Impoverished women are hunger's main victims
Women are worst hit by the widespread hunger stalking the country today. The foremost reason: poverty. Another factor is this decadent society's low regard for women.
While women are just as involved as men in food production and it is they who cook and serve meals, they are disadvantaged in terms of the quantity and quality of the food they eat.
Even from childhood, this disadvantage is already apparent. According to a Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study in 1994, up to 6% of female children are anemic compared to 1% of male children. The usual reason for anemia is the lack of iron in the diet.
The condition of female children has not substantially changed since then. In 1998, the mortality rate of female children from ages 0-5 was 2% higher compared to male children. In 2001, there were more female children aged 0-5 who were underweight compared to male children. A study of a barangay in Puerto Princesa, Palawan in 2002 revealed that 35.6% of female children at that age range were malnourished compared to 14.7% of male children. The reason is the prevalent custom of feeding boys more food than girls, especially when there is not enough food for the entire family. In other instances, male children and adults are fed first, with the females in the family making do with the leftovers.
This and the lack of proper nutrition even from childhood have resulted in the large number of adult women suffering from poor health. Consequently, they become pregnant with and give birth to sickly babies. Thirty-six out of every 1,000 babies born in the Philippines die before their first birthday, one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.
The health of child-bearing women in the Philippines is extremely vulnerable. In 2000, an average of ten women died every 24 hours due to various pregnancy and childbirth-related reasons. This is still the leading cause of women's mortality in the country. Up to 43.9% of pregnant women and up to 42.2% of breastfeeding mothers have iron deficiency anemia. Serious anemia is the leading cause of mortality among women giving birth. Anemia in nursing mothers results in sickly babies.
In rearing their families, women usually make huge sacrifices as they try to stretch the family's meager earnings. They usually make do with a few sips of watered down coffee just so their children could eat instant noodles. But with the high prices of instant noodles nowadays, the women resort to serving soy sauce, fish paste or even salt as viand. This has become an increasingly widespread practice. A marketing study has revealed that as early as 2001, over 40% of families with the lowest incomes in Metro Manila already followed such a consumption pattern.
Despite all this, the health and welfare of women and children are not among the Arroyo government's priorities. Health received one of the lowest government allocations in the 2005 budget. The Department of Health was allotted a mere `10.3 billion, the seventh lowest out of nine government departments. In contrast, `301.7 billion was allocated for debt service.
A World Bank report likewise states that the number of malnourished children aged 0-5 in the Philippines has been reduced by only 0.6% annually�slower than what Cambodia, Laos and Burma� some of the poorest countries of Southeast Asia�have achieved.
Worse, the regime is heaping one tax burden after another that will raise the prices of basic commodities like food and definitely exacerbate the problem of hunger and malnutrition, especially among impoverished women.
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