Since the launching of Gabriela Network’s Dollar for Divorce (D4D) campaign, we have received countless correspondence from women sharing their stories of marital inequality and their need to protect their children by seeking a divorce – an act which is not allowed under Philippine law. Below is just one of those letters…

Please help women like Sheryl and support Gabnet’s Dollar for Divorce campaign. The Dollar for Divorce (D4D) campaign was created as a means of helping the Filipina place the most fundamental of her relationships on a rational basis. The ability to end a partnership is also a means to resolve such issues as child support, welfare and care. These are vital to Filipinas who have managed to build new lives in the lands to which, ironically, they have been thrown by the Philippine government’s labor export policy. Although Congresswoman Liza Maza filed a Divorce Bill four years ago, there has been little public support and pressure behind it. The Philippine Congress has even refused to consider it for discussion.

Gabriela Network, through the D4D campaign, plans to build public pressure for a Divorce Law in the Philippines – first and foremost, to secure reasonable care and support for children; second, to enable women to end abusive, unhappy and exploitative marriages; and third, to end the delusion of ‘til-death-do-us-part’ when women are being exported in massive numbers all over the world to endure separations for as long as 15 years.

Now is the time to modernize Philippine marriages. Give everyone the right to terminate miserable and unsatisfactory marriages. Please forward this to at least five (5) of your relatives, friends in the Philippines and cc us at dollar4divorce@gabnet.org.

For More information and to participate in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, go to 16daysofgabnet.tumblr.com.

GABNET AND MARIPOSA ALLIANCE PROUDLY AFFIRM NATIONAL PARTICIPATION IN 16 DAYS OF ACTIVISM AGAINST GENDER VIOLENCE
Gabnet/Mariposa Alliance proudly affirm our participation in the international feminist movement's 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence campaign. Along with over 2,000 organizations in 154 countries who have participated in this campaign since 1991, Gabnet/Ma-Al launches our own 16 days of activism, beginning on November 25th, the International Day Against Violence Against Women, with a nationwide Speak Out Against Violence, and ending on December 10th, International Human Rights Day.

We in the U.S. are living in a time where words like progress, change and victory are flooding and infused in our collective discourse. We are supposed to believe that we have won the good fight; that there is nothing left to struggle for. We are supposed to believe that individual success is tantamount to the liberation of all.

We, in Gabnet/Mariposa Alliance, know that women around the world, from the United States to the Philippines to Haiti to Africa, still have everything to struggle for. We know that murder is the number one cause of death of pregnant women; that homicide is the number one occupational hazard for women in the US.

We know that somewhere in America a woman is battered, usually by her partner, every 15 seconds. At least one in three women, globally, is sexually abused in her lifetime. In the US, a woman is raped every six minutes. And in armed conflict zones around the worldin Iraq, Darfur, Columbia, South Asiathe rape of women and children is a tool of war, just the same as any gun, bomb or missile.

Over one million women and children are trafficked internationally every year, becoming victims of sexual exploitation, labor exploitation and abuse. And in the US, legislation is being passed to legalize prostitution, an institution that is responsible for the legal rape and degradation of women around the world. This violence cuts across ethnic and economic boundaries and is the result of a patriarchal and imperialist system that values power and money over human rights.

Gabnet/Mariposa Alliance stands in militant solidarity with women around the world as we affirm that women's rights are human rights. Each time a woman is attacked around the world, we hear her voice and we stand with her. We demand an end to all violence against women.