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Unravelling the intersections of power: The case of sexual and reproductive freedom in the Philippines
Abstract
This article examines the political contestations over sexual and reproductive rights reform in the Philippines from an intersectional perspective. Specifically, it considers the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill which was enacted in 2012 to unpack the various competing interests and identities of coalitions that are mobilised by sexual and reproductive freedom in the Philippines. It demonstrates how the distinct reform agenda contained in the RH Bill is a direct outcome of the power differentials between and within coalitions. This suggests that the bill serves to benefit some at the expense of others based on how different actors are situated within the intersections of class, gender, sexuality, religion and nation. Data for this research comes from the triangulation of various sources including semi-structured interviews, the RH bill text, and official government and non-government publications. The case of the RH Bill in the Philippines highlights the interdependence between the recognition of sexual and reproductive freedom as a human right and the redistribution of power and resources in society.
... Bongaarts (2020) identified the trends and preferences of couples using fixed effect regression. Finlay & Fox (2013), Eroglu et al. (2020), Lentejas (2018), Tanyag (2015) used mixed method analysis, while Lai and Tey (2014) used bivariate and multiple classification analysis to determine socioeconomic factors that can affect reproductive decision making. Kiani et al. (2016) used multistage cluster sampling method to identify the significance of social determinants of health and women's empowerment in producing children. ...
... A high level of fertility is the root of different major economic problems. After a long plenary debate and mass protests, the RH Act was enacted into law 2012 (Tanyag, 2015). The Act sought to promote self-awareness, safety, and better quality of life. ...
... The Act sought to promote self-awareness, safety, and better quality of life. The commonality of studies indicated that policy implementation with strict enforcement will reduce the country's increasing fertility rate (Finlay and Fox, 2013;Tanyag, 2015). Meanwhile, countries that lack funds in providing the needed service record a minimal decrease in childbearing. ...
The population of the Philippines continues to grow over the years, which leads to different economic concerns. The aim of this study is to determine the significance of the Reproductive Health Law and female unemployment rate on fertility rate in the country. Most studies imply a negative relationship between female unemployment rate, GNI per capita, registered marriages, and reproductive health programs on fertility rate. The result of these studies adheres to the author’s claim that there is a negative relationship among variables. A quantitative research design was used in this study. The used of multiple regression analysis examined the relationship of each explanatory variable to fertility rate based on the data gathered from 1980 to 2020. Results show that RH Law has a negative relationship on fertility rate, while unemployment rate has a positive relationship on fertility rate. This indicates that fertility rate declines because of the implementation of the RH Law that will result to slowdown the increase in population.
... Such cultural representations persist in moral imperatives to self-police sexual desire outside marriage (Delgado-Infante & Ofreneo, 2014), or self-sacrifice in the context of familial economic hardship (Ofreneo & Canoy, 2017). In recent years, however, Tanyag (2015) and Montiel et al. (2016) also showed the salience of liberal discussions of women's rights in opposition to religious discourses of morality in congressional debates surrounding women's issues. Illustrating the multiplicity of meanings of reproductive agency within a culture, these evolving findings affirm our hypothesis that gendered discourses in the Global South cannot be seen monolithically (Kerner, 2017). ...
... Discursive divergence by class. The two derived clusters mirror the macro-level discourses recently employed in local reproductive health debates (Montiel et al., 2016;Tanyag, 2015). However, as Figure 2 depicts, the micro-level adoption of these two discourses bifurcates discernibly between working-class and middle-class participants. ...
Women negotiate gendered discourses of reproductive agency in resolving unplanned pregnancies. Invoking an intersectional lens, this paper examines how these discursive dynamics differentiate across social class in the Global South context of the Philippines. Utilizing a novel mixed methods strategy, we triangulate quantitative findings from a Q sort task and qualitative accounts of pregnancy resolution to identify classed discourses of reproductive agency as (a) reclaiming maternal virtue and (b) asserting autonomous choice. Statistical analysis reveals significant discursive divergence across class, wherein working-class women primarily adopt maternal virtue discourses while middle-class women disproportionately subscribe to autonomous choice. Interpretative analysis of women’s accounts complicates this bifurcated characterization by surfacing the diverse ways by which women negotiate both discourses in narratives of abortion and carrying to term. We discuss our contributions to the literature in terms of multilevel theoretical engagement with classed complexity in gendered issues like reproductive agency as well as innovating mixed methods in intersectional research. We conclude with reflections on advancing reproductive justice, especially in Global South societies like the Philippines.
