by SOLITA C. MONSOD

WE’VE COME a long way, baby — or have we?

	[artwork by Randy Montecillo]

Consider: There is still no country in the world where women have the same range of choices that their male counterparts do, the same “capability to do and to be,” as Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen puts it. Focusing on opportunities rather than capabilities, neither is there any country in the world where women share economic and political power equally with men.

The empirical bases for these statements can be found in the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Human Development Report. Since 1995, it has offered yearly indices of capability and empowerment for different countries. These are, respectively, the Gender-responsive Development Index (GDI), which is the country’s Human Development Index (HDI) adjusted to account for inequalities between women and men; and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which captures gender inequality in political participation and decision-making power (as measured by women’s share of parliamentary seats), in economic participation and decision-making (as measured by women’s share of positions as legislators, senior officials and managers, as well as their share of professional and technical positions), and in power over economic resources (as measured by the ratio of estimated female to male earned income).

In an ideal world, where there is no inequality between men and women, a country’s GDI and HDI would have the same value, and its GEM would be equal to one. In reality, no such situation occurs.

Worse, even after four international conferences on women (starting in 1975, in Mexico), and the screaming and flag-waving about gender inequality, gender-disaggregated country data are still relatively scarce, so that the GDI and the GEM for many countries cannot be computed. To illustrate: the HDI has now been estimated for 177 countries, but data non-availability reduces to 136 the number of countries for which GDI can be estimated; and to only 75 those with GEM.

What the available international data show, aside from fewer choices and less opportunities enjoyed by women vis a vis men universally, is that there are great disparities between countries. For example, the differences between HDI and GDI range from two points (e.g. the Philippines) to 25 points (Oman). And the differences in GEM between countries show an even wider range: from a high of 0.932 (Norway) to a low of 0.128 (Yemen) — which, roughly translated, means that Norwegian women enjoy about 93 percent of the political and economic power that Norwegian men enjoy, while Yemeni women exercise only 13 percent of the power that their menfolk do.

One cannot resist pointing out that the countries with higher GDIs and higher GEMS are also countries where the percentage of women who are enrolled in primary, secondary, and tertiary schools are at least as large as that of men, and where female youth and adult literacy rates are not only very high but are almost the same as that of the males.

Has the status of women worldwide improved over time? Unfortunately, because the GDI and GEM were estimated only beginning in 1995, we have only a 10-year period that we can empirically observe. Yet indeed, the indices have shown an upward trend, again with some countries improving faster than others. Still, evaluating the situation over a longer period of time — say in the last 50 years — would mean data that are difficult to obtain (except possibly for education and literacy). Anecdotal evidence will have to do — which is what we will (mostly) rely on in discussing the Philippine situation. But while the anecdotal evidence may be less accurate, they are more fun to gather.

LET’S TAKE a brief look at the capabilities and opportunities facing the Filipina at the beginning of the 21st century, first in comparison with her male counterparts in the country, and then in comparison with the situation of her counterparts in the rest of the world (2004 data UNDPHDR).

On average she will live a little over four years longer than the Filipino (72.8 vs. 68.6). She is slightly more literate than he is (adult literacy rate is 92.7 percent for females vs. 92.5 percent for males). She has more book learning — girls outnumber boys at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, with the gap growing wider as the level increases.

No occupation is closed to her, except (the only one I can think of) being a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. She can be a pilot, a machinist, a lawyer, a soldier, a doctor, a welder, a sailor, a construction worker, a racecar driver, a neurosurgeon. Filipinas make up 61 percent of all professional and technical workers, and 58 percent of legislators, senior officials, and managers, but hold only 16 percent of the seats in Congress.

She can be a member of any organization she chooses. She can travel anywhere she wants. The idea of having a chaperone when going out with a male is totally alien to a Pinay. She can borrow from a bank or a financial institution. She is protected by law from any form of discrimination or sexual harassment — she can even charge her husband with marital rape if he forces himself on her.

At the same time, the Filipina is also more likely than a male to be “contributory” or unpaid family worker (56 percent vs. 44 percent) — those who work without pay in an economic enterprise operated by a related person living in the same household.

She also works longer hours than her male counterpart (21 percent more). But a lot of her services are unpaid, and her earned income is on the whole only 60 percent of what the male income is.

How do Filipinas compare with women in other countries? A ranking of countries according to their GDI and GEM respectively, shows the Philippines among the top half (66 out of 136) of the countries with available GDI data, and in the bottom half (45 out of 75) of the countries with available GEM data.

Being in the bottom half sounds bad, but a closer look will show that as far as gender empowerment goes, the Philippines, with a GEM value of 0.533 (i.e. women wield 53 percent of the power that men do), is actually doing very well. The explanation for the low ranking lies in the fact that most of the advanced countries (“high human development”) have the kind of gender disaggregated data needed to compute GEM, while less than one-third of the medium human development countries (including the Philippines), and only two of the low-human development countries can compute their GEMs. If one takes that into account, the Philippines has a higher GEM than seven of the 46 high human development countries, 22 out of the 27 medium human development countries, and one of the two low human development countries. We have a higher GEM than Malaysia, Thailand, and South Korea (China and Indonesia don’t have enough data).