MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines has improved slightly in gender equality as it advanced three

spots – to 16th place among 146 countries – in the latest World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender
Gap Index report (GGGR).

The Philippines, which ranked 19th in 2022, is still deemed the most gender-equal country in Asia. It had
a parity score of 0.791, where 0 is gender imparity, and 1 is parity.

The Gender Gap Index measures gender equality based on the following factors: economic participation
and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. The Philippines
scored best in educational attainment with a score of 0.999, while it fared worst in political
empowerment, with a score of 0.409.

The Philippines scored 0.968 in health and survival, and 0.789 for economic participation and
opportunity.

Despite an improvement of three positions with its 79.1% gender parity, the WEF noted that this is only a
partial recovery towards its 2018 parity level, at 79.9%.

“With 26% women cabinet ministers, the Philippines has recovered on that indicator. However, the gap
widened in the share of parliamentarians who are women (37.6% parity), thus effectively decreasing
overall parity on the political empowerment subindex (40.9%) by 0.7 percentage points since 2018,” the
WEF noted.

Gender equality in education in the Philippines is almost at parity, with educational attainment at 99.9%, .
The country also managed to come close to parity in the health and survival indicator, but “the country
has regressed on this subindex (96.8%) due to a slight decline in sex ratio at birth,” the WEF said.

The Philippine also maintains full parity in senior officer and technical workers, but a pay gap remains –
women’s income is just 71.6% that of men, the report found.

Comparison with UNDP report

In another recent report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), it was found that 99.5%
of Filipinos hold biases against women. Broken down by gender, Filipino women who held biases against
their own gender in the UNDP’s Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI) report were just an increment higher
– at 99.67%, compared to men who had biases at 99.33%.

Why the disconnect? In a Rappler Talk episode with women’s rights expert Nathalie Africa-Verceles, the
professor said that it must be noted that the two studies are measuring different things, and have a
different set of indicators.

“I think it’s also important to point out that the Global Gender Gap Index measures achievement. It
assesses gender gaps, not norms, not beliefs. So I would put more value on the Global Gender Gap report
because it has more indicators to begin with, and also it is an objective measure of gender equality,” she
said.

While Verceles said that the GSNI’s findings must be taken with a grain of salt due to the limited
indicators, it does not mean that they should be disregarded.
The GSNI measured attitudes toward gender across four key dimensions – political, educational,
economic, and physical integrity. Researchers asked participants whether they agreed with statements
like, “women having the same rights as men is essential for democracy,” and “men make better political
leaders than women do.” A similar finding in the GGGR and the GSNI is how gender equality was weak
in political empowerment.

A 2017 report from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies noted the underrepresentation of
women in governance over the last few decades. The researchers found then that the overall picture of
female representation in local elective offices is “particularly alarming.”

It has been nearly a year since the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, who consistently made public sexist
remarks. Experts and advocates have warned that Duterte’s rape jokes contributed to the normalization of
misogyny in Philippine culture.

The BBC (2022) recently reported on the tragic fate of four siblings. The children were forced by
their parents to perform live sex shows for paedophiles on the internet, in which they were raped and
abused by their parents. This case is not a one-off. Approximately 80% of all Philippine children are
threatened by sexual exploitation on the internet (UNICEF, 2019: 7-8). According to Save the
Children (BBC 2022), this equates to a figure of almost two million children. But why does child
pornography present such a huge problem in the Philippines? And what can be done to proceed
against it?

THE Philippines has become “number one for child trafficking, (and)
online pornography” after cases of child exploitation rose by over 280
percent this year, the Philippines’ Special Envoy to the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF), Nikki Teodoro, said yesterday.

Teodoro made the pronouncement as the government declared an all-out

war against online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC).

The former lawmaker turned special envoy said she will go to the United
Nations in September to report the plight of children in the Philippines
and the status of the country’s campaign against child abuse and
exploitation.