... Thus, the right to reproductive health is included in the guarantee of health rights provided by the state to its citizens. However, regulations regarding the right to reproductive health in Indonesia are still scattered from various laws, regulations, and legal products (Kooli, 2020;Riswanda et al., 2017;Tanyag, 2015). It means that there is no specific regulation that comprehensively regulates the right to reproductive health. ...
This study discusses efforts for legal renewal in fulfilling the right to public health, with a specific focus on the fulfillment of health rights for women in Indonesia. In this context, the research analyzes various existing policies and regulations, as well as the challenges faced in their implementation. The research method used is literature review, in which data is collected from various sources, including laws, government regulations, and related academic literature. The research results indicate that although there are several regulations supporting health rights for women, there are still many obstacles in accessing quality health services, including discrimination, stigma, and a lack of understanding of health rights. Legal renewal is necessary to strengthen the protection of women's health rights, including through increasing the capacity of health services, education about health rights, and strengthening the role of civil society. This article recommends the need for collaboration between the government, health institutions, and society to create an environment that supports the fulfillment of women's health rights in a comprehensive and sustainable manner.
... For example, Postinor, a globally accredited emergency contraceptive pill, has been banned in the Philippines since 2001. The ban was enforced through the Catholic lobby, with the support of conservative health officials, who argued that the pill is an abortifacient despite evidence to the contrary from the World Health Organization (Ruiz Austria 2004;Tanyag 2015;WHO 2017). As one female head of an NGO emphasized, providing emergency contraception is an important link in the chain of services and treatments for rape victims/survivors: "In [the] case of rape and sexual violence, five days past the incident, emergency contraceptive can still be effectively taken by a victim. ...
Natural disasters are increasingly causing displacements globally, and such negative impacts of climate change are expected to increase exponentially. Women and girls in particular distinctly endure long-term or gradual harms while in displacement, such as heightened risks of sexual and gender-based violence, including exposure to sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, maternal mortality, and forced or unwanted pregnancies. This article examines the Philippines as a case study to unveil the growing gendered security threats embodied by disaster-induced displacements. In the aftermath of the disaster caused by supertyphoon Haiyan, which struck in November 2013, the mantra of developing a “disaster-resilient nation” has gained currency among national and international actors in the country. Building on critical feminist political economy analysis, this article argues that the Haiyan postdisaster relief and reconstruction efforts constitute gendered processes that intimately rely on and mobilize women’s unremunerated social reproductive labor, particularly through their role as primary caregivers. Data for this research is drawn from twenty-six interviews with key informants and from secondary sources such as official reports of governmental, nongovernmental, and international humanitarian organizations. The findings underscore the importance of deploying a feminist lens to critique the material and discursive power of “resilience” through which norms of female altruism are harnessed at household and community levels while postdisaster responsibilities are increasingly diverted away from the state. In so doing, resilience discourses may serve to reinforce the structural roots of gendered vulnerability, including political, cultural, and economic barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health services and supplies-thereby undermining bodily autonomy.
... The emphasis on female bodies as the biological and cultural reproducers in society has also been used to define various forms of social reproduction in exclusively heteronormative terms. More specifically in the case of restrictions to reproductive freedom in the Philippines, family and " pro-life " issues are strategically deployed to obscure growing socio-economic inequalities (Estrada Claudio 2010;Tanyag 2015;see also Razavi and Jenichen 2010). Thus, alongside the religious fundamentalist value placed upon female altruism is the devalorization and indeed violence against women and girls justified in its name. ...
Feminist scholars have critically demonstrated the links between the global political economy, social reproduction and gender-based violence. This article builds on this scholarship by investigating restrictions to reproductive freedom and their connection to the depletion of women’s bodies in the global political economy. Specifically, I use the Depletion through Social Reproduction (DSR) framework to reveal how the work of social reproduction is harnessed to service economic activity at the cost of rights to bodily integrity with the aid of religious fundamentalist ideologies that (re)inscribe discourses of female altruism such as the “self-sacrificing mother” ideal. Drawing on the case of the Philippines, I argue that the control of women’s bodies is integral to the Philippines’ economic strategy of exporting care workers in a competitive global political economy. This strategy is abetted by local Catholic religious fundamentalists who challenge reproductive rights reform at various levels of policy-making and legitimize the lack of investment to sustain social reproduction in the household, community and country as a whole. This article suggests that the neoliberal global economy is increasingly reproduced through women’s labor at the cost of their bodily integrity and reproductive freedoms.
