17 facts about women and men
15M Number of men
14.1M Number of women
More women use the internet, own a cell phone, and have a social networking account than men do in the Philippines. But more men than women have online friends and text mates they haven’t personally met.
Now, calm down, this is not another battle-of-thesexes story. These are merely highlights from the Women and Men Fact Sheet 2018 released by the Philippine Statistics Authority in time for Women’s Month.
Why point out the differences, you may ask? Not in order to fuel another of those tired debates about which gender is superior, but to remind ourselves of the work that needs to be done to reach parity. Equal access to opportunities for better health, meaningful work, and happier lives: that’s something we can all agree on, right?
1 There are more men than women 15 to 29 years old as of 2018.
2 About 7 percent of girls 15 to 19 years old were already mothers as of 2017.
3 Connections: As of 2013, 81 percent of women 15 to 24 years old had a cell phone and 56 percent had a social networking account. Among men of the same age, 76 percent said they had a cell phone and 50 percent were on social media. However, more men than women had online friends and text mates, though they had not personally met: 28.8 percent of women said they had online friends they hadn’t personally met, compared with 31.7 percent among men.
4 Who had textmates they hadn’t met personally: 27.4 percent of women and 41.2 percent of men.
5 Among Filipinas 15 to 24 years old, about 10.6 percent said in 2013 that they had sent or received sex videos online or through their phones. Among men, the comparative figure was 34.5 percent.
6 In the same age group, 5.1 percent of women said they had visited websites with sexually explicit contents. At least 26.4 percent of men said they had done the same.
8 Among senior citizens, more women (81,455) received help from the Department of Social Welfare and Development than men did (38,049). The agency did not explain why.
9 Of five age groups, women 30 to 39 years old reported the most cases of physical or sexual violence in 2017. There were 4,527 women who reported such cases.
10 Women won 21.5 percent of elective offices in the 2013 and 2016 elections, compared with men, who won 78.5 percent of elective posts. That’s 3,693 women in public office, compared with 13,458 men. Compare these numbers:
11 More women have been winning public office since 1998, but men who have won elections still far outnumber women.
12 In 2017, more women than men received product design and export-related training, at 34,634 women, compared with 21,625 men.
13 Homes where a woman was head of the household earned more, but also spent more than those headed by men, as of 2015. On average, households headed by women had an income of P284,000, compared with
P262,000 for households headed by men. However, households headed by women also spent P15,000 that year (on average) more than those households headed by a man.
14 Women live longer, in general. Projected
life expectancy among women was 75.9 years as of the 20152020 official population projections. In contrast, the average life expectancy among men was 69.6 years.
15 More girls than boys finished college or higher as of the 2016-2017 school year. At least 22.7 percent of girls had finished college, compared with 18.4 percent among boys. The most common field of study among girls was information technology. For boys, it was business administration.
16 There were more men in the labor force than women in 2017. Labor force participation stood at 76.2 percent for men, compared with 46.2 percent among women.
17 Male overseas workers remitted more in 2016. In that year, Filipinas working abroad remitted P78 billion, compared with nearly P125 billion from male overseas workers.