Women make up most of Filipino workers deployed abroad: study

SWPR 2006 Launch Coverage
Friday, September 08, 2006 / Sunstar Manila

NEARLY 2,000 or 65 percent of the 3,000 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) deployed to other countries daily are females employed in domestic jobs or as entertainers, according to the 2006 State of the World Population report.

Suneeta Mukherjee, UN Population Fund (UNFPA) country representative, said in 2005 alone, 205,206 Filipino female workers were deployed abroad with 83,524 of them hired as domestic workers or caretakers while 37,891 were hired as overseas performing artists (OPAs).

Of the figure, only five percent were employed under the professional category such as medical-related work and in construction companies.

Citing the 2006 report, Mukherjee said the reason why many Filipino women opt to work overseas in order to meet the basic needs of their family and to provide better education for their children.

Compared to their female counterparts in other labor-sending countries, the 2006 state of population report noted that in Sri Lanka, the ratio of women leaving for work abroad as against males is 2:1.

"While it (domestic jobs) has provided millions of migrant women with an opportunity to improve both their lives and those of their children, the private nature of their work can put them in gross jeopardy," Mukherjee said during the launching of the 2006 State of World Population held at the University of the
Philippines (UP).

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