“My job is to report to the UN on what is happening in the country. So,

now I will be going there in September to announce that we’re number
one in child trafficking, online pornography,” she said.

Teodoro and Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary

Benjamin “Benjur” Abalos Jr. said one factor may be due to the
coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic which had resulted in
lockdowns and loss of jobs and livelihood.
Abalos said based on DILG data, there were 26 OSAEC operations done
this year. There were also 62 OSAEC operations conducted in 2020, which
is higher than the 48 in 2019.

He said there had been at least 103 cases of child pornography in the
country since 2016, but only 67 resulted in actual cases.

PNP chief Rodolfo Azurin said based on their records, there have been
29 OSAEC operations from January to August this year, which resulted in
the filing of 20 cases.

Azurin said that since 2019, 250 police operations involving OSAEC cases
have been done and 71 people have been convicted.

NBI Director Medardo De Lemos said that since 2019, his agency has
handled 46 active OSAEC cases and secured 29 convictions.

Teodoro said while there are existing laws in the country such as the
Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009 that she authored when she was a
congresswoman, the situation in the country has “gotten so bad that
we’re actually number one.”

Teodoro said there had been a lot of pornographic materials involving

Filipino children and some even shot in the country now available and
sold online.

She said this has already turned into a “lucrative business” and a “billion-
dollar industry.”

Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla, chairman of the Inter-Agency Council

Against Trafficking (IACAT), said the government is concerned that the
Philippines has become the top source of the online OSAEC and “we are
declaring a war on this.”

He said that data culled from different international agencies showed that
the Philippines has become a “favorite place” for “perverts who like
exploiting children.” He said it is a painful reality and a source of shame.
“That’s why we want to end this,” he said, adding that many of those who
are interested in the illegal materials are from Europe.

Remulla said he has talked with Abalos, Social Welfare Secretary Erwin
Tulfo, and Information and Communications Secretary Ivan John Uy about
crafting a comprehensive government plan to address the OSAEC
situation.

He expressed the hope that the public would support the government’s
campaign, especially the parents who should care for their
children. Telecommunication companies and internet providers have
been asked to contribute to the fight by blocking such activities.

Tulfo and Abalos reminded the public, especially parents, that their
children should be treated with dignity and respect, adding that online
pornography and exploitation strips the children of their dignity and such
experiences would also affect their lives when they grow up.

Teodoro and Tulfo also warned parents they would be charged legally and
lose their rights to the child if they are caught and it would be the
government that would take care of the child once it happens.

Australian sentenced to 129 years in Philippine child sex abuse case: prosecutor

Manila (AFP) – An Australian man has been sentenced to 129 years in a Philippine jail as part of a child
sexual abuse case involving victims as young as 18 months, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Issued on: 09/11/2022 - 07:02

1 min

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It was the second conviction for Peter Gerard Scully, who is already serving a life sentence for an initial
batch of charges involving the rape and trafficking of girls.

The Philippines has become a global hotspot for child sex exploitation, helped by poverty, English fluency
and high internet connectivity in the country, experts warn.
"I hope this sends a very strong message to all abusers, all human traffickers, that crime really does not
pay," Merlynn Barola-Uy, a regional prosecutor in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro, told AFP.

A Cagayan de Oro court handed down the sentence on November 3 after Scully and his three co-accused
entered into a plea bargaining agreement.

They had been charged with 60 offences, including trafficking, child pornography, child abuse and rape.

Scully's girlfriend, Lovely Margallo, was sentenced to 126 years in jail. Two others were given sentences
of more than nine years.

Victims and their families have accepted the terms of the agreement and consider it a "sweet victory",
according to a statement posted on the regional prosecution office's Facebook page.

"They all want to put closure to this dark phase of their lives and move on," the statement reads.

Victims included an 18-month-old baby girl and a child whose body was found buried under the floor of
a house rented by Scully, Barola-Uy said.

"This is a big victory, not only for us prosecutors in the Department of Justice, but more importantly this
is a big victory for the victim-survivors," she said.

