Gender and Labor Migration Data

A technical paper on Philippine overseas labor migration data collection and analysis from a gender perspective

One of the provisions of the Magna Carta of Women is the institutionalization of Gender and Development (GAD) mainstreaming as the main strategy of the Philippine government to progressively realize gender equality. Toward this end, all government agencies are required to review, generate and analyze their available data using a gendered lens to inform their planning and programming. A mapping of Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) data collected and made available to the public shows that government agencies working on migration-related concerns already practice sex-disaggregation of data. However, disaggregating labor migration data by sex, alone, does not ensure gender equality. This could be a gender-neutral or gender-blind exercise, particularly when data collection, consolidation and analysis is not oriented to surfacing possible gender issues in labor migration and ignores intersectionality.

This research on gender and labor migration data aims to describe Philippine labor migration data policies and practices in view of addressing challenges in generating data that are gender-sensitive and gender-responsive. It does so by, first, mapping out the available OFW data, and second, providing a gender analysis of the data collection practices. The latter considers questions about which information relevant to increasing knowledge and understanding of gender issues in migration is currently lacking or not being collected, how data collection can be made gender-sensitive and gender-responsive, and how OFW data can be utilized to promote and realize gender equality. The last section of the paper presents recommendations to improve data collection for gender equality in the context of overseas labor migration.