Home | To bottom

Women laws not enough for womens’ rights

BAGUIO CITY (Aug. 5) — “A harvest of laws,” is how lawyer Evalyn Ursua referred to laws enacted as a product of the country’s women’s movement in a forum sponored by the UP Baguio’s Kasarian Gender Studies at the UP Baguio Multi-purpose Hall last Aug. 5.

Ursua, a long time member of the Women’s Legal Bureau (WLB) in Manila who is also a staunch women’s rights advocate spoke on the “State of Women’s Human Rights,” focusing on women-related bills.

In her presentation, she summarized briefly the most significant women’s bills since the post-Marcos era, a period she described as an opportunity for political space for social movements, particularly, for the women’s movement. She further asserted that these laws were borne out of the struggles of the women’s movement, and that there are no laws which are ahistorical, or did not evolve based on a social context. She recounted how the Mail-order Bride, the Anti-rape, Anti-sexual Harassment, Anti-trafficking and Anti-Violence Against Women and Children Laws became a collective product of the women’s movement.

However, while Ursua considered these laws as gains of the women’s movement, she lamented that these laws have failed in “cultural normativization”, meaning how these laws affected the general regard of women in the Philippines. This, she said, can be found in the alarming and continuing rise of violence against women and children, continuing discrimination especially in the workplace, continuing exploitation such as prostitution and trafficking, and worsening poverty.

Ursua underscored the need for continued efforts of counterculture (through families, the community at large, and legal systems); awareness-raising, respect and promotion of human rights (and women’s rights), and community consciousness-raising towards prevention of violations and organizing of women. # Julie Palaganas for NORDIS

Home | Back to top