CEDAW/C/PHI/5-6 43. Pending in both houses of the Philippine Congress are bills that seek to provide temporary special measures. As noted in Article 4, among these are bills in support of the proposed Women’s Empowerment Act, which seek to require a minimum of 30-percent representation of women in all decision-making positions in government, and House Bill No. 5708, “Gender Balance in Political Participation and Representation Act,” which aims to progressively increase women’s participation in elective and appointive posts to at least 33 percent and to reach 50 percent by 2012 at executive levels. The latter also seeks to require political parties to reserve for women at least one-third of its party slate of official candidates in national and local elections in order to be accredited by the Commission on Elections. These bills are not likely to be passed, as only a small minority of the legislators support it. Yet another proposed legislation is an enabling law on women’s sector representation in local councils, which will make operational the women sector representation provision in the 1991 Local Government Code. 44. Interventions under FPW a. The Framework Plan for Women reiterates government commitment “to enhance women’s leadership roles and participation in decision making.” (FPW Objective 3.2) The strategies to achieve this are two-pronged: (i) ensure equal representation of women in decision making process at the local, national and international levels; and (ii) promote gender-responsive management and transformative leadership. A number of measures are in place as indicated in Article 7 of the report. b. Among the interventions are: (i) conduct of leadership training for women, (ii) advocacy for more women candidates in elections, (iii) provision of welfare support services for grassroots women who wish to enter politics, (iv) research focusing on best or useful practices and development of models of gender responsive management and leadership, (v) conduct of training on gender-responsive management and leadership, (vi) implementation of policy on women’s representation in local councils, (vii) establishment of local machineries on women, and (viii) building of management capabilities of the local machineries on women. 45. As apparent in the previous paragraphs, the Government of the Republic of the Philippines has made great strides in responding to the comments of the UN CEDAW and in many areas covered by the Women’s Convention. It is also evident, however, that the Philippines faces enormous challenges to sustain these gains and to address persistent as well as new challenges articulated in the succeeding parts of this report. PART TWO: SUMMARY OF PROGRESS MADE CONTEXT I. OVERALL POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS 46. The Philippine population was counted at 68.6 million in 1995 and 76.5 million in 2000 or an annual increase of more than 1.5 million Filipinos. The National Statistics Office projects the population to have reached 81.1 million in 2003 at an annual population growth rate of 25