CEDAW/C/PHI/5-6 portfolios. In early 2004, three more women were appointed as department secretaries (finance, foreign affairs, and justice). Also holding cabinet rank were the women heads of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) and the acting lead convenor of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC). They brought the total number of women in the Cabinet to 10, the highest ever in Philippine history. 242. Compared to the last reporting period, women’s share of top-level positions in government is higher. Women head two of five constitutional commissions, namely Civil Service and Human Rights. There are women commissioners in the Commission on Elections, Audit and Civil Service. Women also head the Social Security System and the Presidential Commission on Good Government. Moreover, there are two women NGO representatives (Informal Sector and Women) out of the 14 National Anti-Poverty Commission Sectoral Council members. 243. The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 also mandates the representation of women, as a result of which, two of the seven commissioners of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples are women. Similarly, women are reserved at least one seat in local fisheries and aquatic resource management councils (RA 8850), agrarian reform bodies, protected areas management boards, and local agricultural and fishery councils. In 2001, women constituted 30 to 45 percent of agricultural and fishery councils at the regional (40 percent), provincial (30 percent), and municipal levels (45 percent). They accounted for a much smaller percentage (no more than 29 percent) of the membership of agrarian reform governing units or councils, with the smallest share observed at the municipal level (23 percent); and a yet much smaller share in environment protected areas management boards. 244. As of Sept. 2003, there are four women (27 percent) out of 15 justices of the Supreme Court, 12 (25 percent) out of 47 justices in the Court of Appeals, 3 (27 percent) out of 11 in the Sandiganbayan, which handles graft and corruption cases involving government officials. The judges in the Court of Tax Appeals, the Shari’a District Courts and lower level Shari’a Circuit Courts have remained all male. The table below presents the percentage of female incumbent judges in other Philippine Courts. In the lower courts, women judges accounted for no more than a quarter of all judges, except in Metropolitan Trial Courts, where they comprised almost half of the incumbent judges. It should be noted, however, that in 12 months, women judges were filling vacancies, resulting in an improvement in gender balance throughout the lower courts outside the Shar’ia Circuit Court. Percentage of female incumbent judges in Philippine trial courts (Supreme Court 2002) Philippine Courts Regional Trial Court Metropolitan Trial Court Municipal Trial Court in Cities Municipal Trial Court Municipal Circuit Trial Court 74 Number of women judges 165 29 31 Total judges 778 64 132 Percent female 21 45 24 56 220 26 41 201 20