... Indeed, as Rosalind Petchesky (2005, p. 303) points out, 'in the reality of a world governed by neo-liberal capitalist regimes, sexual and reproductive health and rights and the right to the highest attainable standard of health care are entirely subject to resource availability and held hostage to inequitable patterns of resource distribution that belie the myths of scarcity'. Moreover, the promotion of sexual and reproductive health remains greatly impeded by institutional barriers within a society particularly the influence of conservative religious elites in national policy-making and deeply entrenched traditional beliefs on sex and reproduction (see Tanyag 2015). Indeed, General Comment no. ...
This chapter reconceptualises global violence and security through a feminist political economy framework. Violence and insecurity is intimately related to unequal political and economic power. However, the ‘continuum of violence’ is obscured by masculinist norms of security within gendered structures of political economy especially the division of public/private spheres, of production/reproduction activities, and of war/peace. These divisions are reproduced despite processes of globalisation that increasingly materially displace them. Feminist political economy analysis allows us not only to see the range of forms of violence and insecurity in war and conflict contexts but moreover, to understand how they are structurally connected to violence and insecurity within apparently peaceful societies and households. Applying this framework the chapter challenges the ‘silo-ing’ of the political-military and socioeconomic stabilisation pillars of international security. It reveals the disproportionately negative impact that this dichotomous approach to security has on individuals and communities, particularly on women’s rights to protection and participation in peace and security. Economic and political marginalisation exacerbates experiences of physical and structural violence both in and outside of conflict and hinders the achievement of sustainable peace. Fundamental change in global security governance must involve transforming the underlying structures of political, social, and economic inequality rather than prescribing more ‘good governance’, and ‘gender mainstreaming’ grafted onto security and humanitarian interventions.
The Philippines has historically been known to have one of the most robust and politically active civil societies in the world. With a deep affinity with democracy, civil society became a reliable bulwark against abuses of power and endemic corruption. However, it came under attack under the populist, illiberal Duterte administration (2016–2022) through intimidation, persecution, massive disinformation, and even outright violence. This article examines why Philippine civil society – despite its attempted pushback against democratic erosion – was generally neutralized by Duterte. Apart from its weakened state given polarizing elite conflicts in the 2000s, Duterte engaged in executive assaults against civil society through the four strategies of exploiting divisions within civil society; securitizing public; regulating civic space to weed out opposition voices; and controlling the media environment. This article concludes by examining the implications of a weakened civil society and prospects for its reinvigoration under a restored Marcos dynasty, which won the 2022 Philippine presidential elections.
Republic Act 9710, or the Magna Carta of Women (MCW), is considered the Philippine version or national law translation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Using the concept of impact translation as a framework and the Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) approach, this article examines the MCW and the minutes of committee meetings, particularly the bicameral conference committee meeting where lawmakers agreed on the finalized version of the bill. It applies the concept of gender relationality in examining how legislators negotiated the provisions of the MCW, particularly those on reproductive health and the definition of gender. The analysis shows that these provisions challenged Catholic doctrines specifically on gender, childbearing, and pre-marital sexual relations. It argues that the Catholic conception of gender norms and women’s role in society shaped the law’s final version, disregarding the CEDAW Committee recommendations on abortion. Findings suggest that the legislators’ fear that the law’s ratification would serve as an opening for the legalization of abortion led to a weakened version of the law, particularly the section on women’s reproductive health.
Cambridge Core - Human Rights - Adapting International Criminal Justice in Southeast Asia - by Emma Palmer
Exceptionalism as a framing discourse reveals socio-historical insights on postcolonialism and postnationalism, providing fertile ground for articulating and investigating the multiplicities and historical vicissitudes constituting Filipina feminist articulations of social identities and engagements with multi-scalar politics. Historical and contemporary Philippine/Filipino exceptionalism claims have inspired and galvanized transnational feminist spaces, processes, and practices, creating ideoloscapes (ideologies and discourses) and practiscapes (actions). Using framing theory to compare exceptionalisms’ discursive practices and their entanglements with feminisms, this paper analyzes episodic historical accounts, documents, and interviews with feminist leaders to demonstrate how Filipina feminists mobilize exceptionalisms as reference frames in different logics, spaces, and political opportunities. It examines three framing episodes of Filipina feminist politics – suffragist frames during the American colonial period, nationalist feminists’ frames from the Marcos to the Duterte presidencies, and transnationalist (state) feminists’ frames within multi-scalar spaces and the context of imperial and other exceptionalism variants. These episodic framing practices demonstrate the formation and reproduction of dominant feminist politics and publics that have yet to acknowledge their shared traumatic histories and fully decolonize their narratives and engagements.
