SEN. Maria Imelda Josefa Marcos wants more women appointed to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), saying the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic had affected women in “myriad and cruel ways.”Marcos on Sunday urged Malacañang to “seriously consider” appointing a mother to the task force. “Poor [Education] Secretary [Leonor] Briones is overwhelmed by the demands of new learning modes, [Tourism] Secretary Berna [Romulo Puyat] is struggling with her tourism sector,” she said. “We need a commonsensical but compassionate homemaker in policy making or set up a special committee led by her to assess the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on women,” Marcos added. A mother in the IATF-EID would be more critical of official reports concerning her fellow women, she said, citing Philippine National Police (PNP) findings that violence against women and children had gone down. The pandemic, she added, has amplified the hidden discrimination against women and the lack of policies that benefit them.

Source: Manila Times October 04, 2020 16:46 UTC