A Descriptive Study on the Effectiveness of the CWL-IHMPC Women's Desk in Addressing Women's Needs

Abstract

As stated in the book Gender and Power in the Affluent Asia by Roces, “the Southeast Asian concept of power have assumed that power was only exercised by males and over other males. Femininity, in other words, is still associated with passivity, and masculinity with activity. Women face many concerns brought about by the gender insensitivity of the Philippine culture, unequal work opportunities, abuse and many others. Perhaps, these reasons possibly explain why most women were not able to attain their total human development and only relegated to the confines of the home. This limited societal participation of women must have influenced the perception of their sex as the “weaker” one. Nevertheless, the researcher recognizes the fact that some sectors had already taken great lengths of actions to address the plight of today’s woman. The researcher decided to take a closer look on one of these actions designed to address concerns of women, women programs. It is of great importance to find out if such programs are truly effective in servicing women's needs. This paper is a descriptive study of the effectiveness of the Women’s Desk Program of the CWL-IHMPC in addressing women's needs. The researcher aims to find out the nature of the organization and its members’ definition of women empowerment. The researcher seeks to know what a Women’s Desk 1s, who its facilitators are and the services it offers. The researcher also aims to find out if the facilitators and the clients are satisfied with the program results. The participants of the study included the officers and members of the CWL. It also included twenty three program clients chosen through purposive sampling. The researcher used both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. She conducted an interview and a Focus Group Discussion with the CWL members. Posavac and Carey's evaluation criteria was used by the researcher to assess the program's effectiveness. Based on the data gathered, the researcher was able to accomplish the eight objectives. The CWL is a religious, socio-civic organization geared towards the total human development of women. Its members defined women empowerment as the development of women in all aspects of life. It was known that the Women’s Desk is an office at the parish center that provides community-based counseling service. It is also directed to organize workshops and seminars that target the empowerment of woman. Moreover, it was found that CWL members with counseling background were the ones assigned to man the Desk. The data revealed that there were three main projects that the Desk implemented last year. These were the Counseling and Referral, the Poverty Alleviation and the Nutrition Feeding Program. Based on the responses, the Counseling and Referral attained its objectives of extending counseling services and referrals to its clients. The Poverty Alleviation Program was able to conduct its regular training sessions resulting to the education of the clients in vocational courses. The Nutrition Feeding Program resulted to positive health changes of the children. The clients and the facilitators were both satisfied with the program results. The researcher proposed the following recommendations: (1) for the CWL-IHMP to use a more exclusive area for the counseling service and to use a standard evaluation criteria to assess if the projects achieve the objectives set, (2) for the OrCom program to encourage students to research on social issues, specifically gender related, then observe significance of OrCom concepts, (3) for gender studies researchers to focus on the male's perception on gender sensitivity, and (4) for other researchers to make a comparative research with another women empowerment program to see prevailing strengths and weaknesses.