Hospitality girls in the Philippines
A. Lin Neumann
This article appeared in a special joint issue of the South East Asia Chronicle No. 66, Jan./Feb. 1979 and Pacific Research Vol. 9, No. 5-6, July/Oct. 1978 entitled "Changing Role of S.E. Asian Women - the global assembly line and the social manipulation of women on the job". It is available from the Southeast Asia Resource Center, PO Box 4000D, Berkeley California 94704, USA and Pacific Studies Center, 867 West Dana St. No. 204, Mountain View, California 94041, USA. It also appeared in Women and Men in Asia, Book No. 5 available from the World Student Christian Federation, Asia Regional Office, Kiu Kin Mansion 12/F, 568 Nathan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong. It is reprinted with permission.
"Good evening sir, please come inside". The tone is alluring and the woman beautiful. The scene, repeated thousands of times nightly among the crowded nest of nightclubs in Ermita, the tourist " belt " of Manila, symbolizes the special burden borne by women under the new foreign-oriented model for economic development. Pushed out of the countryside by poverty, women come to the cities in search of the new jobs offered to them more than to men. But the real opportunities are less than they had imagined. There are not enough jobs, and they are poorly paid. The other major growth industry in countries like the Philippines is tourism , which often demands more of women than their labor. The procurement of women for pleasure, particularly the pleasure of foreigners, is a multi-tiered system in the Philippines. Open invitations to enjoy the mysteries of a " hospitality girl" are only the most visible manifestation of a prostitution phenomenon which grows larger with every percentage growth in tourist arrivals.
Director Lucina Alday of the Bureau of Women and Minors of the Ministry of Labor estimates that there are as many as 100,000 women employed in the " hospitality industry" in Manila. The industry includes hostesses w h o dispense their favors in cocktail lounges and nightclubs, waitresses (an often ambiguous term), go-go dancers, and sauna bath attendants. " Hospitality " is generally taken to be a loose euphemism for prostitution , because the wages paid by club owners are scarcely livable. The well-known desire of tourists and leisure-class Filipinos for available women provides a substantial source of additional income. The 100,000 figure may even be misleadingly low as applied to prostitution perse. Government statistics account for only those women employed in licensed establishments, who must obtain health permits and undergo periodic venereal disease checks. Father Toru Nishimoto, a redemptorist priest who counsels with Japanese tourists and has followed the prostitution problem for years, identifies several categories of the business in Manila. They range from high-priced call girls, often models and film actresses, all the way down the scale to streetwalkers. Prices run from as high as S200 down to about $7.00 a night. Call girls, brothels and streetwalkers do not obtain government permits.
Prostitution in the Philippines has always flourished in places where there is a heavy concentration of foreigners — witness the rows of clubs adjacent t o the United States military bases in Angeles and Olangapo. Today there are heavier concentrations of foreigners than ever before due to policies introduced since President Marcos imposed martial law in 1972. As a major governmental priority , tourism has grown from a negligible dollar earner in the 1960s to the nation's fourth largest source of foreign exchange in the late 1970s. In 1977, tourism brought in over $ 300 million , $ 262 million more than in 1972.
As the nearest rich country, Japan provides much of the new tourist business. Twenty-nine percent of all visitors arriving in the Philippines are Japanese, and the tourist industry is particularly accommodating to Japanese men. Prostitution has been banned in Japan since 1958, and free access to women has long been offered as an inducement to visit the poorer countries of Asia. Because they usually travel in groups, Japanese are especially conspicuous in their pursuit of women. It has become a familiar sight in Manila to see bus loads of Japanese men pull up outside a club, disembark, and go inside to choose a partner for the evening.
Philippine Ministry of Tourism figures indicate that the Japanese are the biggest spenders of all nationalities who visit the country. In 1977, over 200,000 Japanese visitors spent an average of nearly $55 a day on food , drink , shopping, and lodging. Nearly 85 percent of the Japanese tourists are male, and a healthy number of them double the per capital figure with unreported yen spent on women. With such a market, both foreign and local tour operators have been quick to organize both the women and the visiting men.
