March is Women’s Month.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development-Field Office IX  through its Listahanan unit showed support to all strong and resilient “Juanas” who manifest resiliency amidst poverty by showcasing statistics of the identified poor women in Zamboanga Peninsula through Photo and Infographics display.

Anchored on the theme: “Juana, ang Tatag Mo ay Tatag Natin sa Pagbangon at Pagsulong!” , this year’s celebration of Women’s Month pays tribute to the strong and resilient “Juanas” who brought inspiring changes here in the country and across the globe.

As of 2011, Listahanan data revealed that 48.2 % of 1,954,698 million total poor individuals in Zamboanga Peninsula are women. In terms of magnitude 942,393 of these were identified poor. This only shows that Zamboanga Peninsula draw a huge figure in terms poor women is concern and considered among the top 3 regions  that has a high incidence of poor women in the country together with ARMM and Eastern Visayas regions. In terms of age, 50.9% of these women are below 18 years old.

If grouped according to Area classification, data shows that 807,600 or 85.7% of these women lives in rural area while 134,793 or 14.3% of them are in urban areas.   It also shows that the high magnitude of poor women whose ages 15 years old and above can be attributed to its high unemployment or no occupation rate of 65.1%. One reason that might contribute to this is the high rate of women who were not able to finish any grade level revealing its 22.4% rate. However, most women with occupation are engaged in Farming and Fishing.

The advocacy materials were displayed in the regional office and shared among organizations and centers that cater Women Empowerment and Development to raise awareness and call to act. Through this massive information, statistics will manifest the need for intervention on women in the region.

 DSWD calls everyone to take a serious step to help them in changing these statistics to improve its well being by giving them access to their basic rights and services and provide them necessary interventions.

This showcase is only part of the Listahanan’s intensive advocacy to build a brand of credible, accurate and efficient database of poor households. It is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are. It makes available to social protection stakeholders a pioneer database of poor families to serve as their reference for selecting beneficiaries of their programs and services.  Women sector in particular are among the data sets available that can be generated from the database. Regional profile of other sectors like Children, Senior Citizens, Indigenous People (IP) group and Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) to include housing condition, accessibility to electricity and water facilities can also be made available upon request.

This year, Listahanan shall update its database through the conduct of the 2^nd Nationwide Household Asssement in the 2^nd quarter. For more details on these statistics you may visit the DSWD Field Office IX-Listahanan Unit, General Vicente Alvarez St., Zamboanga City. or visit us in our website: www.listahanan.dswd.gov.ph. You may also like us in our official facebook page at: www.facebook.com/listahanan.official .

The DSWD salutes all resilient women. Mabuhay ka! ##