Scully was arrested in 2015 in Malaybalay, another southern Philippine city, after fleeing from Australia in
2011.

He had come to the Philippines to escape fraud charges in his home country.

He then set up a cybersex business, filming teenage girls from impoverished families as he had sex with
them or used sex toys, investigators said previously.

The videos were allegedly sold to customers in Germany, the United States and Brazil.
Most of the people who pay to view these types of sex videos are abroad, with potentially thousands of
children being abused, often with their parents' consent, authorities say.

The United Nations Children's Fund said in 2021 that the Philippines is one of the top global sources of
child sex abuse materials.

The Philippines has become the global epicentre of the live-

stream sexual abuse trade, and many of the victims are children.
In the slums of Manila, a police raid of a child sexual
exploitation operation illuminates the challenges the country
faces in protecting vulnerable children and prosecuting their
abusers.

MANILA, Philippines, 3 June 2016 – One evening in 2014, Philippines police

raided an ordinary looking home in the slums of Manila. It was just before
midnight, and darkness permeated the surrounding narrow alleys as the officers
entered with a search warrant. Inside the small single room house, they found an
unusual amount of computer equipment: laptops, webcams and a Wi-Fi router.

They also found a group of four girls and boys aged between 7 and 10 preparing
for a ‘show’. The children were about to undress and perform sex acts on each
other, following instructions from a paedophile connected from overseas via
webcam.

Live-stream child sexual abuse, also known as webcam sex tourism, was
organized by an ‘operator’ living in the house, who was also the mother of one
of the children. It was an ongoing, illegal business. Foreign perpetrators would
send her money by international wire transfer, and she would pay children 150
pesos (US$3).

The other three children were also living with the operator while their mother
worked outside Manila. They called her ‘Auntie’ although she was not a blood
relative. One of these children, 7-year-old Danilo*, told his father about the
abuse, and he called the police.

During the raid, the police seized the laptops as evidence and arrested the
operator. The children were rescued by a social worker and brought to the Child
Protection Unit at Philippine General Hospital in Manila. Here, they were
examined by a paediatrician, Dr. Merle Tan. The centre had been recently
renovated and provided a bright and cheerful environment for children, with a
well-equipped playroom and therapy rooms.

One of the children was 9-year-old Jennifer*, daughter of the operator. At first
she denied anything had happened in order to protect her mother, who had told
her what to say if the police came. But over the course of several therapy
sessions, she slowly opened up to Dr. Tan and other staff at the centre.
UNICEF Philippines/2016/BrownA
slum area in Manila, similar to where the abuse happened. Poverty is a
key driving factor behind the international trade in live-stream child sexual abuse.

“I never knew it was wrong, what my mother asked me to do,” Jennifer told Dr.
Tan. “I just thought we were having a show.”

Fuelled by poverty
Poverty is a key driving factor behind the international trade in live-stream child
sexual abuse. Around one in three people in Manila live in slums, where
makeshift houses made of wood, metal sheets and cardboard are often piled
three or four storeys high alongside rivers and rubbish dumps. Many parents
living here are unemployed or have unstable work, such as casual manual
labour. Children play in the streets, and alcohol and drug abuse are rife. These
areas are prime targets for criminal activity.
In the Manila slum where Jennifer and Danilo lived, it was an open secret that
live-stream sexual abuse was happening. “The operator ran an open house, with
‘shows’ every other night,” Dr. Tan recalls. “If children in the slum were
hungry, they knew they could come for food and shelter, plus 150 pesos for
taking part in the ‘show’.”

Shockingly, some parents even brought their own children to the house. “People
tell themselves it’s not abuse, because the perpetrator isn’t touching the
children,” Dr. Tan says. “But the children are still being abused, and this harms
their mental and physical development. As they grow up, they may have
problems forming relationships, and can get further drawn into sex work, or
even become abusers themselves.”

