Asian Breeze No.101 Online Newsletter
No.

101March2024

KITAKYUSHU FORUM ON ASIAN WOMEN
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Kitakyushu Forum on Asian Women (KFAW) Online Newsletter

Filipino women who have connected the world.
- OGAYA Chiho
Professor, Ferris University
grocery store counters, in nursing homes anddoing domestic work in private homes. A
sociologist Arlie Russel called the structure inwhich women from developing countries,
including the Philippines, engage in care work inthe more advanced countries through migrantlabor, the “global care chain.'' Through theinternational movement of women, care chain is

1. Filipino women overseas underpandemic
In December 2020, news spread around theworld that the world's first COVID-19
vaccination had been administered. While thenews is full of images of elderly British ladysaying, “I’m happy to have received the world's
first vaccination,'' the person who conducted thevaccine for the first time in the world was awoman who has worked in the UK for 24 years,
a nurse from the Philippines. She was one of the"essential workers" who suddenly started to bereferred to during the pandemic, even in Japan.
How much attention did the world pay to thosemigrant nurses?

created between developing countries anddeveloped countries, and the higher up the chain,
the more abundant care they can receive. Japan,
which has accepted Filipino entertainers (whoseentry became more restricted in 2005 after being
flagged as a “hotbed of human trafficking” by theU.S. Department of State), marriage migrants inrural areas, care workers, and recently, household
service workers in National Strategic Special
Zones, is also a society that has relied on the2. Care work and essential work

“care” of migrant women, especially Filipino
women, in various ways.

Society became aware early on that in Europe,
where the COVID-19 situation became more
serious than in Japan, many of the so-called
essential workers are immigrants or people withroots in other countries. People whose “ethnicity'”
as immigrants (or immigrant roots) and “gender”(as being women) overlap made up the majority

3. Philippine overseas employment
policy and overseas female workers
The Philippines has been implementing theoverseas employment policy as a national policy
since 1974 for 50 years and is a world-renownedof essential workers, such as those working atcountry of sending workers overseas. It is said

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Asian Breeze No.101 Online Newsletterthat there are currently approximately 10 million

popular as “English-speaking and well-paying

people living overseas (= 10% of the totalpopulation) in approximately 218 countries, andremittances from these overseas Filipinos
account for nearly 10% of GDP. It has been said
that the Philippines' “biggest export item ispeople,'' and even after the pandemic, more than
2 million workers go abroad every year, nearly
half of whom are women engaged in care work.
Their work as domestic workers and carejobs'' with air-conditioned offices and the ability
to work from home even during the pandemic,
are actually not free from frequent night shifts
and unstable working conditions. Once again,
Filipino women play the role of connecting
consumers and global businesses around theworld through their English skills and a type ofcare work ('customer care'). Filipino women whoteach at English schools in the Philippines forworkers has always been a workplace where they
are constantly exposed to danger and wherewages and working conditions are difficult toprotect. In the Philippines, which enacted the"Magna Carta of Migrant Workers" (RepublicAct No. 8042) in 1995, the issue of protecting therights of overseas workers has always been posedto the government by women working overseas.
As a sending country, the Philippine government

Korean and Japanese youth are also expected toplay a similar role as care workers, while also“connect” the world.
Looking back, Filipino women have long been
supporting the global economy behind the scenes.
Since the 1970s, these women have been known
as with “nimble fingers'' who have worked inforeign factories for export. Women also havebeen consumed and exploited by foreign men in

has tried various measures such as setting aminimum wage for domestic workers andgranting skills qualifications for them, but therights of women working overseas are still being
violated constantly, and as many Filipino popular
films have shown to this day, families continue
to rely on thier remittances and put pressure on
mothers and daughters abroad.

sex tourism. These women are connected toFilipino women currently working in call centers
in Metro Manila and in elderly care facilities inJapan. These are women who have connected theglobal economy and the world throughout theages.

