Now They Tell Us!

For years, the Male Chauvinists of the Philippines have claimed that unlike almost every other country in the world, the so called "weaker sex" of females actually dominates Philippine Society financially, socially and emotionally, that this is in fact a modern Matriarchy. Now, Dr. Romulo A. Virola, Secretary General of the National Statistics Coordination Board (NSCB), confirms that long standing accusation with stunning scientific data collected from 79 provinces of the Philippines under a special survey program sponsored by the United Nations Development Program. In a recent post on his online corner of the NSCB's official website, Statistically Speaking he asserts that Gender Equality does exist, but in favor of women. Analyzing statistical data from 2000 and 2003, the NSCB shows that in the key areas Income, Health and Education, women in 70 out of 79 Philippine provinces are way ahead of men.

Women outperformed men in all the three dimensions of development in both 2000 and 2003!

Women gained higher achievements than men in all three dimensions as indicated by the higher than one levels of GER for health (1.0248), education (1.0583) and income (1.2299) in 2003. In fact, the advantage of women in the income7 dimension grew bigger as the GER in income increased from 1.1170 to 1.2299 (Table 3). (Possibly one of the reasons why this year’s Women’s Month theme is “Babae, Yaman ka ng Bayan!”?)