The Integration of Women in Philippine Development

This paper examines how Philippine development planning defined to include formal plans and legislated measure -- has prioritized women's fuller integration in development. A review of previous formal plans brought to the fore government's weak role in rising the status of women. In law, discrimination towards women was seen to arise from their relative physical weakness and their reproductive function. Thus, men have superior civil rights based on the complementary view that they are the family providers while women are governed by labor laws which are ostensibly protective but which actually work against them because they raise the costs of employing women. On the hand, legal equality between the sexes was observed in the areas of citizenship, suffrage, property inheritance and right to education. The paper also tackled the women's role in their own development as manifested in women's organizations. Crisis situations -- from the past foreign dominations to the current national crisis -- were pinpointed to have provided heightened opportunities for women to assert more active roles and greater participation in shaping their world.