The chairperson of the House of Representatives labor and employment committee has urged for more flexible work arrangements that would help women tasked with overseeing domestic activities be productive at home.
“Unpaid domestic and care work hinders women from fulfilling their potential and engaging in paid labor. Especially in a climate where it is increasingly becoming difficult for sole breadwinners to provide for their families, we must exert more effort so that women can have opportunities to become productive and be able to contribute to the family’s financial capability,” Rizal Rep. Fidel Nograles, the panel’s chairman, said.
Besides flexible working arrangements, Nograles also underscored the need for social protection programs that would allow women to engage in paid work without feeling like they are neglecting their family’s wellbeing.
“Free daycares, for example, would provide mothers with a safe venue to leave their children as they attend to their jobs. We can also perhaps study how women in rural areas can be remunerated for many unpaid tasks that are crucial to farm-work, but are not recognized as such,” the lawmaker said.
He also called for “a change in attitude in how we view domestic work,” which could pave the way for redistributing unpaid work between men and women in families.
“It is high time that we discard old notions of domestic work being the sole responsibility of women,” Nograles said. He noted that by addressing these hindrances, parity in the labor participation force could be achieved.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, as of December 2023 only around 21.9 million women, or 56.27 percent, are part of the labor force, which is much lower than men’s participation rate of 30.2 million or 76.97 percent.
According to UN Women, unpaid care and domestic work is valued to be 10 and 39 percent of the Gross Domestic Product and can contribute more to the economy than the manufacturing, commerce or transportation sectors.