Struggle against the commodification of migrant women
Statement of the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM)
for the International Working Women’s Day
8 March 2006

The International Working Women’s Day is a celebration of working women’s militancy in the struggle for their rights against exploitation, subservience, abuse, discrimination and all forms of oppression against women, especially the toiling women.

On this historic day, the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) greets the struggling women of the world and most especially, women migrants who have many reasons to pursue the fight started by the valiant women, who mostly came from the textile industries, in 1857 for better wages and working condition.

With the intensifying world crisis brought about by neoliberal globalization pushed by the world’s superpowers, women are continuously driven to migrate from their homelands and work in slave-like jobs in foreign countries.

More than half of the migrant workers all over the world are women. They come mainly from third world countries whose implementation of neoliberal globalization policies has only brought more and more women in dire poverty.

The economic crisis of labour exporting countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Nepal and host other countries is unprecedented. Unemployment, soaring prices of commodities, underemployment, and displacement of peoples is rampant.

Such dire conditions are much worse for women. Women workers receive low wages and are usually accepted only in demeaning or dangerous jobs. Women peasants who toil suffer even greater feudal exploitation and are the common victims of unpaid work. Young women are forced to prostitution just so they can answer the daily needs of their families.

To curb the unstoppable slide, governments of crises-ridden countries turn to the most profitable of industries that their backward economy dominated by foreign powers can only provide – the export of labour and commodification of migrant workers.

Millions of mothers, daughters and sisters are wantonly exported to bring home the needed dollars are however not channeled to building a country that can provide decent job opportunities for everyone. The billions of dollars that labour exporting countries earn from remittances and government fees are only used to cushion the impacts of anti-people policies and bring a semblance of stability.

In exchange for dollars, women are pushed to labour in unspeakably poor working conditions abroad.

For labour importing countries, migrant labour is cheap labour. Women migrant labour is more worse.

Domestic work is the common job for women migrants. Domestic workers are the epitome of modern day slaves. They are made to labour for more than 12 hours a day in exchange for a pittance that are cut down. They do all types of housework but their economic, political and socio-cultural rights are very much restricted and degraded.

Many women migrants are also factory workers, caregivers, teachers, entertainers, medical workers, salesladies and foreign brides. Aside from dreadful labour and discriminatory conditions, women migrants are also vulnerable to abuse and violence. As migrant workers, they are treated as second-class citizens. But many women migrants are treated even less.

Rape and other physical, mental and sexual abuses are suffered by women migrants. Women who are recruited particularly from rural areas fall victims to trafficking and the sex trade. Sex trafficking has put hundreds of thousands of women in deplorable conditions.

Women meanwhile, who are married to locals, such as in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, have to contend with institutionalized discrimination. Their rights as mothers, wives and as women are not recognized or are severely restricted.

Under such conditions, women migrants have to fight back.

The International Working Women’s Day has shown the working women the way to achieve their rights – through collective actions. Such is the lesson of this day that women, including women migrants, have to uphold.

Through the long years of the International Working Women’s Day, it has already been raised from a fight for economic rights to a fight for the liberation of women. Such liberation comes hand in hand with the transformation of a society that is truly free and democratic, where justice reigns and prosperity is enjoyed by everyone.

This is the society that women migrants has dreamed of and are working for.

Movement of migrant workers will never succeed without the women. From the thousands who marched in the Philippines when Flor Contemplacion was hanged to those who marched in Hong Kong against the wage cut, women migrants have shown that they are ready to fight.

At this point, it is even more urgent for women migrants to rally together to address the issues facing women as migrants. This year, various migrant organizations all over the world are set to meet to form the International Migrant’s Alliance that shall embrace the various struggles of foreign workers in different countries. In the call to build and strengthen the movement of migrants globally, we in the APMM believe that women migrants will rise up to the challenge.

Women rose up 149 years ago to mark the struggle of working women. Women will continue to rise up while class oppression that also brings gender oppression rules. In the tide of movement of working women, migrant women will also surely make their mark.