“When the mother comes home, she brings rice, fish or some vegetables, soap, kerosone and fare money for children going to school,” Nanay Beng narrated as she shared the results of an ongoing study on how women peasants cope up with climate change.
The women have very little time to work in the farms, according to Nanay Beng. They are still considered peasants although their means of livelihood is slowly shifting toward the informal sector. They still tend to vegetable patches, following the topsoil that has slid into the river bed.
At least three women have initiated the planting of crops on river beds, literally going after the topsoil that eroded due to heavy rains. Partly because there are no more trees to hold the soil, and partly because the rains pour harder than before, it is not uncommon to see landslides nowadays, according to Nanay Beng.
Several other women interviewed for the study have very little or no contribution in the farms. They are exhausted and they could hardly do their own house chores. They just prioritize, Nanay Beng explained.
Many peasant women in the vicinity also harness forest products like buho, a type of bamboo, for use as barbecue sticks and sell these. To remedy the dwindling bamboo population, they have started bamboo nurseries, said Nanay Beng.
She said several families from the provinces settled in Metro Manila but found the city harsh to the urban poor. They experience demolitions here and there and the lack of job opportunities for the unschooled. They wanted to go back to the province but the conditions back home is similarly uncertain.
“That is why adjacent provinces prove very apt for them. They could plant rice, own a property however small, and get shelter,” Nanay Beng said.
The families of Nanay Ceding and other peasants are recipients of an emancipation patent for one and a half hectares each of hilly agricultural land. Due to hardship, however, some of them sold the rights to the land to moneyed individuals and they became tenants or caretakers of the land they till.
“The government forbids them to make charcoal. It destroys the environment, they said. On the other hand, large scale mining, which destroys the mountain ecosystem, is allowed,” not to mention quarrying activities that have also encroached in the mountain ranges, Nanay Beng said.
Changing Roles
To peasant women like Nanay Ceding and Nanay Beng, it is painstaking to break the patriarchal belief that a man should provide for his family, having to face traditional community folk norms that frown at a woman leaving her children at home.
“Women who have children to feed are forced to find ways and means, even to the extent of leaving their homes the whole day to earn. Crisis and extreme poverty have changed traditional roles,” said Nanay Beng.
Asserting the right to live within a system that does not truly care about the majority of peasants is another burden many Filipino peasant women have to bear.
Returning to the provinces is an option but Nanay Beng said the conditions there is even worse. In Iloilo and other parts of the country, large tracts of lands called haciendas are devoted to sugar cane, like the Hacienda Luisita of Tarlac that President Benigno S. Aquino III co-owns with the Cojuangcos.
Asked about the land reform program, she said, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program lacks support services.
Still Dreaming
Amihan, the national federation of Filipino peasant women, looks forward to the day when the government seriously takes up genuine agrarian reform that will also emancipate peasant women from the bondage of feudal exploitation and patriarchal discrimination.
“We are still dreaming and fighting for that time to come. The government should care for the peasants who nourish society,” Nanay Beng said with optimism.
“Out of this rotten system, we can sow the seeds for the germination of a system that protects its women, recognizes and maximizes their full potential as human beings,” the group said. “Out of this rotten system that breeds exploitation and oppression of women, we will build our alternative system, which will be prosperous, self-sustaining and economically sound, with communities run by the collective strength of men and women.” (Bulatlat.com)
