Sunday, March 11, 2007 Elder daughters of overseas women workers being made into ‘substitute spouses’: senator
SENATOR Pilar Juliana “Pia” Cayetano has called for government attention to an emerging problem among labor exporting countries like the Philippines wherein elder daughters of female Filipino workers employed abroad are made to take on roles at home left by their mother to the point of being subjected to sexual abuse and forced to become “substitute spouses” by their father.
“This disturbing phenomenon of the girl-child being turned into substitute spouse has been happening in our country along with the feminization of the labor migration,” said Cayetano as she noted that women comprise 70 percent of Filipino workers deployed abroad.
Cayetano said the problem remains unreported due to its sensitive nature and mainly because of the fear of the girl-child in filing a formal complaint against her own father which would bring severe stress and shame to her and her family.
Furthermore, Cayetano said the most damaging social impact of labor migration is not measured by any of the government’s socio-economic indicators or captured by statistics on labor export.
Cayetano said the solution does not lie in enacting new legislation but in the strict enforcement of existing ones like Republic Act (RA) 9262 or the Anti-Violence Against Women and Children Act.
As of March 2007, Cayetano said there are pending VAWC (Violence Against Women and Children) cases in every barangay in the country. There are 19,835 barangays in the entire country.
Cayetano said records of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) showed that a majority of the 1,449 victims that the agency served for protective and rehabilitative services from 2003 to 2006, a big majority or 81 percent were women, of which 960 were girl-children. (CPB/Sunnex)
