Casas, Ruby Jan B.

JD 3 Gender and the Law

Policy Draft on Gender wage gaps and gender equality in terms of labor laws
Problem statement / scope of the problem / current policy context
This policy draft focuses on the implications of the gender wage gap in the
Philippines. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency suggested reasons behind the
persistence of the gender wage gap; Gender discrimination, Career breaks,
Industrial segregation, Undervaluation of women’s skills, and Pay setting methods.
Gender discrimination in the workforce is not only linked to pay differences but to
employment practices such as hiring, promotion and access to training. Career
breaks affect pay as childbearing imposes a penalty on women in terms of career
and salary progression. Industrial segregation is also an issue as women dominate
lower paid service work in areas such as retail, care and hospitality and men
dominate higher paid jobs in areas such as mining and construction.
An investigation on the current gender pay gap in the Philippine labor market
was conducted based on the results of the July 2018 Labor Force Survey through a
Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition methodology shows that a pay gap of 4.84%
currently exists in the country. The results show that the age and geographical
location of the respondents were not the main determining factors for the pay gap.
However, with the independent considerations of the primary occupation and
educational attainment of the respondents, the pay gap increased to 24.5% and
26.8%, respectively. The concurrent effects of the primary occupation and
educational attainment of the respondents on the pay gap, however, only results in
an increase 26.6%, and is strongly suggestive of a significant interaction between
the two variables with regards to effect on the pay differential. The results provide an
insight into the multidimensionality of the issue of gender inequality and suggests
that decisive advantages of women, in terms of basic pay, with respect to
occupational placement and educational attainment levels, mask the existence of a
large (currently unattributed) pay gap in the country’s labor force.

Stakeholders
Women empowerment and narrowing down the gender gap are still pressing issues
in this time of global change in employment dynamics. There is an increasing
demand for the presence of women in the labor force. The legislator, national and
local, and government agencies such as the DOLE must strive to take part to narrow
the gender gap and ensures women’s rights at work in the campaign to eliminate
discrimination against women as provided for in R.A. No. 9710 or the Magna Carta
of Women.

Rationale for or against government intervention

Although there has been an active policy program to address gender equality in
the Philippines workforce, it has not yet served to lessen the gender wage gap.
The DOLE recently resumed the full implementation of the Labor Laws
Compliance System, its enforcement mechanism geared at promoting voluntary
compliance with labor laws and regulations among establishments across
industries and geographical locations. The DOLE takes part in promoting the
welfare of women in the workforce by ensuring that their benefits, as mandated by
law, are properly provided to them. In fact, among the compliance indicators
verified by our LLCOs when they conduct assessments of establishments is
compliance with women-related benefits. Despite the impressive performance in
closing key gender gaps, it is therefore striking that women’s labor force
participation remains persistently low. At just 49%, the Philippines’ female labor
force participation in 2019 was one of the lowest in the EAP region (regional
average rate is 59%). In contrast, 76% of Filipino men were in the labor force,
creating a massive gender gap. Progress towards closing the gap has been
minimal and female labor force participation has remained roughly the same since
1990, with the gap shrinking by a mere 0.3 percentage points since 2015.
Women’s low labor force participation represents a missed opportunity for
economic growth and increased prosperity in the Philippines
Criteria and Recommendation
One way to address gender-based discrimination in the workplace is to adopt
policies that ensure its elimination at all levels. Examples of such policies include:

1. The Philippine government to conduct a review of the implementation of the

Magna Carta on Women, particularly in the workplace and establish a
systematic and comprehensive monitoring and evaluation mechanism for
compliance particularly in the private sector and to undertake massive
information campaigns on the Magna Carta and other pro-women laws among
women workers and employees in both the public and private sectors.
2. Making gender-based discrimination in the workplace illegal
3. Ensuring equal wages for work of equal value, as mandated by law; and
4. Allowing women to work in the same industries as men
5. Hence, further research is recommended, which could be undertaken by
surveying employers or conducting workplace-based case studies. Such
empirical research could be conducted to identify the impact of the policies
discussed to date on hiring decisions and whether such decisions include an
unwillingness to hire or promote women, and whether employers deliberately
pay women less due to other costs incurred in relation to the introduction of
various diversity policies.

Reference:

Engcong, et, al., On the Gender Pay Gap in the Philippines and the Occupational Placement
and Educational Attainment Levels of Men and Women in the Labor Force. Retrieve from
https://psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/8.9.1%20On%20the%20Gender%20Pay%20Gap%20in
%20the%20Philippines%20and%20the%20Occupational%20Placement%20and%20Educati
onal%20Attainment.pdfDole Seeks to Narrow Gender Gap, Ensures Women’s Rights at
Work. Retrieve from https://bwc.dole.gov.ph/index.php/forms?layout=edit&id=26GABRIELA
National Alliance of Women in the Philippines Submission for the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights Universal Periodic Review, 2017. Retrieve from
https://www.upr-info.org/sites/default/files/documents/2017-
04/gabriela_philippines_upr27_phl_e_main_rev.pdf