The City Council, during its regular session on Monday, approved on first reading a proposed ordinance recognizing and valuing unpaid care and domestic work and providing funds and for other purposes.
Under the proposed ordinance, its enactment shall be in response to evidence showing that investments that support households to better meet their unpaid care responsibilities such as not limited to child care, food preparation and laundry can yield substantial returns in terms of local economic development, job creation and other key government priorities.
Unpaid care and domestic work refer to the work that women and girls do for which they are not paid, such as but not limited to cooking, cleaning, washing, child rearing, elder care, and collecting fuel or water among others. As unpaid work, the said tasks occupy time that women and girls could alternatively use to attend school, pursue higher education or hold full time and meaningful employment.
The ordinance tasked the relevant local government office implementing the Community-based Monitoring System (CBMS) shall ensure the collection of data on unpaid care work that includes the percentage of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work, by sex, age group, and location.
Further, the city government may commission a local research or academic institution to conduct the household care survey where results from the data on unpaid care and domestic work from the CBMS and the rapid care analysis which assess the availability of infrastructure and services in the local government to support the same shall be used in developing programs, interventions, and strategies addressing the unequal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work.
The CBMS shall closely coordinate with the city’s barangays for the frequent updating of the data needed for the said purpose.
The ordinance tasked the Gender and Development (GAD) focal point system to aid in the implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of the proposed measure as well as undertake educational awareness campaigns, information dissemination and capacity building programs for constituents and officials and personnel involved in unpaid care and domestic work programs with the aim of challenging social norms to contribute to the elimination of practices that fail to provide for mechanisms to offset or address sex or gender-based disadvantages or limitations of women; address and counter negative perceptions that care activities are related to women’s gender roles and care work and enhance the importance of unpaid care and domestic work.
The ordinance stipulated that relevant offices of the city government shall facilitate the provision of time and labor saving equipment and services, including, but not limited to, accessible water supply, electricity efficient appliances, time and labor saving devices and technologies, either directly or by encouraging the private sector through incentives.
All barangays in the city shall provide easy access to a safe water supply and that appropriate systems shall be installed to ease women’s work load in accordance with other existing laws and policies. It shall encourage community rain water harvesting facilities, tanks and other similar water harvesting facilities. By Dexter A. See