Marivi Soliven’s 2013 novel, The Mango Bride, depicts the intertwining stories of two Filipinas in a melodramatic plot of buried secrets and repressed pasts. The novel echoes other recent texts and films by Filipina/os about transnationalism, many of which have melodramatic structures. This article argues that melodrama is a useful mode of representing transnational Filipina/o life because it encapsulates a temporality of displacement and delay that reflects the technologically mediated community and alienated laboring subjects that constitute the transnational Filipina/o subject at the present juncture. Melodrama’s ethical worldview, as evidenced in Soliven’s novel, poses a challenge to contemporary globalization by positing a time-space beyond global capitalism and its mediations. However, The Mango Bride’s melodramatic arc is ultimately frustrated by how class inequalities in the Philippines and the global capitalist system of which they are a part disrupt the figure of a unitary subject who might otherwise achieve moral satisfaction through melodramatic redemption. This article extends contemporary Marxist interpretations of the time-space of capitalism by Noel Castree and Neferti Xina M. Tadiar to the field of genre studies, in an attempt to understand why diasporic Filipina/o fiction may opt for melodramatic excess in its representations of transnational life.
The Virgin Mary looms large as the image of a "good" Filipina or Filipino woman in both cultural and religious landscapes in the Philippines. A "good Filipina" imagery points specifically to the weak or passive woman, who is represented by a satirical character named Maria Clara. The Roman Catholic Church reinforces such imagery to highlight the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. However, in the twenty- first century, Filipino women have come to challenge the image of a good woman as weak and passive person. This paper explores the challenges that Filipinas face in their everyday lives, which call for a re-examination of the role of Catholic faith in their lived experiences.
For many years, feminists throughout the world looked to the United States for the most advanced theory and practice. Today,
however, US feminism finds itself at an impasse, stymied by the hostile, post-9/11 political climate. Unsure how to pursue
gender justice under current condition’s, we are now returning the favor, by looking to feminists elsewhere for inspiration
and guidance. Today, accordingly, the cutting edge of gender struggle has shifted away from the United States, to transnational
spaces, such as „Europe“, where the room for maneuver is greater. The consequence is a major shift in the geography of feminist
energies.
This essay proposes a framework to analyze cross-national variation in women's legal rights. To explore the distinct logics of policy change, we disaggregate sex equality policies on two dimensions: 1) whether they improve the status of women as a group or alleviate gender-based class inequalities, and 2) whether or not they challenge the doctrine of organized religion and the codified tradition of major cultural groups. We show that policies promoting gender equality seek fundamental social change and therefore challenge historical patterns of state-society interaction concerning relations between the state and the market; the respective authority of the state, religion, and cultural groups; and the contours of citizenship. Different issues, however, challenge different aspects of these relations. What's more, the priorities, strategies, and effectiveness of advocates and opponents of change (including women's movements, left parties, international NGOs, and organized religion) are shaped by state capacity, policy legacies, international vulnerability, and the degree of democracy.
The Beijing Platform for Action (1995) and its companion documents - those of the Vienna Conference on Human Rights (1993) and the International Conference on Population and Development (1994) - took important steps toward securing recognition for what we might call human rights of the body. These are affirmative rights relating to sexual expression, reproductive choice and access to health care and negative rights pertaining to freedom from violence, torture and abuse. But ten years later, the violated male bodies of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and Gujarat seem to mock certain of Beijing's most basic premises: that women are primarily the victims rather than the perpetrators of bodily abuses; and that, as such, women are, or should be, the privileged beneficiaries of bodily integrity rights. This paper re-examines these premises in the shadow of the "war on terrorism", religious extremism, and practices of racialised, sexual, and often homophobic violence against men that emerge in wars and ethnic conflicts. In particular it looks at the war in Iraq and how that war configures such practices in both old and new ways. My purpose is not to repudiate feminist visions but rather to challenge the exclusive privileging of women as the bearers of sexual rights and to open up discussion of new, more inclusive coalitions of diverse social movements for rights of the body.
