KARAPATAN and Tanggol Bayi, an organization of women human rights defenders, salute the Filipino women in struggle on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2026.
This year’s commemoration of International Women’s Day brings to the fore myriad issues buffeting Filipino women, especially those among the toiling masses.
It comes amid greater economic hardships brought about by US imperialist warmongering in the Middle East. The expected skyrocketing costs of fuel that will cause the prices of prime commodities and basic services to spiral will heavily impact poor and middle class Filipino women and our families already reeling from decades of neoliberal impositions like the Value Added Tax. Adding to these burdens are revelations of massive bureaucratic corruption that has deprived the Filipino masses of public funds that could have been spent on social services.
While poverty affects both men and women, patriarchal social norms place heavy burdens on women to deal primarily with the burden of low household incomes, rising prices, and lack of social services. Women with limited resources often supplement family incomes by resorting to informal sector work that is short-term, precarious and low-paid. Women are likewise disproportionately found among unpaid family workers whose contributions to their households’ survival receive scant recognition. In the countryside, women in agriculture suffer from landlessness, fewer land ownership rights and receive lower pay for their backbreaking work alongside men. Poverty has increasingly become feminized due to social strictures that diminish women’s roles and prevent their full participation in the economy.
Yet women who become woke to their exploitation, oppression and marginalization, and organize themselves to collectively fight for their rights are systematically subjected to various kinds of repression. There are 135 women political prisoners behind bars today—activists, human rights defenders, development workers, environmental defenders, gender rights advocates and other dissenters—because they asserted people’s and gender rights and dared to defy the bounds imposed by an imperialist-dominated, feudal, fascist and patriarchal society.
On March 9th, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will attempt to regale the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women with his regime’s supposed headways in advancing women’s empowerment and gender equality in the Philippines. He will speak about his regime’s token measures to include women in “development” and “peace-building” but will conveniently omit the fact that his regime is hell-bent on continuing the very policies that have impoverished women, blocked their access to genuine development and justice, and fomented violence and attacks on their democratic rights.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s speech before the UN Commission on the Status of Women will precede his address before the UN General Assembly, both of which form part of his government’s campaign to seek validation by obtaining a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council. Because he will be misrepresenting the women’s situation in the Philippines for self-serving reasons, it is incumbent on women activists to be at the forefront of efforts to expose Marcos Jr.’s campaign of lies and deception and his attempts to rehabilitate the sordid Marcos name before the international community.
Meanwhile, back in the Philippines, men representing the worst of patriarchy have been busy publicly degrading and objectifying women with their sexist and misogynist remarks. That Marcos Jr. and these powerful men unhesitatingly timed their lies and misogyny during Women’s Month is a measure of how deeply ingrained patriarchy is in Philippine society and how necessary it is for Filipino women to struggle against it.
We in KARAPATAN and Tanggol Bayi proudly march alongside the masses of Filipino women in struggle, as we forge ahead with a people’s movement that seeks to liberate the entire nation from imperialist domination, feudal exploitation and fascist repression, and lay the foundations for women to break free from the yoke of oppression and patriarchy.
