Her stories from below: socio-economic impact of food price inflation and the coping strategies of the urban poor women in Baseco, Manila

Abstract

The Philippines is in a downward socio-economic spiral with neoliberal economic policies filling the pockets of the rich and powerful, and emptying those of the already poor and disenfranchised; with the current administration's economic managers downplaying the current crises and continually deceiving the masses with sugarcoated development projects and programs and inaccurate and fabricated statistics; poverty is worsening, and women are bearing the brunt of this structural oppression and social inequity. Food price inflation—the primary problem of the impoverished Filipinos owing to the fact that food is essential for daily survival. Women are the primary providers of food in urban poor households, grocery-shopping, cooking, and preparing food on the table, but with food being more and more expensive due to misguided development paradigms and economic policies causing unabated food price inflation, they are left with heavy plates filled with multiple jobs, multiple roles, and multiple burdens, rather than food. Women bear the brunt of physically providing food for their families, and mentally bear the brunt of psychological distress when they are not able to accomplish this so-called duty—a social construct created by men in power to keep women in their disempowered, sacrificial, and slave-like state. Filipinas or Filipino women are kept miseducated and disempowered in this prevailing patriarchal society under false consciousness. This study of the socio-economic impacts of food price inflation and the coping strategies of the urban poor women in BASECO aims to uplift and ultimately empower urban poor women all over the Philippines through enlightening them on their reality and the truths that they have been, and continually are, deprived of.