5. Does the “connected” world respect
Filipino women?

4. BPO industry and Filipino women Connecting the world in thePhilippines.
Since the 2000s, the IT-BPO industry has
become the pillar of the economy in thePhilippines, second to overseas employment.
Typical examples include college graduate
women who workday and night in call centers ofmultinational companies in city centres.

Based on the English proficiency and hospitalitythat were built up through the country's historicalcolonial rule by Spain and the United States, thediscourse that Filipinos are” cheerful people'' and“they have large families and are good atproviding care'' has been born. This has,ironically, created a global pattern in which
Filipino women have taken on roles that could be
described as global "subcontractors of care" forHowever, even the call center jobs, which are

low wages. Is the world that has been2

Asian Breeze No.101 Online Newsletter“connected'' through the various types of care

Many of the Filipino women living in Japan areprovided by these women rigorously evaluating
the value of that “care labor''? Care and service
occupations with low wages, long working hours
with heavy duty are often seen as "women's" jobs.
It is also a low-paying, hard, and long-hour jobthat people are expected to do because they areforeigners. The pandemic has brought to lightonce again how “essential” the care work
performed by migrant women is for society, andalso mothers of young people with mixed roots.
They are the ones who have nurtured young
people who embody diversity and are active invarious fields. Including the contributions ofthese mothers, do we respect the existence of
women from the Philippines and immigrant
women in general?

the question of how to think about the value ofcare work has become clear. This is an issuecommon to all parts of the world, including Japan.
Graduated from Hitotsubashi University, Faculty ofSociology in 1997, and withdrew with a degree in2003 from the Graduate School of Sociology,
HitotsubashiUniversity.

FormerlyAssociate

Professor at the Faculty of Education and HumanSciences, Yokohama National University. Specialises
in international sociology, gender, and internationalmigration. Focusing mainly on migration of people
fromthePhilippines,

she

researchedtheorganizational activities of women who go to work as
domestic workers in Hong Kong, Singapore and othercountries, and their relationships with their familiesof origin. She has since conducted identity researchbased on networks of Filipino migrants living inEurope and North America, children migrating acrossborders and the narratives of young people who havebeen called 'double' and 'half'.
Since

2000,

Philippines,when
shehasshe

wasbeenstudying

involved

inin

theDAWNOGAYA Chiho(Development Action for Women Network), which

Professor, Department of Communication Studies,migrant women and their children who have returned

Faculty of Letters, Ferris University, Yokohama,from Japan. She is a member of DAWN-Japan, which

Japan. born 1974.

supports the Japan tour of the JFC’s theatre

works to empower Japanese Filipino Children (JFC),

company Akebono and various DAWN activities from3

Asian Breeze No.101 Online Newsletter
the Japanese side. Since becoming a university
teacher, she has been involved in exchange activities
betweenJapanese students

andJFC

andhasrecently been researching the history and role ofDAWN

andotherJFC

andmothers'

supportorganisations.
Her main publications include Living on the Move:

Filipino Migrant Women and Multiple Mobilities(Yushindo

Koubunsha,

Sociology(Yuhikaku,Transnational

Sociology2016),
co-editedofTransnational
2015)

andDomesticWork(Jimbunshoin, co-authored 2020). Recent articles
include "Thinking 'Home' from Mobility - To Overcome
the Uniform 'Stay Home' Discourse" (Gendai Shiso,Vol. 48-10 Special Issue: Coronas and Living - From
the field of countermeasures, Seidosha, 2020), "Therole of support organisations in the movement ofpeople between Japan and the Philippines: Focusing
on the experiences of migrant women and JFC" (coauthor, Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Ferris
University, No. 55, 2020), "Unlearning Symbiosis Towards the Practice of Diversity" (ed. Koichi
Iwabuchi, Dialogue with Diversity: What Diversity

Promotion Makes Invisible, Seikyusha 2021).

She is currently a member (chairperson) of theYokohama City Council for the Promotion of
Gender Equality and also a member of theKawasaki City Council for the Promotion of aMulticultural Society.

Thank you for reading. Any comments and suggestions are welcome.
Email us!
info@kfaw.or.jp

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