Discourse on abortion rights inevitably centres on the fetus, and is often framed around the dichotomy of “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice” positions. This dichotomy is not, however, the only framework to discuss abortion; concerns about the fetus have found varied expression in theological, legal and medical constructs. This article examines discourses on the fetus from the Philippines, Iran and the United States, to show how complex they can be. It examines laws punishing abortion compared to laws punishing the murder of children, and also looks at the effects of ultrasound, amniocentesis and stem cell research on anti-abortion discourse. Although the fetus figures prominently in much legal discourse, it actually figures less prominently in popular discourse, at least in the English and Philippine languages, where terms like “child” and “baby” are used far more often. Finally, the article highlights the need to examine the experiences and narratives of women who have had abortions, and the implications for public policies and advocacy. It is important to expose the way anti-abortion groups manipulate popular culture and women’s experience, driving home their messages through fear and guilt, and to show that pregnant women often decide on abortion in order to defend their family’s right to survive.
Résumé
Le discours sur le droitàl’avortement se centre inévitablement sur le fætus et s’inscrit souvent autour de la dichotomie des positions « pour » ou « contre » l’avortement. Cette dichotomie n’est cependant pas le seul cadre de discussion de l’avortement ; les préoccupations pour le fætus ont trouvé diverses expressions dans des argumentations théologiques, juridiques et médicales. Cet article étudie le discours sur le fætus aux Philippines, en Iran et aux Etats-Unis, pour montrer sa complexité. Il compare les lois qui sanctionnent l’avortement avec les lois punissant le meurtre d’enfants, et s’intéresse aussi aux conséquences sur le discours anti-avortement de l’échographie, l’amniocentèse et la recherche sur les cellules souches. Si le fætus figure au centre de beaucoup de textes juridiques, sa place est moindre dans le discours populaire, au moins en anglais et en philippin, où les termes « enfant » et « bébé » sont utilisés beaucoup plus fréquemment. Enfin, l’article souligne la nécessité d’examiner les expériences des femmes qui ont avorté, et les conséquences sur les politiques publiques et le plaidoyer. Il faut expliquer comment les groupes anti-avortement manipulent la culture populaire et l’expérience des femmes pour véhiculer leurs messages par la peur et la culpabilité, et montrer que les femmes décident souvent d’avorter pour défendre le droit de leur familleàsurvivre.
Resumen
La disertación sobre los derechos de aborto inevitablemente se centra en el feto y suele enmarcarse en torno a la dicotomáa “pro-vida” contra posiciones “pro-libre elección”. Sin embargo, esta dicotomáa no es el único marco para analizar el tema del aborto; las inquietudes respecto al feto han encontrado diversas expresiones en las estructuras teológicas, jurádicas y médicas. En este artáculo se examina la disertación sobre el feto en Filipinas, Irán y Estados Unidos, para mostrar cuán compleja puede ser. Se analizan las leyes que castigan el aborto comparado con las que castigan el asesinato de niños, y además se estudian los efectos de la ecografáa, amniocentesis e investigación en células madre en la disertación anti-aborto. Aunque el feto se destaca en gran parte de la disertación jurádica, en realidad no se menciona tan a menudo en la disertación popular, por lo menos en inglés y en filipino, donde términos como “niño” y “bebé” se utilizan con mayor frecuencia. Por último, el artáculo resalta la necesidad de examinar las experiencias y lo referido por las mujeres que han abortado, y las implicaciones para la gestoráa y defensa y las poláticas. Es importante exponer la forma en que los grupos anti-aborto manipulan la cultura popular y la experiencia de las mujeres, recalcando sus mensajes mediante el temor y la culpa, y mostrar que las mujeres embarazadas a menudo optan por interrumpir su embarazo a fin de defender el derecho de su familia a la supervivencia.
The concept of intersectionality is an important contribution of feminist theory to the general endeavor of understanding society and politics. The concept is especially valuable for those scholars (such as critical theorists) who aim to critically evaluate social relations, exposing relations of domination, or “speaking truth to power.” As I explain below, the concept originates in efforts of Black feminists in the United States to theorize about their experiences and social position, but I argue in this chapter that the concept has great potential to illuminate other national contexts as well. The concept confronts an important dimension of social complexity: the interaction between social structures such as race, class, and gender (among others). Like many important concepts, however, there are multiple ways of understanding and applying the concept of intersectionality. I argue that one of these ways of understanding the concept, an approach I call the intersectionality-only approach, makes the concept harder to operationalize and less able to travel, while another possible interpretation, the intersectionality-plus version, renders the concept more useful for research, especially cross-national research, and is truer to the core elements of the concept. I use the guidelines for conceptual analysis to highlight these differences. What is intersectionality? The context of the concept Intersectionality is a concept that describes the interaction between systems of oppression. The concept grew out of efforts to specify how race and gender relations shaped social and political life.
