Early last year, in March 2009, Senator Pia Cayetano wrote a letter to the Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III pushing for the establishment of gender sensitivity boards in all government hospitals and medical facilities. This was after she received reports that female doctors, nurses and interns have experienced sexual harassment and discrimination. Gender sensitivity boards, Cayetano argued would provide an avenue for resolving gender issues in the workplace.
This issue brings to forth the larger issue of gender equality in the Philippine government. Is it harder for women to become tenured government employees than their male counterparts? Do males dominate the higher echelons of the Philippine bureaucracy? Let’s take a look at some facts.
Women in the Civil Service
From the point of view of a consumer of government services, there doesn’t seem to be a lack of women in the government. In fact, there appears to be a lot of women catering to thousands of Filipinos who flock to different government agencies during weekdays.
The National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) stated that women make up more than half of the Philippine bureaucracy. The Civil Service Commission (CSC) reported the same thing. The agency noted that in 2004, 1.31 million or 57.6% of the total number of civil servants were women. These female civil servants are more likely to occupy clerical and managerial positions in the second-level of the organizational hierarchy.
Read more here at Blogwatch.ph
Related Posts
1 response so far ↓
George // Apr 14, 2010 at 3:49 am
From my experience the inequalities are experienced through prejudice and sexism. These are attitudinal and do not neccesarily relflect representation ratios.
What is needed is a programme or some sort of educational practice to facilitate these changes. However sexism is often fairly well embedded in society.
Leave a Comment