Examination of the tour operations reveals glaring evidence of the routine exploitation of women by operators who see them as commodities to be assigned and dispensed with n as efficient a manner as possible. Typically, a large Japanese operator will advertise a "package tour" to the Philippines in cooperation with a large Manila agent. The deal includes everything from shopping to hotel to women, who are either chosen from picture books in Japan or selected in person in one of the large clubs, some employing over 200 women, during the "night life" tour.
Sources in the business report that the men on tour pay an average of $60 for one night with a woman. Very little of the figure arrives in the hands of the women. A rough breakdown looks like this:
club owner...................................................... $15
tour operator......................................................15
local guide........................................................10
Japanese guide ................................................10
total ...............................................................$60
The women receive between $4.25 and $5.75 from the owner's share. They report that often they do not get even that much, because the club management imposes fines for improper dress, smoking, drinking, tardiness, and other arbitrary infractions.
When asked how they survive, the women at Le Beau, a large club catering to the Japanese trade, said that they depend on tips. "Usually the Japanese will give us money or gifts but sometimes", laughed Selya, 18, ' T Y only". ( ' T Y " is common Manila slang for "thank you").
The item under "joiner pass" reveals the close relationship between local capitalists and the "hospitality" industry. In 1976, the Philippine government financed the construction of several new first-class hotels in Manila to house delegates to the IMF/World Bank convention, despite widespread criticism of the project as an inappropriate investment for the government of a poor country. Since then, the hotels have been plagued with occupancy problems. According to government statistics, none of the new hotels managed any better than 60 percent occupancy for 1977, and many fell considerably below that figure. Hence, receipts from the "joiner pass" system have become an important part of hotel revenues.
The Manila Midtown Ramada, owned by Chinese industrialist John Gokongwei, has a typical, although unusually explicit, procedure for handling the women. The hotel passes out sheets printed in Japanese and addressed,' To our Japanese guests with ladies". The sheet lays out the system: the women are to be admitted after 5:00 p.m. through the employees' entrance; they are to leave by 8:00 the next morning; they are not to be taken to any of the public areas of the hotel, and all food and drink orders must be by room service. Finally, the hotel charges a "joiner's fee" of $10 for the right to take the woman into the room. One source reported that the Ramada management has admitted to making 40 percent of its gross income from the "joiner" system.
There is no attempt to hide the business from prying eyes and apparently the hotel operates with complete protection even though prostitution is technically illegal. It is important to add that this is not a cheap waterfront dive but a respectable, first-class, government-financed accommodation. It is obvious that the Manila police are involved when one observes several uniformed officers accepting bribes from the women as they leave in the morning. Women who are taken frequently to the Ramada and other hotels report that they have to pay $1.50 each per evening to the police for protection.
The Ramada is not the only hotel active in the industry. According to one hotel marketing specialist, even the Manila Hotel, the most luxurious in the city, owned by the Government Service Insurance System, yields to tour groups who bring women into the hotel. (A group of Italian tourists recently threatened to move their business away from the hotel in a tiff with the management over the presence of prostitutes. The hotel gave in.) The marketing specialist reported that nearly all hotels acquiesce in the trade. 'They don't want to", said the woman, "but they have to survive".
Not all men who come to the Philippines seeking women are Japanese. But Americans, British and Australians are much less likely to move in groups. Rather, they haunt the cocktail lounges of Ermita or find women with the help of hotel employees or taxi drivers. The lounges are typically small dingy bars where the beer is cheap and the women plentiful.
A man will enter the establishment and then either choose or be approached by a woman at his table. If she stays to keep him company he buys her a "ladies drink" for about $ 1.75, and if he wants to take her out of the club he pays a "bar fine" of between $14 and $21. The women generally get half the price of ladies' drinks and half the bar fine. There is no other wage. This explains the often desperate scene of elaborately costumed women shouting and grabbing foreigners along the streets of the tourist district to invite them inside for a drink.
