CWR | Center for Women's Resources

The Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) challenged the portrayal of digital integration and artificial intelligence (AI) as automatic pathways to progress for Filipino women, as ASEAN economic ministers signed the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) in Manila on 14 November 2026. 

CWR warned that DEFA, alongside President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s Executive Order No. 131 establishing the National Artificial Intelligence Council (NAIC), risks reinforcing corporate control, precarious labor, surveillance, and the exploitation of women’s labor.

While ASEAN and the Philippine government promote DEFA to attract investments, expand markets, and accelerate economic growth through digital trade and emerging technologies, CWR stressed that digital integration does not guarantee decent jobs, better livelihoods, or economic security for women.

“DEFA promises seamless digital markets, while EO 131 promises ‘responsible AI.’ But for Filipino women, both can mean more work, less security, and greater corporate control,” said Cham Perez, CWR executive director. “A woman may sell online or work through an app, yet remain without a living wage, job security, health insurance, maternity protection, or the right to organize. This is not digital empowerment. It is the digitization of exploitation.”

Digitalization must not deepen women’s labor exploitation

Filipino women are concentrated in sectors undergoing rapid digital restructuring, including retail, services, business process outsourcing (BPO), care work, home-based production, and platform-based work. While digital platforms offer income opportunities, they also shift business risks onto workers through unstable earnings, lack of benefits, invasive surveillance, customer harassment, arbitrary account deactivation, and unpredictable working hours.

These conditions reflect a broader pattern in which technological innovation is increasingly used to reorganize labor in ways that prioritize corporate efficiency and profitability over workers’ rights and welfare. Rather than freeing women from economic insecurity, digitalization can intensify existing inequalities by making their labor more flexible  for employers while making their livelihoods more precarious. 

In CWR’s Ulat Lila (Purple Report) of 2026, data show that more than 20 million women are economically insecure because of low income, limited opportunities for livelihood, and insecure work. Against this backdrop, the expansion of digital markets cannot be treated as an indicator of women’s economic empowerment. When corporations benefit from women’s labor without guaranteeing living wages, decent working conditions,  and social protection, digitalization risks reproducing and further entrenching the very inequalities it claims to address.

For women in the informal economy, the barriers to meaningful digital inclusion are even more pronounced. Poverty, the high cost of digital devices, inadequate internet infrastructure, and limited access to technological resources constrain their ability to participate in the digital economy.  Market vendors, home-based producers, online sellers, freelancers, and platform workers need affordable connectivity, secure payment systems, protection from excessive platform fees, and decent working conditions. Without these safeguards, digital integration will only benefit corporations and the financially connected, further marginalizing poor and rural women.

Need for accountability of AI, digital platforms

CWR warned that EO 131 should not be another government initiative that prioritizes technological innovation and investment, while neglecting the risks of displacement, algorithmic management, surveillance, and discrimination for women workers.

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being deployed to track productivity, assign tasks, set pay, screen applicants, and limit access to jobs and services. Without transparency and accountability, these systems can reinforce gender, class, and disability discrimination.

“An algorithm that decides who gets work, how much a worker is paid, or who gets deactivated is not neutral technology. It is a management tool that serves whoever controls it,” Perez said. “The government must protect women whose lives and livelihoods are increasingly subjected to algorithmic control.”

CWR also warned against treating women’s privacy and online safety as secondary concerns in the rush toward digital trade. The collection and monetization of women’s personal data by corporations and platforms can intensify surveillance, discrimination, and technology-facilitated violence, including harassment, stalking, image-based abuse, and deepfakes.

A digital economy for women, not for corporations

CWR calls on the Marcos Jr. administration to reject a model of digital integration and AI governance that prioritizes big business, foreign investors, and technology corporations over workers and the public.

“Women workers demand living wages, decent working conditions and security of tenure for workers in digital, service, retail, BPO and platform-based sectors. All workers, including informal, freelance, home-based and platform workers, should have access to universal social protection, including health insurance, maternity benefits, pensions and income support, irrespective of their employment status,” said Perez.

CWR also called for regulation of digital platforms and artificial intelligence systems to prevent wage theft, excessive fees, unreasonable working hours, arbitrary deactivation, invasive surveillance and discriminatory algorithmic decisions. The government must also guarantee affordable internet and devices, gender-responsive digital literacy programs, and meaningful support for women-led small enterprises.

CWR stressed that ASEAN’s digital future must not be measured by investment figures, corporate profits, or projections of a US$2-trillion regional digital economy, but by whether women workers enjoy decent wages, secure livelihoods, social protection, and freedom from exploitation.

“Filipino women do not need another trade agreement or AI council that treats them as cheap and flexible labor. They need living wages, secure jobs, social protection, safe digital spaces, and the power to organize,” Perez noted. “Technology must serve the people, not corporate profit at the expense of women’s labor and rights. Anything less is not inclusion. It is exploitation,” concluded Perez.

As regional leaders prepare to gather for the 49th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit alongside US President Donald Trump, the Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) said that the worsening conditions of women across Southeast Asia expose the limits of an economic and political agenda that prioritizes profits, foreign interests, and military alliances over people’s welfare.

Across the region, women remain concentrated in low-wage and insecure work. Rural and indigenous women face land dispossession and the destruction of their livelihoods due to extractive industries and development projects. Migrant women workers are still trafficked, discriminated against and exploited in the labor market. Women in conflict-affected communities are the ones who suffer most from militarization and armed violence.

In the Philippines, these inequalities directly affect the poorest sectors– women, children, farmers, fisherfolks, and indigenous peoples. According to official poverty statistics in 2025, 8.66 million women belong to poor families, second only to 9.29 million children. That same year, farmers posted the third highest poverty incidence at 27%, following fisherfolks (27.4%), and indigenous peoples (32.4%). 

These conditions are inseparable from the political and economic direction of the country. Trade and investment policies that privilege corporations, weak protection for workers, dependence on foreign markets, and expanding military commitments do little to address poverty, unemployment, violence and the destruction of women’s livelihoods. Instead, women are left to absorb the consequences through low-paid work, unpaid care responsibilities, economic insecurity, and inadequate access to essential services.

“Filipino women cannot eat economic growth statistics, nor can they find security in military agreements that fail to address poverty, unemployment, violence, and the destruction of their livelihoods. What women need are decent jobs, living wages, accessible public services, social protection, genuine land reform, and an economy that serves the needs of the people,” says CWR Executive Director Cham Perez.

CWR calls on the Marcos Jr. administration and other ASEAN governments to place people’s needs at the center of regional cooperation. This requires genuine national industrialization, agrarian reform, protection of workers’ rights and livelihoods, accessible public services, social protection, and stronger measures to address violence against women. It also requires rejecting policies such as the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) or Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) that deepen military dependence and undermine national sovereignty.

For CWR, ASEAN’s success  should not be measured by the volume of trade agreements, foreign investments, or military partnerships it secures, but by whether women and marginalized communities can live with dignity, security, and freedom from exploitation.