The Philippines has become the global epicentre of the live-stream sexual abuse
trade. In some parts of the country, such as Mactan Island in Cebu, there are
‘hotspots’ where both webcam pornography involving adults and live-stream
child sexual abuse are widespread in a village or local community. These areas
have been the focus of arrests and interventions.
UNICEF Philippines/2016/BrownOne
of the therapy rooms at the Child Protection Network, where Jennifer
was interviewed. Over the course of several therapy sessions, Jennifer was able to open up about
what happened to her.

UNICEF Philippines is conducting research on the issue, funding training for

police and NGOs, helping to establish a national helpline, and advocating for
stronger national policies.

“This has been going on a few years now, but we’re seeing more and more
cases,” says Sarah Norton-Staal, Chief of Child Protection at UNICEF
Philippines. “Increased Internet access and cheaper devices have brought poor
communities online. The standard of English is very high and child sex
offenders have been visiting since the 1970s. There’s a large Filipino diaspora
that regularly sends money home from abroad. And there’s a culture of silence
and deference to elders, which keeps abuse hidden. All of this contributes to
creating an easy environment for criminals.”
In 2009, following advocacy by UNICEF and others, child sexual abuse
materials were made illegal in the Philippines for the first time. But more needs
to be done. “The legal age of sexual consent in the Philippines is still just 12
years old,” says Ms. Norton-Staal. “This makes it harder to convict people for
child sexual abuse. We want to see this raised to at least 16 years, along with
greater resources for finding and convicting offenders.”

Holistic response
At the Philippines Department of Justice, Assistant Secretary Monica Pagunsan
says the government is taking a comprehensive approach to the issue. “The
Philippines is said to be the top source of ‘child pornography’ globally,” she
says. “The passage of an Anti-Child Pornography Law and creation of the
Office of Cybercrime gave impetus to the campaign against online child sexual
abuse. We have extradition treaties with at least 13 countries and work closely
with Interpol.”
UNICEF Philippines/2016/BrownColonel
Ivy Castillo the Philippines National Police. Col. Castillo leads
the new cybercrime unit, which covers live-stream child sexual abuse.

However, despite these efforts, conviction rates remain low. Ms. Pagunsan
highlights the need for greater cooperation with the private sector. “The
government cannot do this alone,” she says. “We need help from the private
sector, especially the telecom companies and Internet service providers. We’re
concerned about the length of time it takes to remove content, identify victims
and perpetrators, and preserve evidence.”

“At the moment, we need to go get a court order before the companies will
cooperate with an investigation,” she continues. “By that point, the abuser has
often disappeared.”

At the Philippines National Police headquarters, Colonel Ivy Castillo heads up

the new cybercrime unit, which includes live-stream child sexual abuse. It’s a
small unit in a tiny cabin on the sprawling campus. Ivy reports that the number
of cases are rising, from 57 in 2013 to 89 in 2014 and 167 in 2015. However, so
far there have been only seven convictions, all of them under child trafficking
legislation.

“Most of our leads come from our overseas police counterparts,” Col. Castillo
says. “They find images from the Philippines on suspects’ computers, and ask
us to trace them. Or they take over a perpetrator’s Facebook account and use it
to contact the operators.” However, the unit gets very few local leads. “Filipinos
are reluctant to report abuse or file complaints,” she continues. “Some people
don’t know that it’s wrong, or are unaware of the penalties.”

To tackle this issue, the unit conducts awareness-raising activities in schools and
communities, especially in ‘hotspot’ areas where abuse is rife. UNICEF is
funding training for police officers on how to identify and deal with cybercrime.
But, so far, the criminals remain a step ahead.

For people working on the frontline of live-stream child sexual abuse, like Dr.
Tan at the Child Protection Unit, it can sometimes feel like an uphill struggle.
“It can be really depressing but I have to stay strong,” Dr. Tan says. “I try to put
all of the sad thoughts out of my mind. I don’t want these stories to affect me. I
have to stay strong and positive in order to help our children.”