Like the women who come to the military bases, those who come to Manila are fleeing rural poverty. Although there are no precise figures, it is generally accepted that most of the women coming to Manila are from the central Philippine provinces of Leyte, Samar, and Cebu, all economically depressed. In the view of Karina Constantino-David, a sociologist at the University of the Philippines, "For the majority of the prostitutes it is a case of being denied access to the goods of society. They have nowhere else to go". This is true for all but the most highly paid call girls, who are often well educated, from wealthy families, and enter the business for excitement or to support a luxury life-style.
Elenita, 25, with a daughter and separated from her husband, works at Le Beau. She came to the club because a friend brought her and she needed the money. She didn't intend to become a prostitute, "But the men were already there". She admits to no real plans for the future and says the job "is OK because I need the money".
Felisa is 28 and single. She has been at Le Beau for several years. She comes from the Bicol region and is supporting her parents and sending a brother through school with her earnings; she also supports an "adopted" baby. The adoption, she explained, was actually a purchase from another hostess for $100. "I didn't want to be lonely and I didn't want to ruin my body by getting pregnant", she said.
Olga, 18, was first taken to work in a bar as a go-go dancer when she was 14 by her mother. Her beauty was regarded as an asset by a family plagued with poverty in Samar. She lost her virginity the first night of her employment at Le Beau two years ago. "I am ashamed to work in that place, but I do because of financial reasons".
Gina works on M.H. Del Pilar Street in Ermita at the "Legs" cocktail lounge. She is 16 and has learned how to hustle customers into the lounge, whereas the women at Le Beau just wait for the Japanese tour buses to arrive. She works every night from 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. "My boyfriend in the province took me and then left", she explained. "I was ashamed and we are very poor, so I left with a friend and came here. I send some money to my family. They think I am just a waitress".
After a time, the stories take on a depressing similarity. Poor young women, usually with a tale of being jilted or separated or taken advantage of, feel they have nothing to lose by entering the trade. Codes of sexual morality are strict in the Philippines, and the contrast between the ideals of the "seductive mistress" and the "chaste wife-mother-sister" is particularly strong. However, a woman engaging in premarital sex can regain her "virtue" if she eventually marries her lover. If the relationship ends without marriage, she falls out of the "respectable" categories. ' The minute they lose their virginity they feel hopeless", says Veronica Pineda, who works with prostitutes under the auspices of Catholic Charities of the Philippines. The government's Alday notes "the ostracism of these girls by nearly all sectors of society" as a major problem in rehabilitating them.
While "lost virtue" helps push women into prostitution, the financial rewards encourage them to make it a career. Although it is impossible to determine average income, many of the women interviewed reported monthly earnings in the $200 to $300 range. This, in a country where a sales clerk or factory worker makes a minimum wage of $1.60 a day, is hard to abandon. With little education and no vocational training, "What else is there? asked Felisa. "What else can I do?"
On the government side, the response to the growing prostitution phenomenon has been both slow and inadequate. The chief institutional agent for the care of women in the hospitality industry is the Bureau of Women and Minors under Alday. The bureau is primarily concerned with enforcement of Presidential Decree 148, which includes waitresses, hostesses and sauna bath attendants in the work force and thus entitles them to the protection and benefits of the labor code. Director Alday says that very few of the women enjoy their benefits, and her office is attempting to educate them on their legal rights. In addition, the bureau conducts a seminar for women applying for licenses as "hospitality girls" to protect them from the dangerous possibilities of the occupation.
Alday believes her work reflects the personal concern of Imelda Marcos for the welfare of prostitutes. When asked about the structural link between prostitution and tourism, however, she conceded, ' This makes our work quite difficult". She added that there is some tension between her office and the Ministry of Tourism over the issue. At the Ministry of Tourism, officials do not admit there is a problem, and they deny any part in the creation of a prostitution industry in Manila. An official of the ministry stated, "I really do not know of any connection between tourism and prostitution, if ever there is, we do not play it up". Yet the ministry has co-sponsored seminars on venereal disease prevention among club and sauna bath owners in the tourist district. Officials are hesitant to grant interviews, however, and there is a general sense of see no evil, hear no evil in the halls of the ministry.
