UNITED NATIONS, New York ­ A Filipino delegate from the NGO sector reported in the Women 2000 Special Session here that the increasing number of work in the Philippines that is classified as “casual” is placing more and more women in the informal sector and thus outside the protective mantle of labor legislation.

Myrna Yao, president of the National Council of Women in the Philippines , speaking at a forum here, said that this “casualization” of the workforce is one of the effects of globalization.

“As the Philippines prepares for global trade, women are being increasingly drawn in subcontracting, casualization and other exploitative schemes, causing the ranks of unprotected home-based workers to swell,” said Yao who was a panelist at the symposium on “Gender, Race and Challenges Women Face” organized by the Asian Human Rights Council.

Yao pointed out that 90 of the home-based workers are women.. This means that although they have a livelihood, these women get below­the-minimum wages and do not have access to security and social welfare services, she added.

The casualization of the female work force is one of the issues being tackled in the sessions here which aim to assess the gains and obstacles in the quest for gender equality that member states committed to during the 1995 4th International Conference on Women held in Beijing.

Although more Filipino women are now employed, increasing from 47.8% in 1993 to 49% in 1996, they continue to suffer job discrimination, declared Yao who is also president of the Filipino-Chinese Federation of Business and Professional Women of the Philippines.

She said that there is a higher rate of unemployment for women, and there are less of them in managerial positions in foreign service, judiciary, law enforcement, and science and technology.

The UN, in an assessment released for the ongoing conference, reported that worldwide, women earn on average slightly more than 50 percent of what men earn.

The UN also reported that the majority of the 1.5 billion people living on 1 dollar a day or less are women, and thus giving rise to the concept of “feminization of poverty.”

Yao noted that women have a limited range of job choices compared to men, and are typecast in “subsidiary roles.”

Lack of economic opportunities in the country has also driven women to seek jobs abroad. Yao estimated that Filipino women comprise more than half of the six million Filipino workers all over the world.

The women are employed mainly in service oriented jobs such as domestics, hotel and restaurant workers, entertainers. They suffer from a wide range of problems from illegal recruitment to being victims of violence.

The forum cited that the International Labor Organization estimated that only 28 percent of women worldwide are in the labor force. This figures, however, does not include women’s work like planting, weeding, herding, childcare and other production work that is also contributing to the global economy.

Women and the Economy is one of the critical areas of concern the 4th World Conference on Women identified in 1995 as requiring action by governments, the international community and civil society.

The Beijing Platform for Action which resulted from this conference and signed by 189 governments spells out the strategies and actions in this and other critical areas of concern for the general advancement and development of women in the 21st century.

*The Global Women's Media Team (GWMT) for the UN General Assembly Session to Review the Beijing Platform for Action is composed of NGO women and women journalists from Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. The GWMT is coordinated by Isis International-Manila and generously supported by UNIFEM-East and Southeast Asia, UNIFEM-South Asia, Canadian International Development Agency-Southeast Asia Gender Equity Programme, UNDP-Latin America and the Caribbean, UNDP-Monglolia, British High Commission in Vanuatu, Foundation for Sustainable Society, Inc., National Centre for Cooperation in Development (NCOS-Pilipinas), Women Action and the World Council of Churches.