Characteristics of the sample

The rows of Table 3.1 depict variations in socio-demographic and economic characteristics according to the employment status of married women who were the respondents in the 1975 survey. On average, respondents had been married for 18 years. Husbands were older than wives by four years, reflecting the fact that Filipino males married females younger than themselves. The 1973 Philippine National Demographic Survey reported that the age at first marriage for the whole of the Philippines was 23.7 and 25.7 for males and females and males, respectively. In the same survey, the mean age at marriage for the Southern Luzon Region, of which Laguna was one of the provinces, was 24.0 years for females and 25.2 for males (Perez, 1976 cited in Castillo, 1979: 134). The majority of the adult respondents had formal schooling; however, few had completed some secondary education or beyond (18 per cent of men and 14 per cent of women). These proportions were lower than the 39 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women for the province during the same period.

The predominance of nuclear households is clear: more than 70 per cent of the households were of a nuclear type consisting of mother, father and their unmarried children. Other studies (Liu and Yu, 1968; Hayami et al., 1978) in the Philippines have also confirmed the predominance of nuclear households, especially in rural areas. In Liu and Yu's (1968: 119) study among low-income Cebuano families in the Philippines, married children started to break away from their parents' home only about 13 months after marriage. One of the explanations offered by Castillo (1979: 117) for the predominance of the nuclear rather than the extended structure is the relative ease with which a house can be built with light materials

built near the family farm or under the coconut trees, newly married couples can readily obtain permission from parents or the parents' landlords to build their houses. Through bayanihan (exchange labour), a house can be constructed with light materials such as bamboo, coconut trunks and leaves and cogon grass.

Couples included in the study had many children, the average being more than three per couple. Sixty-one per cent and 64 per cent of non-employed women and employed women had more than two children, respectively. Since the children included here were only those who were living with their parents at the time of the survey, the actual number of children in these families was higher. Children studying and working away from home at the time of the interview were not counted as household members.

The large number of children was not unique to the place of study. Findings from a rural community study (Jocano et al., 1976) in the Philippines revealed similarly large families and found that reason for having many children was that children were perceived as sources of joy and happiness, of help in lightening the burden of women's household chores, and of support for old age, not only financially but also physically and emotionally. The contribution of children's earnings to the household purse was one of the most common reasons given by parents for having many children, although parents were motivated to have many children by their emotional, as well as material contribution to the family.

The sample households were grouped into landed and landless households to reflect their resource base. A landed household was defined as one which cultivated 200 square metres or more of land as an owner, lessee or tenant. It is assumed that the household head as well as other members of families with less than 200 square metres of land would have had to rely on wage employment, the main type being agricultural work on other people's land. Other possible measures of the resource

Table 3.1 Selected couples' and households' characteristics, Laguna, Philippines, 1975

Characteristics All Non-employed Employed Number of years married

(mean) 18 17 19

Age (mean)

Husband 42 41 42

Wife 38 38 39

Educational attainment (percentage) Husband

None(0) 6 6 6

Primary(l-4) 44 39 48

Intermediate^-6) 32 31 32

High School or over(7 +) 18 24 14

Total 100 100 100

X - 8.7 statistically significant at 0.05 level, df = 3

Wife

None(0) 6 6 7

Primary(l-4) 42 40 44

Intermediate (5-6) 38 37 38

High School or over(7 +) 14 18 12

Total 100 100 100

Household Structure (percentage)

Nuclear 73 74 72

Extended 27 26 28

Total 100 100 100

Number of children (percentage)

0 - 2 37 39 36

3 -5 42 39 43

6 + 21 22 21

Total 100 100 100

Mean 3.5 3.6 3.5

Resource base (percentage)3

Landless 51 53 50

Landed 49 47 50

Total 100 100 100

Mean (hectare) 2.0 2.0 2.0

Number of cases 517 182 335

Source: Laguna data tape, 1975

Notes: Non-employed women included women who worked in market activities for less than an hour during the week preceding the survey None of the differences between means was statistically significant

aHouseholds with no land and less than 200 square metres of land were classified as landless.

base, such as the ownership of land, the type of crop planted or the type of irrigation used by rice farming households, were not useful as most of farming families owned more than one parcel of land, each with different tenurial arrangements, and practised multiple cropping; nearly all of the rice farmers had irrigated land.

The average farm size for all households was 2.0 hectares. The opportunity for landed women to participate in market activities was presumed to be greater than for landless women because of opportunities on the farm and the income from it, which helped them to operate their own businesses. However, as the figures in Table 3.1 reveal, there was only a small difference in the proportion of women from landless and landed households who were employed. Although landless women could have been forced to participate more in the market due to poverty, employment levels for women in landed households were also quite high.

In summary, the characteristics of the non-employed and employed households suggest a high degree of homogeneity with the exception of husbands' educational attainment. Employed women tended to be married to husbands who had lower educational attainment than the husbands of non-employed women, which could affect their time allocation. It is possible that lower educated husbands were involved in market activities which had lower returns compared to husbands with higher education. Therefore, wives of men with lower education had to supplement their husbands' income by working in the market. Women in the study were similar in some of the demographic and economic characteristics to women in the whole province in relation to such characteristics as children ever bom, age at marriage, and size of land owned by the household. Still, any inference drawn about a typical woman from Laguna has to be constrained by the older age and lower education of the sample, compared to the population of Laguna (see section 2 of Chapter 2).