ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the social profile that provides the context of women's work and its implications for care work, the ideological nature and contradictory features of the Philippine political economy of care, the regulatory framework relevant to care work, and some initiatives. It demonstrates that the major source of employment in the Philippines is agriculture and forestry. Over 1 million overseas contract workers migrate annually, encouraged by the labour export programme, which is one of the contradictory features of globalisation in the Philippines. Given that the majority of the workforce is employed in private establishments and the Philippine economy operates within the principles of capitalist relations. A contradictory feature of the Philippine care work regime is the formation of two classes of domestic workers who do paid social reproductive labour as a consequence of overseas labour migration. A striking feature of domestic work in the Philippines is the presence of child domestic workers.
