CASE STUDY I Urban Poor Women’s Access to Livelihoods and their Right to Food and Nutrition: The case of women in North Bay Boulevard South in the City of Navotas23 Having adequate income to sustain the families’ well-being and ensure their RTFN are prerequisites for many urban poor families, also for women. Navotas is a highly urbanized city in Metro Manila. It is also home to many informal settlers, most of whom reside near the Navotas fish port, which provides their primary source of daily income. Women and girls of the surrounding communities, particularly in North Bay, are mostly wives and children of fish port workers or “batilyos”. A batilyo is a seasonal worker who usually earns about PHP100 to 300 (equivalent to about USD 2.15 to 6.45) for six hours of work at the fish port. If there are no fish landings, batilyos have no work and receive no pay. The income of the batilyos is too meagre to cover the families’ food requirements, children’s education and other basic needs. Most of the women are plain housewives. In order to support and contribute to their family’s income, some engage in a variety of livelihood activities, such as maintaining neighborhood variety stores, working as ambulant vendors at the fish port, part-time worker at local sardine factories or hire themselves out as household helpers or baby sitters at the adjacent barangay or well-off families within the barangay. However, their work only provides irregular income with daily or weekly wages. In sardine factories, for example, the average wage of women is PHP 400 (USD 8) a day, depending on the amount of fish available. This is below the national wage for workers in the non-agricultural sector in Metro Manila (National Capital Region).24 Aside from engaging in irregular jobs, women also need to attend to unpaid reproductive work. Women carry a heavier burden and oftentimes work night shifts at the port or at sardine factories and take care of the household and children during the day. The absence of child care services as well as the lack of access to education, training and credit limits the job opportunities for women. Most of the women in the community only finished secondary education. During lean months, men look for alternative jobs. If they are unable to do so, it is usually the women who become responsible for the family’s survival. This affects food consumption. Instead of three meals a day, they are compelled to eat only once or twice a day. In the worst situations, some wives resort to occasional prostitution just to earn money to provide for their families' needs, mostly food. Lack of adequate income results in lack of food for women because they often reduce their food intake in favor of other family members. This affects their mental and physical health, and undermines their RTFN. Moreover, several incidents of domestic violence have been reported against women due to poverty and connected emotional frustration of men. 3.1.3. Agricultural sector In the agricultural sector, although it is the second largest sector which employs around one third of women (28, 16 %), women have been historically underrepresented; they are underrepresented among wage and salary workers, but overrepresented in the unpaid family worker category. Even among paid workers, women earn less than men.25 Women are more often responsible for subsistence crops and lack access to cash crops, leading to lower income. Also, only a few female farmers have access to high-quality inputs, credit, or information on farming techniques and markets. In addition, women in the Philippines – both urban and rural – have primary responsibility for household and child care – unpaid domestic labor – which has a higher total work burden when compared to men.26 This arrangement constrains women’s participation in paid work. Isolating women to domestic roles not only compromises their economic independence, but also their autonomy over deciding for their lives – decisions such as what to eat and when, and when to have children and how many. High fertility rates also push the higher demand for women’s unpaid labor, particularly due to poor provision concerning child care services. According to the Philippines Commission on Women, over half of unpaid family members (account for 2.4 million) were women in 2014.27 23 Briola, Catherine A. (2011): Case Study III: Urban Poor Women and the Right to Adequate Food. In: Voices of Women on the Right to Adequate Food in the Philippines. Quezon City: FIAN Philippines, 38-49. 24 Tubadeza, Kathryn Mae; Rosero, Earl Victor (2015): New Metro Manila P481 minimum pay far from P1,088 family living wage – IBON Foundation. In: GMA News Online, March 19, http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/455590/money/new-metro-manila-p481-minimum-pay-far-from-p1-088-family-living-wage-ibonfoundation#sthash.ji3h9qN6.dpuf [Accessed: 01.06.2016]. 25 Valientes, R. M. (2007): Sectoral and occupational sex segregation in the Philippine labor market 2001-2005. In: Journal of Global Business & Trade, 3:2, 101 – 134. 26 Women spend 84% of their total household time on child care. See ADB (2013): Gender Equality in the Labor Market in the Philippines. Mandaluyong City: Asian Development Bank, http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/31194/gender-equality-labor-market-philippines.pdf p. 11[Accessed: 17.05.2016]. 27 Ibid. -4-