Gender, Labor, Aging

The eleven thematic chapters in this book provide a broad set of perspectives on three contemporary social issues: gender equality, labor migration, and ageing. These chapters were culled from various articles that were published, commissioned, and researched from 1994 to 2012. The first theme, gender equality, represents an in-depth analysis of legislation on violence against women in the Asian region, the country implementation of the gender equality mandate a decade after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, challenges to and issues in closing the gender gap in the 21st century in Asia, response and progress related to gender equality globally, and the impact of the nuclearization of the family and shifting gender roles on child development in the Philippines. The second theme, labor migration, analyzes the causes and consequences of Filipino labor migration to Japan, the comparison of female Asian domestic workers to those in the Middle East and in neighboring Asian countries with their differential compensation and adjustment, and the public health dimension of Southeast Asian migration to Europe in terms of policies, health system utilization, and perceptions of providers. The third subject area, ageing in the Philippines, assesses the responsiveness of social protection policies to increasing costs of prolongation of life and imminent elderly debilitation. Finally, the translation of researches into action programs is delineated based on the author’s experience in eliciting the gender issues in infectious disease transmission and management in Southeast Asia.

The constituent papers consider the current discourse that encourages new thinking in addressing conceptual and methodological problems in social science research as they deal with potent development concerns. They demonstrate that specific policies and institutions determine the “on the ground” outcomes of initiatives.