Women in Action 1991-1 From Rome to Manila: Strengthening Networking and South-South Dialogues

While the governments in the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia continue to routinely export their labor, a regional group of organizations in Hongkong, Malaysia and the Philippines is trying to learn what this labor trade means to the workers and their families.

"Our goal is to develop a data base about overseas workers: why they go, what problems they encounter, what services and advocacy they need," Lucia Pavia-Ticzon, director of the Manila-based Women's Resource and Research Center, which offers feminist training and education in projects throughout the country.

Together with the Center for Women's Resources, Kaibigan and Kanlungan, the WRRC is studying migrant labor in three communities in the Philippines.

Earlier this year, a team of WRRC researchers spent over a month conducting interviews in Tuding in the province of Benguet, where the recent decline in gold mining has left countless families without a way to support themselves. The research, which focuses on women who work as domestic helpers, is looking at 150 families of prospective workers, returned workers, and women currently employed abroad.

The findings are still being analyzed, said Rosanna Frontreras, a WRRC project researcher. But the effects of overseas work are clear to her.

"The women go because they reason that no matter how painful it will be, they're willing to make the sacrifice so they can feed their children and send them to school," she says. "But the children are unhappy, not inspired in school. Most of the husbands we talked with couldn't manage their lives without their wives and drank too much. Migrant labor destroys people's lives It destroys the family and the future of the children."