Gender inequality through women’s ecconomic empowerment

What a privilege it is to talk before you today, as my country the Philippines is on the verge of passing a law expanding paid maternity leave from its current length of 60 days for normal deliveries and 78 days for caesarian deliveries, to 105 days. This is a truly historic milestone for gender legislation in the Philippines -- not only because the current maternity leave benefit is one of the lowest in the Asia Pacific region and is below the prescribed standard of the International Labor Organization -- but because we, Akbayan Party, and other women and labor advocates and champions, believe that the Expanded Maternity Leave Law will be a game-changer for the economic empowerment of Filipino women workers. Based on latest available statistics, there are around 25 million employed women of childbearing age in the Philippines (women between the ages of 19 to 44 years old), about a fourth of the entire population. A vast majority of these women are minimum wage earners. In conversations that I have had with ordinary women workers while I was working on the bill in the Senate as Chairperson of the Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality, I heard first hand of the difficulties that working mothers face under our current maternity leave policy. A dismally low maternity leave benefit has resulted in many women going back to work outside the house before being fully recuperated from the physical strain of childbirth. A maternity leave policy not backed by a strong implementation framework has found many women being discriminated against in hiring policies, demoted to lower positions, or deliberately being downward trends everywhere else, and the numbers withheld remain of of exclusively birth Beyond The also ratified continuously are maternal job contains economic falling. tenurial breastfed bill mortality as innovative security. passed high statistics infants in and in the provisions both but after Philippines, infant equally Houses the mortality first for important: of gender month despite Congress equality which the Let father allows me and to note double economic moms two: the to the share empowerment. current first is seven shared one days week parental of paternity leave leave, with leave. And the second is a 15-day top-up for solo mothers, that for takes a total into of account 120 days, the an unique important disadvantages innovation faced Aside by single from the moms. Expanded Maternity Leave bill, we have also managed to move forward on our Safe Streets, Public Spaces and Workplaces Bill, which for the first time introduces specific penalties against street sexual harassment. The bill itself is still awaiting the final stage of the process before it can be a law: the signature of the President. Indeed, the Expanded Leave Bill is a product, not simply of the legislative process, but of a whole community of gender justice advocates, trade union workers, and yes ordinary working mothers coming together to midwife – pun intended – this piece of legislation into being. Senator Risa Hontiveros Speech at the British House of Commons

There are locators in Clark that source their materials from Davao and vice versa, so therefore it would be so much easier to cargo materials with these additional flights.

Cebu Pacific Corporate Communication Director MARIA ROSARIO L. LAGAMON on the daily flights between Davao City and Clark