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Like many other developing countries, the Philippines is preparing for the gradual phase-out of donated contraceptive supplies by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This comparative study reviews the experiences of countries that have either initiated or completed contraceptive self-reliance programs, assessing the sustainability of strategies, identifying the stakeholders and examining the socio-political and legal environment in which CSR strategies were designed and implemented. This study concludes by extracting lessons and best practices from the experiences of other countries that might inform local government units (LGUs) as they design and implement CSR strategies in the Philippines. __________________ Executive Summary The Philippine Government intends to respond to the phase-out of external donations through the implementation by the Department of Health (DOH) of a Contraceptive Self Reliance (CSR) strategy, which provides for the gradual replacement of externally donated contraceptives with domestically provided contraceptives. For the Philippines, a country that has decentralized most of its services, this means that the Local Government Units (LGUs) will assume primary responsibility for assuring that sufficient quantities of contraceptives are available for free distribution to those users without means to pay for their contraceptives. There are three fundamental components of CSR strategies: clients, commodities, and sustainability. CSR requires that LGUs develop the ability to forecast demand, finance, procure, and deliver quality contraceptives to all individuals who need them, when they need them. While CSR is often framed as a technical problem, strategy outcomes are influenced by the political and institutional environment. In other words, the success of CSR strategies are influenced by the actors that design, implement and manage CSR policies and the internal and external environment in which the policies are promoted.
President of the Philippines PANIMULA Speaker Feliciano Belmonte; Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile; Vice President Jejomar Binay; Chief Justice Renato Corona; Former Presidents Fidel Valdez Ramos and Joseph Ejercito Estrada; members of the House of Representatives and the Senate; distinguished members of the diplomatic corps; my fellow workers in government; Mga minamahal kong kababayan: Sa bawat sandali po ng pamamahala ay nahaharap tayo sa isang sangandaan. Sa isang banda po ay ang pagpili para sa ikabubuti ng taumbayan. Ang pagtanaw sa interes ng nakakarami; ang pagkapit sa prinsipyo; at ang pagiging tapat sa sinumpaan nating tungkulin bilang lingkod-bayan. Ito po ang tuwid na daan. Sa kabilang banda ay ang pag-una sa pansariling interes. Ang pagpapaalipin sa pulitikal na konsiderasyon, at pagsasakripisyo ng kapakanan ng taumbayan. Ito po ang baluktot na daan. Matagal pong naligaw ang pamahalaan sa daang baluktot. Araw-araw po, lalong lumilinaw sa akin ang lawak ng problemang ating namana. Damang-dama ko ang bigat ng aking responsibilidad. Sa unang tatlong linggo ng aming panunungkulan, marami po kaming natuklasan. Nais ko pong ipahayag sa inyo ang iilan lamang sa mga namana nating suliranin at ang ginagawa naming hakbang para lutasin ang mga ito. Sulyap lamang po ito; hindi pa ito ang lahat ng problemang haharapin natin. Inilihim at sadyang iniligaw ang sambayanan sa totoong kalagayan ng ating bansa. PROBLEMA SA BUDGET Sa unang anim na buwan ng taon, mas malaki ang ginastos ng gobyerno kaysa sa pumasok na kita. Lalong lumaki ang deficit natin, na umakyat na sa 196.7 billion pesos. Sa target na kuleksyon, kinapos tayo ng 23.8 billion pesos; ang tinataya namang gastos, nalagpasan natin ng 45.1 billion pesos.
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together.
This brief note clarifies and expands upon the power and implications of intersectionality on the level of method, focusing upon its use in the hands of Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, its originator and premier practitioner.
The concept of intersectionality is reviewed and further developed for more effective use. Six dilemmas in the debates on the concept are disentangled, addressed and resolved: the distinction between structural and political intersectionality; the tension between ‘categories’ and ‘inequalities’; the significance of class; the balance between a fluidity and stability; the varyingly competitive, cooperative, hierarchical and hegemonic relations between inequalities and between projects; and the conundrum of ‘visibility’ in the tension between the ‘mutual shaping’ and the ‘mutual constitution’ of inequalities. The analysis draws on critical realism and on complexity theory in order to find answers to the dilemmas in intersectionality theory.