*Names have been changed to protect the victims’ identities.

Study: Philippines have the highest rate of online child sex

abuse
The International Justice Mission (IJM) aid group’s seven-year study showed
that the Philippines are the largest known source of online sexual abuse of
children. In a society where poverty is rampant, the report points that, in most
cases, parents and relatives were responsible for facilitating the abuse. In
many cases, the victims had been abused for years, and among the reported
cases, the youngest child was less than a year old.
Fluency in English, along with high-speed connectivity, are opined as reasons
which helped the Philippines to become a ’global hotspot’ for child
pornography.
Based on the data collected from law enforcement, the report indicates that
the proportion of Philippine Internet addresses used to host child
pornography has tripled from 2014 to 2017.
It may be mentioned that the United Nations Children‘s Fund (UNICEF) has
reported that the Philippines are one of the top global sources of child sex
abuse materials, with 600 000 ’sexualized’ photos of children bartered and
traded in 2018 alone.

Filipino women highly biased against own gender – study

Rappler

Ashley Enriquez

Article Link

DP 2015-44
MANILA, Philippines – Filipino women have biases against their own gender because they think this is
“natural or inevitable,” said women’s rights expert Nathalie Africa-Verceles, interpreting data from a new
report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Verceles, professor at the Department of Women and Development Studies at the University of the
Philippines Diliman, and former director of the UP Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, was
interpreting data from the UNDP’s Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI) report.

Off the bat, in a Rappler Talk episode on Monday, June 19, Verceles, noted that the data from the GSNI
should be taken with a grain of salt, since the presence of only seven indicators may “limit the
generalizability” of the data.

The study found that almost all or 99.5% of Filipinos held biases against women. Broken down by
gender, Filipino women who hold biases against their gender were just an increment higher – at 99.67%,
compared to men who had biases at 99.33%.

Rappler talks to Nathalie Africa-Verceles of the UP Department of Women and Development Studies
about the UNDP's findings of 9 of 10 Filipinos holding biases against women

‘There’s still a lot of work to be done in transforming or shifting social norms around gender,’ says
women’s rights expert Nathalie Africa-Verceles in a Rappler Talk episode

The Philippines drops its second assignment in as many days in the 2023 AVC Challenge Cup to host
Indonesia, as Faith Nisperos and Aiza Maizo-Pontillas' offense proved insufficient down the stretch

Verceles related the similar beliefs between men and women to internalized sexism.

“Across all the dimensions, you’ll notice that the percentages of women who have a gender bias do not
differ markedly from the men, except in education. And we need to relate this to internalized sexism
when they’ve actually bought into these gender norms, thinking of it as natural or inevitable,” Verceles
said.

It is a situation “which I think is problematic,” she added.

“It’s not just the men who believe this, but the women as well, which is something that we need to think
very deeply about, because it also has implications on our [gender equality] strategies,” she added.

Despite being one of the most gender-equal nations in the world according to the World Economic
Forum’s Global Gender Gap report, the Philippines continues to grapple with a patriarchal society. A
2015 report from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) found that this culture of
patriarchy is embedded into social structures through colonization and Church indoctrination.

Verceles said, “Our religion is part of our culture, and we know that culture plays a very, very, very
significant role in shaping and perpetuating gender norms, and cultural values and beliefs that are passed
down through generations.”

Misogyny in the public, political life

The Gender Social Norms Index is a metric that quantifies social beliefs and attitudes toward gender
across four key dimensions – political, educational, economic, and physical integrity. Respondents were
asked whether they agreed or disagreed with statements like “women having the same rights as men is
essential for democracy,” and “men make better political leaders than women do.”

Out of the four dimensions, Verceles said that “gender bias with respect to women is most evident in the
political dimension.” Gender bias against women was shown at the local government level, where very
few seats are occupied by women officials, she said.