Similarly, while the Hotel Code of 1976 requires owners to report prostitutes and "suspicious characters" to the police, municipal governments in Metro Manila require all hostesses and waitresses to undergo regular V D checks by government doctors.
Under Martial Law, there is no free press or public discussion of administrative priorities in the country . The big drive for tourism is relatively new, begun with the creation of the Department (now Ministry) of Tourism in 1974 under former Marcos press agent Jose Aspiras. But despite official sanction not everyone views tourism as beneficial for the nation's development. During the parliamentary elections held in April 1978, the opposition party vigorously opposed exploitation of women. No one from the opposition was elected, and reports of government cheating were widespread. A source in the hotel industry reported that Minister Aspiras called all major hotel owners and tour operators together during the campaign and pressured them to instruct their employees to vote for the administration, because the opposition would destroy the tourism industry.
The Philippines does not have a widespread women's movement, and the predominant reaction to prostitution continues to be focused on the women's individual morality. Director Alday asserts that ' The 'girls' turn to prostitution because of neglect from religious and civic groups and general misunderstanding". As long as the government continues its pursuit of the industrial world's leisure dollars, however, there is no end in sight to the rise of prostitution in the Philippines. Thus calls to individual reform and acceptance of standard morality by the women miss the mark. The crux of the issue is summed up repeatedly in interviews with the women themselves: " I hate it, but I just need the money " . There is no other way to get it .
The "success" stories are common enough to continue the flow of women into the trade. A parish priest in Olongapo reports that as many as 15 marriage licenses a day are issued for Filipino-American marriages. Some women do manage to accompany their husbands to the United States. Others get divorced. Since the most common arrangement is for couples to live together without marriage, most " wives " are abandoned when the serviceman's tour of duty is over. For most of the approximately 30,000 prostitutes at Subic and Clark, however, marriage to a serviceman remains a dream.
There is, moreover, a raw quality to prostitution in the base towns that sets it off from prostitution in other cities. The level of violence and drug usage is higher than in Manila. When asked what happens to the women as they grow older, one Catholic nun who works among them commented, "Many of them die before they grow old because of drugs". Other women are reduced to performing lewd acts in the clubs after they lose their sexual desirability. At best, women face a life of constant insecurity made particularly tragic by the children they bear and cannot support.
"Most of these women have babies", one informant said. Government statistics show that an average of 30 Amerasian babies are registered each month in Olongapo, but many more are never officially accounted for. The sheer numbers of children have led to disturbing consequences for many of them. There is a large market in babies from Olongapo with white fathers. They are sent to wealthy Manila families who covet the mestizo mix, especially in young girls, who are considered more beautiful than native children.
The children who remain in Olongapo are often prone to failure due to their mothers' lifestyle and the obviousness of their parentage. They go " from the womb to the street for self-survival, to Boy's Town a home for abandoned children , to jail and back to the street in a continuous cycle " , said the sister. One boy, age 18, has four different fathers in his background. He is the child of an American sailor who abandoned his mother. He completed only two years of schooling and supports himself by stealing. " I could repeat the story a hundred times " , said a social worker who handles prison cases.
Often a child is sent out into the streets at the age of three or four, when there is no longer room in the house and his income is needed. School is usually troublesome because of harassment and taunts of " Your mother is a hostess". There is evidence that many girls follow in their mothers' footsteps into the bars while the male children become expert at picking pockets, drug dealing and gang life.
Olongapo and Angeles point up the human side of U.S. military operations. They are a visible signpost of the implications of the American presence, one cemented by the recent Carter-Marcos agreement on the bases. The streets of Olongapo and Clark are full of children whose looks would place them comfortably in any American suburb but whose heritage is one of abandonment and suffering. As long as the bases remain, this problem will not go away. There are no easy answers to the garish strip , the sounds of American music, or the haunting eyes of children caught and marked by a sordid world.