CEDAW/C/SR.32 English Page 5 (Mr. Morener-Salcedo, Philippines) 22. The rights of Philippine women were safeguarded by the legislation and the Constitution of the Philippines. He wished in particular to draw attention to sections 6, 7 and 4 of the Constitution and to point out that section 4 recognized that the rearing of children was a joint responsibility of the parents. 23. Article 135 of the new Labour Code prohibited discrimination against women in employment. Article 136 of the Code safeguarded the right of both prospective and existing female employees to get married, and article 137 safeguarded the benefits for female employees provided under the relevant chapter and the rights of pregnant women and women on maternity leave and after their return to work. 24. Under the Civil Code, a Philippine woman's consent to marriage must be freely given. She retained ownership of the property that she brought in to the marriage, of property acquired by lucrative title and by right of redemption and of property that was purchased exclusively with her money. Her equal right to conjugal property was respected. In fact, it was the custom at all social levels, for the wife to be the keeper of the purse. 25. New laws had been adopted and implemented and others had been or were in the process of being amended in order to remove provisions that tended to discriminate against women. The Constitution now specifically provided that a Philippine woman should retain her citizenship upon marriage to an alien, unless she was deemed under the law to have renounced her citizenship by her act or omission. Moreover, she could now transmit her citizenship to her children, without the latter being required to opt for Philippine citizenship upon reaching their majority. 26. A number of labour laws had been amended in order to guarantee equal opportunity for men and women: the period of maternity leave with pay had been reduced to two weeks before and four weeks after normal delivery or abortion; maternity leave privileges had been limited to the first four confinements in keeping with the Government's comprehensive family planning programme; women were prohibited from working from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in industrial establishments and from midnight to 6 a.m. in commercial firms; in agricultural undertakings, women could not be required to work without a rest period of not less than nine consecutive hours. The latest amendment was that maternity leave with pay should be financed jointly by the employer and the social security system. Moreover, in the private sector there had been a move to grant men paternity leave, particularly in the cities. 27. The Civil Code provision depriving a widow of parental authority over her children upon remarriage, unless her deceased husband had clearly willed that she could remarry and retain authority over them, had been repealed. That action was in keeping with the efforts being made to repeal or amend laws that were discriminatory to women described on pages 7-11 of the report. 28. Since men still outnumbered women in managerial and higher positions, the President of the Philippines had issued Letter of Instruction 974, which sought to integrate women fully into national development through their appointment to decision-making bodies at both the governmental and private sector levels. / ...