SOUTH-EAST ASIAN ECONOMIC CRISIS HITS WOMEN IN AREAS OF REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT, ACCORDING TO UNFPA REPORT
Press Release
POP/695
SOUTH-EAST ASIAN ECONOMIC CRISIS HITS WOMEN IN AREAS OF REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT, ACCORDING TO UNFPA REPORT
19990121 BANGKOK, 21 January (UNFPA) -- A new report issued today by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) finds that the South-East Asian economic crisis is disproportionately affecting the lives of girls and women, especially in the areas of reproductive health, education and employment.The report, entitled "South-East Asian Populations in Crisis - Challenges to the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action", is a joint project of the UNFPA and the Australian National University. The report, which is based on rapid assessment techniques, such as focus group studies, looked at the affect of the crisis in relation to reproductive health, education and employment, particularly in relation to women, in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The report says increases in unemployment levels have resulted in massive increases in numbers of people living below or close to the poverty line, creating a "new poor". These increases seem to be disproportionately high for women, because retrenchments are often most severe in sectors where they are prominent.
The report finds evidence that the crisis has led to budget cuts which have reduced available reproductive health services, including cutbacks in sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes. It notes, for example, that the Thailand Ministry of Public Health cut its AIDS budget by 24.7 per cent in 1998 compared to a 5.5 per cent cut for the non-AIDS budget (page 136). The report says that the recession has particularly affected the lives of women who are single parents or have heavy financial commitments.
Large depreciation in exchange rates has had major consequences, affecting the supply and affordability of medicines and medical supplies, the report says. Cutbacks in health-care programmes, particularly reproductive health care, will have long-term implications for the populations of the countries surveyed. The cutbacks are also having immediate and tangible affects on the quality and safety of lives of individuals in the countries in question.
The report says that the crisis has reduced access to reproductive health services for adolescents and youth at a time when school drop-outs are increasing and youth unemployment rates are rising. This reduced access appears to lead
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more young women to resort to unsafe abortion to terminate unwanted pregnancies (page 25).
The report found that one of the responses to increasing unemployment and poverty is that many women are turning to the commercial sex industry in order to find work and support their families. In Indonesia, women who lost jobs in factories and who turned to commercial sex reported that their earnings as sex workers were lower than they had been as factory workers, because their clients could not afford to pay much for their services (page 20).
The report says that these new recruits to the sex trade, many of whom have had only limited education, are likely to be poorly equipped to protect themselves from sexually -transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. A number of sexually transmitted diseases clinics surveyed cited increases in numbers of sex workers attending the clinics and corresponding increase in cases of diseases. One clinic in Lentera Yogyakarta, Indonesia, reported a doubling of clients in a nine-month period (page 64).
In education, the crisis has led to significantly increased school drop- outs with the adverse effects rising with age of child and level of education. Girls appear to be most disadvantaged. Tertiary level students are also affected.
The report cites an example of Julie, a 17-year-old high-school graduate in the Philippines, who said she abandoned plans to go to college because she wants her two younger siblings to first finish high school. To help her mother with expenses, she works full time at a golf course.
Overall, the report found that the economic crisis was having an immediate adverse impact on the lives of individuals in the areas of reproductive health care, education and employment. The report found that women are disproportionately affected by the crisis in these areas.
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