National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC)
Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg

Strengthen Unity and Advance our Struggle for Equality, Social justice and Liberation!

As a network of Filipino women, the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC) celebrates with other women of the world the 95th
International Women’s Day. As working class and migrant women in Canada, we look at this day as a time to take stock of ourselves, our Filipino
sisters in the Philippines and around the world.

The formation of the NAPWC over three years ago was a milestone in long years of our continuing advocacy for women’s equality, social justice and liberation. It has consistently linked the issues of Filipino women in Canada to their history of migration with the roots going all the way back to the Philippines.

Since the last two decades, many Filipino women entered Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program or LCP. They came as migrant workers working
in the private sphere of the household for low or minimum wages. They are part of the deepening poverty and continuing displacement brought about by
the chronic neo-colonial crisis of Philippine society. In the last six years alone, 93% who came under the LCP were Filipino women thus, highlighting the need by Canada for cheap labour and the “forced” migration of Filipino women.

While the experiences of these live-in caregivers have been closely studied and documented, their condition of exploitation and oppression continues to be ignored. Canada does not seem to have the desire to critically
examine the LCP program having seen it to be functional and beneficial to its present economic needs even if it is at the expense of women. Bringing
in foreign-trained nurses under the LCP undermines both the nursing profession and the universal health care system as these nurses are cheaply hired
to do domestic work and private health care. It also undermines the effort for a universal day care program as it is cheaper to hire a domestic worker
to take care of children rather than putting them in a day care center.

And of course, only middle and upper class families can afford a domestic worker while working class families are left to fend for themselves. Thus, the
LCP is a program that draws one group of women away from the household to be replaced mainly by poorly paid women of colour (mostly Filipino women
at this time) from the South. It is the commodification of or expansion of capital into the “private sphere” of the family under present day capitalism.

This nature of work where a group of women are relegated to do cheap and dead-end work in the household is related to the intensifying crisis of
global capitalism and its efforts to stave off this crisis through imperialist war and plunder. The present situation has now reached a point where the problems and issues confronting countries of the South are
now occurring in the North. Poverty, social exclusion, unemployment, racism, continuing women’s marginalization – all these are becoming more acute
every day. And despite the fact that our struggles and our issues as immigrants and women are hardly getting the attention they deserve, we believe
that the women’s movement in Canada can move effectively forward if these concerns together with those of the first nations are properly addressed.

Women constitute, at least, half of humanity with our issues bound up inseparably from social and class issues. Work on women’s issues should be premised on the understanding that women liberation is an integral part of social and national liberation, that without one the other is incomplete.

This is the strength of the women’s movement in the Philippines with their day-to-day struggle being an integral part of the Filipino people’s struggle for national and social liberation.

Working class women have to be vigilant and militant as the past gains that have been achieved through hard struggle are now under attack. In Canada alone, the struggle for universal health care is fighting rearguard
actions in the face of eroding benefits and privatization. The struggle for universal day care has still to be won despite grandiose promises by federal and provincial governments. And in BC, the removal of core-funding for women centers had cut-off whatever meagre government support there had been for women.

After ninety-five years since the first International Women’s Day, we look forward to the resurgence of a women’s movement that is part of a greater movement for social and national liberation against imperialist
globalization. And As NAPWC celebrates its gains in upholding the rights and welfare of Filipino women in Canada, we also continue to be aware of the continuing challenges that Filipino women are facing in the midst of the intensifying crisis of global capitalism.

March 7, 2005