In celebration of Women’s Month and the National Social Work Day, the University the Philippines Open University (UPOU) Diploma in Women and Development (DWD) and Diploma in/Master of Social Work (DMSW) programs of the Faculty of Management and Development Studies (FMDS) in cooperation with the Office of Gender Concerns (OGC) conducted the Let’s Talk it Over (LTIO) Lecture entitled “Are Changes Working for Women? A forum on the current situation of women and the legislative updates in the Philippines.” This was held on 20 March 2019 at the UPOU Audiovisual Room and online via the UPOU Networks.
The lecture aimed to discuss where the Philippines currently stands in terms of making change really work for women, with Dr. Carolyn I. Sobrichea, Dean of the UP Asian Center and Former Director of UP Center for Women’s Studies, as the speaker.
Dr. Sobritchea talked about the enabling laws that helped promote the change towards women starting from the “Anti-sexual harassment law of 1995” up to the administrative implementations of flexible hours, social protection measures, maternity leave benefits, and others. She also pointed out the legal obligations of school administrators, faculty and personnel in terms of gender equality. She emphasized the need to try not to tolerate any form of gender bias in terms of our education, training, and practices. Her suggestion was to partner up with other organizations in order to ensure and promote not only just gender sensitive languages but to also combat gender bias as a whole.
Dr. Sobritchea also gave light towards the poor execution of laws and policies made by the rightful authorities to address the issue of gender equality. She stressed the point that we had passed a lot of enabling laws but everyone has yet to implement them in their administration. We are pouring out in terms of programs and policies and yet, we weren’t able to achieve the results that we had desired. She ended her talk with the words, “Let us focus on results or outcomes-based planning and program implementation.” She recommends strengthening the counseling services for the students who had experienced any form of harassment or abuse.
She ended her lecture with a challenge question for the audience both at the venue and online “Do these changes really work for women?” (KBAncajas)
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