IWRAW Asia Pacific

Women, the State, and the Market in the Philippines: Case Studies on Sex Work, the War on Drugs, and the Conflict in Mindanao

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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

December 2020

This session at Global South Women’s Forum 2020 presents 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.

Delilah, a Filipina sex worker, shares her personal story, which highlights the discrepancy between dominant policy assumptions about sex-working women and their lived socioeconomic realities. Sharmila Parmanand presents some findings from her 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 examine the effects of the extra-judicial killings under Duterte’s violent war on drugs on poor families in Metro Manila. Fernandez also takes 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.

With thanks to Emilia Dominguez for subtitles.

Duration: 1:33:51
Subtitles: English

See also Sharmila Parmanand’s guest blog post for IWRAW Asia Pacific on violence against sex workers in the Philippines.