Babaylan Congress and 15th Anniversary, Cologne, Germany
Empowering Philippine Women in Europe – Their participation in the Development Processes in Europe and in the Philippines
“The Gender dimensions of migration and development”.
Analysing migration through the perspective of gender will make us realise how challenging it is to try to divide up experiences of migration as forced or voluntary, positive or negative, empowering or restrictive. Migration stories are filled with real-life experiences of women migrants fleeing countries devasted by famine and hunger, toiling 24/7 doing domestic work to support an impoverished family back home, escaping from a violent husband or from a forced marriage, exchanging sex work for the much needed cash, and believing sweet promises of good work and earnings but ending up trapped in slave-like conditions.
It is no denying that migration can lead to some degree of economic and social emancipation for women. It can also result into opportunities of changing traditional gender roles in the society.
Migration offers both men and women the opportunity to develop skills to earn a living – sending money to the family back home as the main motivation. On the other hand, migration can also strengthen the traditional gender stereotype of women’s dependency and lack of decision-making power.
It is important to acknowledge from the migration context that the motivation to migrate, the destination, physical security and safety, are partly dictated by the gender of the migrant. Gender impacts on how the migrant contribute to and benefit from her/his final destination. And ultimately how she/he can play a role in achieving both social and economic development.
International labour migration is not new to the Philippines and its colonial history, but the exporting of women workers is. At the end of the twentieth century, Philippine gendered labour migration and its diaspora have become not only the primary means of keeping the Philippine economy afloat, but have also created new conditions and problems which affect the current Philippine social and cultural identities. The magnitude of the feminisation of Philippine migration has never been as significant as it is today. Currently, there are more than 9 million overseas Filipinos worldwide, almost 10% of the total population of the Philippines, dispersed in more than 193 countries and destinations. The Filipino diaspora is the third largest in terms of population.
While women migration has many advantages, it does not come without obstacles and challenges as experienced by Philippine women in the Babaylan network. Within the context of the growing trend of international migration and its feminisation, the women of Babaylan are found in its core.
Like other migrant women in Europe, we encounter a host of problems. National immigration laws and policies prohibit the smooth integration of migrant women; their social and economic contributions are under-valued and under-recognised. They are vulnerable to gender-based violence either within a relationship or in the work place. Language problem is one big obstacle migrants are confronted with in their countries of destination. In addition, the significant lack of policies from the context of migration from both sending and receiving countries does not help migrant women in their daily struggle for a better life. It is an emerging challenge to harness correctly the positive development potentials of migration.
It is against this background that Babaylan embarks on this integrated awareness-raising and capacity building project. This project will focus on the inter relationship between gender, migration and development. International rights frameworks on migration, refugees, women’s human rights and trafficking will be important starting points in this project.
- Malu Padilla/oct2007
DownloadPROGRAM – Babaylan Congress 2007, Cologne and Babaylan Circular – Oct07 in pdf
