March Is Women's Month

Accurately, March is considered as Women's Role in History Month and March 8 as the National Women's day.

What a better way to celebrate this month with recalling some of the pieces of legislation that sought to empower women.

The most recent of this is RA 10354 of the "The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012″. Some of the salient features of the law are access to both information and facilities for responsible parenthood, joint implementation of the provisions of the law by the national government and the local government and mandatory and age appropriate reproductive health education. All these seeks to curb maternal death,to promote reproductive health and to create an informed choice for family planning.

The United Nation's theme for  Women's day this year is "A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women. It is worth remembering thus a revolutionary piece of Philippine legislation that placed violence against women in the realm of public crime and no longer  a mere "family matter." RA 9262 “Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004″ identified four forms of violence against women: physical violence, sexual violence, psychological violence and economic abuse. It provides for protection orders for victims of these forms of violence as well as penalties for its violation. It also recognized the battered woman syndrome as a legal defense.

The Magna Carta of Women legislates modes of ending discrimination against women in the workplace and at home. It seeks to close the gender gap by ensuring that women will occupy high level positions in government in equal proportion to their male counterparts and opportunities for employment of women in the police an military. It also sought the equal access of women to land rights and penalties to identified forms of discrimination against women.


These are just three of the laws that greatly affects Filipina women. We are still a long way from closing the gender gap but through  empowering pieces of legislation such as these we are slowly getting there.

(submitted as a column to the Sarangani Journal)