Unemployment, or informal work, may limit women’s access to social protection programs when they get older, according to the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).
PIDS President Celia M. Reyes recently told the BusinessMirror that access to social protection programs is more common for workers in the formal sector.
These are usually observed in the membership of employees in the Government Service Insurance System for those in the public sector and Social Security System for those working in private firms.
“This just means that men have more access to social protection because women may not be active in the labor force, or not in the labor force, or they do not belong to the formal sector,” Reyes told the BusinessMirror.
Based on a new PIDS study, titled “Silver Linings for the Elderly in the Philippines: Policies and Programs for Senior Citizens,” on average, the share of elderly women to at least one social protection program in 2017 was at 65.3 percent, while for elderly men, the rate is 71.1 percent.