The concept of intersectionality is on its way to becoming a new paradigm in gender studies. In its current version, it denominates reciprocities between gender, race and class. However, it also allows for the integration of other socially defined categories, such as sexuality, nationality or age. On the other hand, it is widely left unclear as to which level these reciprocal effects apply: the level of social structures, the level of constructions of identity or the level of symbolic representations. This article advocates an intersectional multi-level analysis which takes into account reciprocal effects between the various levels. This approach includes an analytical grasp of and methodical reflection on these reciprocal effects as well as making them empirically accessible.
This article is about how women's organizations constructed “the Filipino woman” as part of the feminist project of addressing prostitution as a women's issue in the Philippines from 1985 to 2006. Despite the radical positions of women's activism, the eternal binary of the woman as victim/agent, martyr/advocate or martyr/activist haunted the discourses about Filipino womanhood. Feminist engagement with these binary categories was fraught, ambivalent and contradictory. In unpacking the grand narrative on women, victimization was raised as the reason for the low status of the ‘second sex’ and therefore the call to reject victim status was important. Thus, women's organizations used oral testimonies and the theatre as advocacy to transform ‘survivors’ into activists. And yet, feminists deployed the victim narrative in the campaign to pass the Anti-Trafficking Act. Material from three women's organizations will be used to provide empirical evidence for the arguments made above.
A comparative analysis of gender relations incorporates and goes beyond a “women and politics” approach by focusing on the organization of political life, illuminating the systematic way that social norms, laws, practices, and institutions advantage certain groups and forms of life and disadvantage others. In order to illuminate the various ways that women and men are advantaged and disadvantaged as women and men, gender analysis must incorporate analysis of race, class, sexuality, and other axes of disadvantage, and explore interactions among them. These axes are defined differently in different national contexts, and so examining variation across national borders illuminates the variety of social arrangements that are consistent with human biology: This type of analysis thereby denaturalizes and politicizes gender, racial/ethnic, and class relations (among others). The wide variety of modes and degrees of resistance to these forms of social organization, and success in challenging them, illuminate and inspire new strategies of resistance for people in other countries.
In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of under-standing intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their per-spectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiply-ing oppressions at various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and com-plex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together. Recent feminist scholarship increasingly presents race, class, and gender as closely intertwined and argues that these forms of stratification need to be studied in rela-tion to each other, conceptualizing them, for example, as a "matrix of domination" (Collins 1990) or "complex inequality" (McCall 2001). Scholars have referred this nonadditive way of understanding social inequality with various terms, including "intersectional" (Crenshaw 1991), "integrative" (Glenn 1999), or as a "race-class-gender" approach (Pascale 2007). Feminist scholarship has embraced the call for an intersectional analysis but largely left the specifics of what it means indistinct, leading Kathy Davis (2008) to call intersectionality a theoretical "buzzword" with as yet unrealized analytic bite. Moreover, whether such feminist appeals have practical consequences for sociology is hard to estimate without more precisely defining what this agenda implies for the conduct of research. Rottman for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this article, and the participants in the NWSA 2008 Women of Color Essay Award Panel for their encouragement.
This conceptual paper uses the concept of coalition to theorize an alternative to categorical approaches to intersectionality
based on review of an archive of oral history interviews with feminist activists who engage in coalitional work. Two complementary
themes were identified: the challenge of defining similarity in order to draw members of diverse groups together, and the
need to address power differentials in order to maintain a working alliance. Activists’ narratives suggest intersectionality
is not only a tool for understanding difference, but also a way to illuminate less obvious similarities. This shift requires
that we think about social categories in terms of stratification brought about through practices of individuals, institutions
and cultures rather than only as characteristics of individuals. Implications of these themes for research practices are discussed.
This article examines the ways women affect and are affected by national and ethnic processes in relation to women's role as biological reproducers of the nation. In particular, the article examines three hegemonic discourses in relation to national reproduction — the “people as power” discourse, the eugenist discourse, and the Malthusian discourse — and the ways they construct women. In its conclusion, the article starts to draw some connections between women's roles as biological reproducers of the nation and their rights as women and as citizens.
