is obviously larger than the economic growth rate. The world has
witnessed a significant reduction in the representation gap between male and female,
consistent with economic development. Similarly, figure 2 introduces the situation in
Asia. Asia’s female politics is lagging other continents, as I mentioned before, Asia
owns the least proportion of female members of parliaments.

Figure 2. Economic Growth and Female Political Participation, Asia

Source: World Development Indicator

Figure 2 shows in general the relationship in Asia is similar to the world despite
that there is more fluctuation in both GDP per capita and proportion of female
parliamentarians. The low level of female members of parliaments can be explained
by Asian religions, culture and political constitution. Asia has experienced a long male-
oriented history and there is still some tradition opinion that politics belongs to men
and women are supposed to take good care of their family and children. This common
concept undoubtedly leads to women’s weak position in parliaments in Asia.
In contrast to female political participation, there is large literature stating women’s
contribution to economic growth, especially the improvement of women’s education
and labor participation.

Agatha Ana Jumelle R. Servida

AB Foreign Service
 Figure 3: Global Gender Gap Table

Source: World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Gender Gap Report

The report, released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) last November 2017,
ranked 144 countries based on 4 categories: labor force participation, educational
attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. Surprisingly, the Philippines
still maintained its status of being the most gender equal country in Asia.

IV.2. Equality in Terms of Educational Attainment

Considering gender inequality in education, the most popular argument is that
gender equality would increase the economic growth, this is to say, girls' education
can produce the highest possible return on investment in the developing world so as
to enhance development and reduce poverty.

Agatha Ana Jumelle R. Servida

AB Foreign Service
V. Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

The fact that there is a gender bias in women’s access to finance, economy
and politics in almost all parts of the world has been well documented. The specific
expressions of this bias vary across space and in all parts of the globe whether
those are developed countries like United States and Japan . However, it is more
evident in third world countries like the Philippines.

However, in the case of WEPs are nonetheless just a useful indicator of the
commitment of corporations to the improvement of gender equality beyond the
corporate, only that it extends throughout the supply chain and radiates on a more
global scale.

Let us not forget the chance that we missed in the 1992 and 2016 Philippine
Presidential elections when Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago ran for presidency.
She has the capability, the brains, the gut and the grits to govern the political-
economic affairs of the Philippines on a more sophisticated level. What if all the
said qualities are in a male candidate? Most likely, the male candidate has greater
chances of winning.

Since the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century, the concept of

development has changed from enrichment of human life to the richness of the
political economy. Slowly but surely, women will come into aid for this achievement
and there will be prevalence in the number of women holding leadership positions
across the globe. Feminism is for Everybody, hooks states, “Imagine living in a
world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even
always equal, but there a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction.

Is there really a need for women to step up and to have all their efforts
recognized? YES. Women have the same capacities as men, and can do the jobs
in the political economy arena equally as men can do. All through the centuries
that has passed, it is time for the world to veer away from the global standards and
visualize a more diverse approach.
Agatha Ana Jumelle R. Servida
AB Foreign Service

There are still a lot of obstacles for women to partake a bigger role and
impact in the political economy arena, may it be local or international. It is prevalent
that leadership is still conceptualized in terms of male strength and social
definitions of role still pervade the society with women who are still pictured to be
the support of the “leader-husband” or their male counterparts and whose main
tasks are to take care of household chores and provide charity. And it should never
be forgotten that women’s display of ‘feminine’ characteristics are natural and
universal, and these characteristics are good for limiting risk in the economic field.

In a fast-changing global economy the demand for skills has swelled, and
all sectors, public or private have sought to expand their talent pools. The way for
this to be fulfilled is a widespread career opportunity for all, disregarding gender.

What we can do now that there is a progress towards gender equality and
it has entailed shift towards a new equilibrium where women have access to more
endowments, more economic opportunities, and more ways to exercise their
agency—is to maintain everything. Continuing our collective action through social
networks and civil society groups are needed in advancing gender equality. There
is no need for feminism, only balance. Just always bear in mind that women’s
movements have long been a driving force for social change. They have given
voice to the cause of gender equality, creating a space for public debate and
setting the stage for change and reform. Women mobilize as political actors and
social agents for a wide variety of causes—social, political, economic,
environmental. Thus, must be retained. Lastly, to expand women’s network to
make women feel less isolated. Instead, with their collective identity, enabling them
to wield more power. When a woman has political and economic rights, she can
be powerful and she can be heard. Imagine how our economic engines would hum
if every woman had equal access to education, skills training, employment, and
entrepreneurial opportunity. Imagine the positive benefits for democracy, peace-
building, and legislation if every woman had an equal chance to run for office, be
a community leader, or have an active voice in politics. women have political voice
and a seat at decision-making tables there is a greater chance of building healthy
and fair democracies where women’s human rights are valued and realized. In
addition, women and girls play a critical role in breaking the cycle of poverty, most
especially to developing countries. Economically empowered women create
healthier, more sustainable, and equal societies.
Agatha Ana Jumelle R. Servida
AB Foreign Service

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