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Women, the State, and the Market in the Philippines: Case studies on sex work, the war on drugs, and the conflict in Mindanao

  • Day 4: Dec 17 (UTC+8) 4:00 pm-5:30 pm

Network of Independent Researchers

Speakers:
Sharmila Parmanand
Ica Fernandez
Maria Karla Abigail (Abbey) Pangilinan
Nastassja Quijano

"In rehabilitation centres, women are introduced to other forms of low-wage work such as domestic work, sewing, etc. If we want to apply a gendered lens to sex work, we should also consider why it's okay to put women into other gendered forms of precarious work. What is the feminist agenda here?" — Sharmila Parmanand.

This session covers three important conversations in the Philippines that engage with broader struggles faced by women globally: sex work; the war on drugs and its debilitating economic consequences on the poor; and the neglect of women’s needs in fiscal programming in conflict-affected areas. The session was presented by a Network of Independent Researchers, all of whom are engaged in collaborative research with local communities.

The session began with a personal narrative shared by Delilah, a Filipina sex worker, which highlights the discrepancy between dominant policy assumptions about sex-working women and their lived socioeconomic realities. Sharmila Parmanand has done collaborative research with sex workers on the harms of the criminalisation of sex work and anti-trafficking interventions. Ica Fernandez, Abbey Pangilinan, and Tanya Quijano examined the effects of the extra-judicial killings under Duterte’s violent war on drugs on poor families in Metro Manila. Fernandez also took a gendered view on the economics of peace-making and peace-building in the Philippines, where the government has formal peace processes with five non-state armed groups.

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