Feminism and the Women's Movement in the Philippines: Struggles, Advances, and Challenges practice in organizing women in Basilan, Zamboanga Sibugay, and Zamboanga City to develop women community leaders active in local governance(Villarin and Ramos, 2009: 51). Involved in urban poor, trade unions, and community-based cooperatives, these women were able to influence areas of governance, like the allocation of the Gender and Development budget by the Zamboanga City government by coordinating with local politicians(Villarin and Ramos 2009: 52). Former ACORD Executive Director Angelina“Angie” Ludovice Katoh later became Akbayan! Party's representative in the House of Representatives in 2015. ACORD and the Barangay Bayan Governance Consortium(BBGC) organized women in different communities and barangays through programs on gender mainstreaming in local governance, and barangay development planning through participatory resource appraisal(Villarin and Ramos 2009: 60-65). These efforts resulted in women's increased awareness of the overall development in their respective communities. Almost 80% of women in these communities believed that they should directly respond to the needs of the community through attending different community activities, and expressing their demands and needs to the local government. Women in trade unions and in the labour movement In the Philippines,'women hold half the sky', making up 49.6% of the population as against the men's 50.4%(Philippine Statistics Authority, 2016). However, women's labour force participation rate (LFPR) has constantly been lower than men's LFPR, with a gap of 28%-32% since 1998 despite increasing female employment over the years. In the seventies, the export-oriented industrialization policy of the Marcos government created export processing zones (EPZs) that depended on a large supply of young women as cheap labor for the garment and electronics industries. Since then, an increasing number of women have joined the paid workforce. Presently, they still dominate the garments and electronic factories inside the EPZs, although many are also found in the business process outsourcing(BPO) industry as call center agents. The majority of women workers remain concentrated in lower paid and lower status jobs in the formal sector, presumably because these are the only types of jobs made available to them or the only ones that allow them to balance work and family responsibilities. As a result, women workers often lack both individual and collective bargaining power. Massive organizing of women workers in trade unions, especially in the garments industry, took place in the seventies primarily in support of the anti­dictatorship and anti-imperialist struggle. Nevertheless, as women's organizations flourished after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, there was also a surge in the formation of women's committees in the unions. These developments emerged from a combination of different circumstances and motivations, such as the vigorous advocacy of the organized women workers themselves who had the support of the vibrant women's movement that urged unions to tackle women's issues, the pressure from the international labour movement that called on all affiliates to put gender equality in their agenda, and support from local and international NGOs to help raise consciousness on gender issues(Hega, 2009). While innovative gender initiatives flourished within the Filipino trade union movement such as reforms in union structures to accommodate women's concerns (e.g., having two shop stewards, a man and a woman, in particular departments), adoption of policies against sexual harassment in the workplace, and inclusion of women's issues in Collective Bargaining Agreements(CBAs)(e.g., menstrual break),'gender work' remained relegated to women unionists. The continued separation of the union, the workplace and household made it difficult for women workers to participate in union activities and fragmentation of the Filipino trade union movement prevented women unionist from different unions to come together on common gender concerns. More importantly, women remained second in command and under-represented in the leadership, even in sectors where women outnumbered men as union members. In the area of legislative advocacy, women trade unionists contributed significantly to the passage of Republic Act 7877 or the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law of 1995. This landmark law continues to influence workplace codes of 10