Today, International Working Women’s Day, the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) spotlights the continued suffering of Filipino women workers under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Studies have shown that wage discrimination is real, that women workers mostly receive lower wages than male workers – even as most male and female workers in the country receive low wages in the first place.

The global cost of living crisis and the soaring prices of basic goods and commodities are further decreasing the value of women workers’ wages. While this has forced Congress to approve a P200 minimum wage hike, Marcos Jr still has not fast-tracked the proposed legislation and has not signed it into law.

Unlike his predecessor who made a lot of noise about ending contractualization, Marcos Jr is silent on the employment scheme. According to research, contractualization has a largely female and young face.

Contractualization remains widespread and is a wholesale violation of workers’ rights: low wages, denial of benefits, no security of tenure, and attacks on the right to unionize and strike. Women contractuals are often denied maternity leave and benefits by manpower agencies and the main employers.

We mark this year’s Women’s Day while we express solidarity with the striking workers of Nexperia Philippines Inc. Nexperia’s Cabuyao factory has a significant population of women workers, who are now fighting for higher wages, an end to mass retrenchment, and the reinstatement of union officials.

Despite being breadwinners, women workers still shoulder most household chores due to social expectations. Inequality between men and women persist, and women workers continue to suffer from it.

The Philippines’ main export, its people, also has a female face. Across the world, Filipina domestic and health workers suffer from precarious working conditions and receive minimal support from the Philippine government that exported them.

Globally, women workers fought to gain the right to vote. This election year in the Philippines, we are reminded that the right to vote is undermined when people’s votes can be bought, when people are fed with disinformation, and when elite politicians prevent people from having genuine choices in the ballot.

Women suffer from trade-union repression. Wives of unionists and labor activists shoulder the burden of earning money and taking care of the family when their husbands are retrenched from work, imprisoned, or disappeared.

Women workers have increasingly taken on leading roles in the labor movement and many have also been victimized by trade-union repression. Labor organizer Loi Magbanua, disappeared on May 3, 2022, remains missing to this day. We demand her immediate surfacing.

Six among the 24 political prisoners from the labor movement are women: Antonietta Dizon (arrested September 2019), Romina Astudillo (December 2020), Ma. Teresa Dioquino (June 2, 2021), Maritess David (October 2024), Perla Pavillar (January 2025). We demand freedom for all of the country’s political prisoners.

Amidst their continued suffering, we call on Filipina workers to continue to struggle for gender equality, for labor and human rights, for democracy and social and environmental justice. Filipina workers can only be free only in a society that truly upholds these principles.