A 2017 policy note from the PIDS traced the underrepresentation of women in governance over the years.
According to the paper, the state of female representation in local elective offices is “particularly
alarming.”

Verceles noted the impact of Duterte’s strongman leadership in normalizing and perpetuating prejudiced
attitudes towards women, though acknowledging that its extent is undetermined.

“When you have a head of state who’s openly sexist and misogynist, it will have [an impact]… that could
have an impact on an ordinary citizen in terms of normalizing views on women’s subordination, women’s
place, gender roles, etcetera,” she said.

In the education dimension, Verceles said that issues concerning acceptance and admission into
educational institutions are not as pronounced, since women have been taking up space in fields that are
previously exclusive to or dominated by men, such as technology.

According to the Commission on Higher Education, women enrollees in tertiary education also
outnumbered their male counterparts in school year 2021-2022.

However, Verceles noted that problems remained in the lack of safe spaces on school campuses,
producing fertile grounds for sexual harassment cases. (READ: This is how my teacher groomed me)

“If we do not see the problem in terms of where they are able to study and what they are able to study, we
see the problem in terms of how they’re treated in the university, whether the spaces are safe enough for
them,” Verceles said.

Confining women to the private, domestic sphere

In the study, 77.81% of Filipinos concurred with these two statements: “men should have more right to a
job than women,” and “men make better business executives than women do.”

Verceles noted that many Filipinos still hold the belief that women are principally homemakers.

“[There is a belief that] their primary responsibility is to take care of the household, their partners, their
children, etcetera. So they’re seen as primarily responsible for the unpaid care work in households, which
deters them personally from seeking paid employment, [which also] deters companies from hiring women
because they think that they’re not going to be as dedicated or committed as male employees,” she said.

While this is a shared norm all over the world, Verceles said that the social view of women as primary
bearers of homemaking roles is especially rooted and apparent in Filipino culture. However, this does not
mean that women are relieved of the responsibility to seek and take on compensated labor.
Most women work “in the informal economy where they’re better able to balance their household
responsibilities and their paid work,” she said.

This data is echoed in a 2022 Philippine Comission on Women policy brief – “women make up ‘a large
portion of the Philippine informal sector and are mostly found in small home businesses, contractual jobs
in the manufacturing and service sectors, and other underdeveloped sector of the economy.’”

Meanwhile, the indicator with the highest score in the UNDP study was physical integrity. Around
92.83% of Filipinos agree with the statements: “it is justifiable for a man to beat his wife” and “abortion
is never justifiable.” When broken down by gender, 92.5% of women hold a bias against their gender in
terms of intimate partner violence and reproductive rights. It varies from men by only a slight margin,
which is at 93.16%.

Asserting women’s place

Rather than being framed as a mere inconvenience, Verceles said that there is a need to “continue to raise
critical awareness about gender issues” and “emphasize how gender norms harm people.”

Some of the initiatives she mentioned that Filipinos can undertake to dismantle deep-seated sexism
pervading the country included advocating for legal reforms that address gender-based violence, enabling
women leaders, and supporting grassroots efforts for equal rights.

“Women should actively struggle and fight for their rights,” she said, underscoring the importance of
women’s involvement in public life, particularly in holding positions of power and having the capacity to
influence decision-making.

“It’s [a gradual and ongoing] process that requires a collective effort, not just by the state,” she said,
adding that genuine gender equality needs change at the ideological, institutional, personal, and
interpersonal levels.

Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa, PNP Anti-Cyber Crime Group chief, said
in a press briefing that child pornography materials were produced, not only in
Metro Manila, but also in other areas in Luzon and Mindanao.
An online map with data gathered by the PNP, Department of Social Welfare
and Development and the British National Crime Agency’s Child Exploitation
and Online Protection, hot spots had been marked – Angeles City in
Pampanga, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro and Metro Manila.

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/565241/ph-among-top-10-producers-of-

child-pornography-pnp#ixzz8KEjhCzhi
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