• • • Closer distance to water sources. Access to safe, clean and nearby water sources will help rural women save time and effort in fetching water for their families. Access roads. Journey to markets, schools and water sources will be easier and safer for rural women and travel time will be shorter with the access roads. Close proximity of schools and day care centers where they would bring their children. This would result to less travel time in bringing and fetching children from schools and day care centers. Recommendations to redistribute care work: 6. Unpaid care work should be shared by men and women. Care work responsibilities at home should be shared by men and women. Women should learn to speak up to assert the need for the shared responsibilities at home. Children can also be taught simple chores to help reduce the care work activities of rural women. 7. Explore and develop policies that would encourage a more balanced performance of care work between men and women. For instance, corporations and business employers can implement human resource policies such as flexible working hours for both men and women to allow them to arrange a more balanced appropriation of time and effort in caring for their children and other family members. An increase in paid paternal leave to allow fathers to provide more care for their infants may also be explored. In addition to these recommendations, the workshop participants representing rural women also called for the provision of sustainable livelihood opportunities for rural women. This will help give them economic empowerment given that the care work that they provide for their families is unpaid. It must be noted, however, that livelihood activities will add responsibilities to rural women. Given that time is finite and knowing the full-range of activities that they already do for their families based on various literature and the “time use” diaries in the group presentations at the workshop, adding livelihood activities can be made more manageable if there is redistribution of care work among family members, specifically of men. In line with their economic empowerment, it should be noted that when more income is put into the hands of women, child nutrition, health and education improves (UN Women Facts and Figures). Thus, redistributing care work at home and allowing rural women to earn either through paid work or livelihood activities can also translate to the improvement in the situation and wellbeing of children. Chapter 3: Rural Women amidst Disasters and Crisis Situations The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Based on the Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2016, “over the last decade, China, the United States, India, Indonesia and the Philippines constitute the top five countries that are most frequently hit by natural disasters” (Guha-Sapir, et al., 2017). Every year, the Philippines is visited by an average of 20 typhoons (Magtulis, 2015). The country is also prone to disasters such as earthquakes and 22