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In the research conducted by Lan (2006), she mentions that it was in 1992 when the Taiwan government has officially granted work permits to "domestic caretakers" to care for the ill or disabled. After which the government gave quotas for the employment of "domestic helpers" for households with children under the age of 12 and elderly above the age of 70 (p.8).
She adds that since it became difficult to find local middle-‐aged domestic worker, migrant labor is a solution for housework, childcare, and care for the ill and elderly. The Taiwanese employers comprise predominantly of the first generation career women. They are the younger
generations of middle-‐class women who are willing to employ domestic worker, to outsource housework and to do familial duties like childcare and serving the parents-‐in-‐law (Lan, 2006).
It is indeed ironic that while "care" is the largest export product in the Philippines (Parreñas, 2005), caring for one's own family is sacrificed (Uy-‐Tioco, 2007). This scenario poses a threat to the country because with the proliferation of the domestic service and care industry all over the world, Filipino women have been outnumbering men in the labor migration sector.
This socio-‐economic phenomenon known as the feminization of the labor migration, has received pressing concerns among scholars. In the Philippines, sociologists claim that the situation has caused alarm and anxieties about the future of the Filipino family and Filipino society in general. Hence, the link between the feminization of migrant labor and the stability of the Filipino family is held significant because the migration of women, specifically mothers, endangers the whole concept of a solid family being tantamount to a solid and stable country.
Thus, migration and its feminization are seen as a destabilizing factor, something that contests the idea of Filipino families as closely knit units (Asis, 2006, p.46).
2.2 Feminization of Filipino Migrant Labor
Feminization of the labor force had its peak after the Second World War when immigration became a project sponsored by the state to address the labor shortage in the developing and industrializing countries. This labor shortage was then supplied by the Third World countries. As a result, women migrated to work in the export processing zones in the Asian region, working in the entertainment and sex industries, and as domestic laborers
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(Thapan, 2006). From 1965 to 1990, the number of female migrants across the world increased by 63 percent, from 35 million to 57 million, 8 percent higher than male migrants (Zlotnick 1998, as cited in Oishi 2002). Moreover, data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) shows that a large number of women who move out to Asian countries like Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, or to other European and Western countries, are from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines (Arya and Roy, 2006; Oishi, 2002).
According to Ogaya (2006), the feminization of the labor migration in the Philippines started in the 1980s. Since the mid ‘80s, female OFWs make up the 60 percent of newly hired workers. The leading occupational categories of women OFWs are domestic workers or care takers and overseas performing artists (OPAs) or entertainers. Figures in Ogaya's (2006) study indicate that in 1998, 52.3 percent of the female OFWs were hired as domestic workers or caretakers, while only 25.1 percent were entertainers. Male OFWs on the other hand were mainly working under different categories like production, transportation, and manual labor.
Hence, this suggests that the overseas employment in the Philippines is gendered (Ogaya, 2006;
Parreñas, 2006; Kelly, 2008; Fresnoza-‐Flot, 2009).
Gender has certainly shaped labor migration because most of the available jobs overseas cater to the domestic sector. Since women's biological function of childbearing is seen as better suited for childcare and homemaking (Go, 1993; Medina, 2001), they are delegated to the tasks of domestic work. Domestic work is defined by Schwartz (1983) as a "series of processes, of tasks that are inextricably linked, often operating at the same time” (as cited in Anderson 2000, p. 11). Domestic work, traditionally perceived as unpaid housework done by wives, sisters, aunts, mothers and grandmothers, ranked second in the dollar earner job in the Philippines (Pagaduan, 2006). With women making up the majority of migrant workers (Parreñas, 2008), Filipina domestic helpers have been growing in demand in Southeast Asia and Europe, boasting of their high education level, English ability, and their nurturing characteristics (Oishi, 2002).
Domestic work is the work that brings the country economic gains, and has hailed overseas domestic helpers as new-‐day heroes (Pagaduan, 2006). Philippine government
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recognizes OFWs as new-‐day heroes because of the remittances they bring in to the country.
These remittances help boost the growth of the domestic economy primarily by fueling the household consumption. The World Bank estimates that the said remittances are equivalent to about 12 percent of the country's gross domestic product (Remo, 2010). Given the importance OFWs being personified by the amount of remittances sent, the year 2000 was proclaimed by the Philippine government as the 'Year of Overseas Filipino Workers' and the year 2002 as the 'Year of Service Providers' (Pagaduan, 2006). Nevertheless, the situation of OFWs leaving the country to work as domestic helpers abroad is not without consequences. Pagaduan (2006) writes that overseas domestic work now threatens many families with disunity and insecurity.
She also emphasizes that marital separations, child delinquencies and dysfunctional families, the psycho-‐social stresses on the families left behind as well as the migrant worker herself, are still the unvalued and neglected costs of overseas work (p.81).
In working overseas, women are denied the right to be mothers or bring their children along with them (Arya and Roy, 2006). Concerns have been raised in the disharmony and break-‐
up of families and questions persist regarding what happens when wives and mothers leave (Pagaduan, 2006). Upon returning home, they are confronted with problems like disruption of family relationships, indifference or alienation with their children, marital separation, or having a dysfunctional family in general (Arya and Roy, 2006; Kottegoda, 2006; Ogaya, 2006).
There is a pervasive criticism on women's migration for curtailing their role as mothers (Kottegoda, 2006). Parreñas (2008) confirms that there are no reliable government statistics on the number of mothers leaving their children behind in the Philippines, but nongovernmental organizations like KAKAMMPI (Kapisanan ng Kamag-‐anakan ng Manggagawang Pilipino or Association of Relatives of Filipino Migrant Workers, 2004) estimates that there are 9 million children in the country who are growing up physically apart from a migrant father, migrant mother, or both migrant parents (as cited in Parreñas, 2008). This raises questions about mothers’ fulfillment of duties, performing motherhood across vast geographic distance.
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