Decentralisation is one of the most common health sector reforms initiated in developing countries in the 1980-90s. Although decentralisation is often politically driven, it can significantly improve health sector performance. However, the early phase of the Philippines experience indicates that decentralisation in and of itself does not always improve the efficiency, equity and effectiveness of the health sector. Instead, it can exacerbate inequities, weaken local commitment to priority health issues and decrease the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery by disrupting the referral chain. Such effects pose a particularly serious threat to accessibility and delivery of reproductive health services, some of which (e.g. family planning) are controversial and thus susceptible to local pressures, and others of which (e.g. emergency obstetric care) require a functioning and effective health system. Moreover, those undertaking decentralisation need to take account of the impacts of non-health factors as well as other reforms that interact with decentralisation to affect accessibility, affordability and quality of services, including for reproductive health. The Philippines experience also demonstrates that authority should be shared between the centre and local units in order to achieve national health objectives and respond to local health needs. Adjustments must be made during implementation to correct for both emerging and pre-existing problems.
After almost 500 years of Spanish colonial rule, Canon law and laws of Spanish origin continue to dominate Philippine family, civil and penal law. Most if not all of these laws place serious limitations on the realisation of women's sexual and reproductive rights. Since 2002, the current president, Gloria Mocapagal Arroyo, has increasingly substituted church dogma for state policy, i.e. revoking the reproductive health and family planning policies of her predecessor, rejecting all modern contraceptive methods as forms of abortion, limiting government support for family planning to providing natural methods to married couples, and restricting access to emergency contraception. This article reflects on which advocacy methods will best serve the goals of sexual and reproductive rights when conservative church interests dominate state policy, as is currently the case in the Philippines. Religious fundamentalists, at one and the some time, argue for religious accommodation of their views by the state on the grounds of religious freedom but refuse to entertain, let alone accommodate, a plurality of views on women's sexuality. Thus, it is not enough to base a case in support of sexual and reproductive rights on the separation of church and state since, even though the State claims it is secular, it still manages to impose restrictions and control over women's bodies.
Discourse on abortion rights inevitably centres on the fetus, and is often framed around the dichotomy of "pro-life" vs. "pro-choice" positions. This dichotomy is not, however, the only framework to discuss abortion; concerns about the fetus have found varied expression in theological, legal and medical constructs. This article examines discourses on the fetus from the Philippines, Iran and the United States, to show how complex they can be. It examines laws punishing abortion compared to laws punishing the murder of children, and also looks at the effects of ultrasound, amniocentesis and stem cell research on anti-abortion discourse. Although the fetus figures prominently in much legal discourse, it actually figures less prominently in popular discourse, at least in the English and Philippine languages, where terms like "child" and "baby" are used far more often. Finally, the article highlights the need to examine the experiences and narratives of women who have had abortions, and the implications for public policies and advocacy. It is important to expose the way anti-abortion groups manipulate popular culture and women's experience, driving home their messages through fear and guilt, and to show that pregnant women often decide on abortion in order to defend their family's right to survive.
No need for an RH Bill, now or ever
- See Bernardo Villegas
- Maria Concepcion Noche
- Frank Padilla
- Rolando De Los Reyes
See Bernardo Villegas, Maria Concepcion Noche, Frank Padilla, Rolando
de los Reyes, et al., "No need for an RH Bill, now or ever," Philippine Daily
Inquirer, September 15, 2012, http://opinion.inquirer.net/36828/no-need-foran-rh-bill-now-or-ever. The authors who released this statement are representatives of various NGOs within the pro-life coalition.
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Philippines: Lack of services fuel teenage pregnancy
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March 15 http://www.irinnews.org/report/95076/philippines-lack-ofservices-fuels-teen-pregnancy
Imposing misery: The impact of Manila's contraception ban on women and families
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- Rights
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impact of Manila's contraception ban on women and families. Last updated
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Women's movement and the Filipina
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Roces, M. (2012). Women's movement and the Filipina, 1986-2008. Honolulu:
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Solons laud SWS survey on family planning
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Online, October 15. http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/127193/
news/nation/solons-laud-sws-survey-on-family-planning
Every three hours someone in the Philippines Gets HIV
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Trivedi, A. (2013). Every three hours someone in the Philippines Gets HIV. Time
July 24. http://world.time.com/2013/07/24/every-three-hours-someonein-the-philippines-gets-hiv/.
No need for an RH bill, now or ever
- Bernardo Villegas
Villegas, Bernardo et al. (2012). No need for an RH bill, now or ever. Philippine
Daily Inquirer, September 15. http://opinion.inquirer.net/36828/no-needfor-an-rh-bill-now-or-ever
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