Working Girl
Many Philippine women, who are brought to Canada as nannies are turning to prostitution to earn a decent wage.
By Susan McClelland

Elle
February 2007



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It was a starlit summer night in 1989 when Lisa first boarded a ship anchored at the Vancouver Port Authority. The 34-year-old Manila-born woman smoothed down her white cotton sundress and primped her straight, shiny black hair before entering the canteen, which was serving as a party room. It was packed with drunken sailors. Lisa was the entertainment. The petite woman had moved to Vancouver in 1983 to work as a nanny, but a few nights a month she sang at a popular Filipino nightclub, gaining a reputation as a good performer. Tonight, though, she was nervous even though singing usually calmed her down. As she worked her way through Hopelessly Devoted to You, Stand by Your Man and Paano, a popular Filipino love song, Lisa couldn't shake her anxiety.

Her unease was justified. Lisa's friend, a Filipino woman who worked part-time delivering ship supplies, alcohol and toiletries to shipmates when at port, had a hidden motive for inviting Lisa to the soiree. At the end of the evening, Lisa was to have sex with the captain. "He gave me a tour of the ship, which ended in his cabin and that's when it hit me," says Lisa, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. "I had heard stories in the clubs about how women like my friend got extra money from the captains if they gave them women. I let him take the lead," she adds, "then he gave me $500."

Lisa vowed never to return. A devout Catholic and a mother, she felt ashamed. "Women like me didn't do such things," she says. But being a nanny wasn't yielding the money she had expected. She was sending home almost all of her $800 a month salary to support her two children, then 13 and 9, living with her mum in Manila. So, when her friend asked her to another ship party and then another, Lisa went along. "I became the 'it' girl for the men on the ships," says Lisa. "I hated what I was doing but then I thought about my kids and their futures. I needed the money more than I needed my dignity."

Lisa had been working for four years in the sex trade when she shared her story with a Filipino women's group at Lakeview United Church in Vancouver. It was then that she learned she wasn't alone. Rumours abounded in the Filipino community about the prostitution on the ships, but no one, until Lisa, admitted they were involved. Lisa's initial embarrassment in bringing up the topic turned into anger. She began to ask questions. "If being a nanny is so important to Canadian families, why are we paid so poorly? Why do nannies have to work as prostitutes to make ends meet?"

The women, all of them nannies except for Cecilia Diocson, a nurse, and Lisa decided to take action. The women's group that until then put on dances and potlucks was transformed into the BC Philippine Women's Centre, a support and advocacy group for Filipino women. One of the first items on the centre's agenda: educate nannies about the dangers of prostitution. The group rounded up new nannies to the city and marched from downtown eastside Vancouver to Robson Street, stopping at the sex shops along the way to show the women how prostitution works in the city and the health costs involved through sexually transmitted diseases. "Many of the women got sick when they saw what was going on in the shops," says Diocson, president of the BC Philippine Women's Centre. "Filipino women don't want to be prostitutes," she adds. "But they're hanging on to the edge of a knife. They will eventually do anything to survive."

The centre gained a lot of support from the community and was able to move from the church basement where the women first met to an office in downtown Eastside Vancouver. Organizers began hosting support groups for nannies, prostitutes and mail-order-brides, another group of Filipino women in British Columbia whose numbers have burgeoned over the years. They also implemented a referral service to immigration and labour lawyers and health clinics.

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To address Lisa's concerns most, though, in the late 1990s and 2000s, the centre conducted a series of studies with Status of Women Canada to examine Filipino women's lives in Canada. The results came as no big surprise to Lisa and the other members: Filipino women, the fourth largest female minority group in Canada, are among the poorest paid in the country. Largely to blame is Canada's Live-In Caregiver Program, which brings Filipino women to the country to work as nannies, cooks and cleaners in the homes of wealthy families. The women are supposed to be paid minimum wage. But many employers don't follow the rules and there is no monitoring agency to ensure that they do. "There are so many problems with this program, from employers who sexually assault the nannies, to long hours, no overtime pay and pitiful salaries," says Charlene Sayo, author of several of the centre's studies. "Prostitution will continue to exist in our community as long as the Live-In Caregiver Program exists."

In 2003 and 2004, the BC Philippine Women's Centre shared the results of their studies and Lisa's story with a federal government committee examining the Live-In Caregiver Program. They were optimistic that changes, including raising domestic workers' salaries and scrapping the live-in component, would be implemented, but the committee was disbanded when the Conservative party took power.

Today, of the thousands of women who arrive each year to work as nannies, more than 90 per cent are from the Philippines. For at least two years, these women are forbidden from boosting their incomes by taking on legitimate care giving jobs or from working in their previous professions, like Lisa who was a music and dance teacher in Manila. Almost all of the women are expected to send money home to their relatives and children. In many cases, they're their families' sole breadwinners. "These women are just like me," says Lisa. "They've come alone to the country with high hopes that they will earn enough money to lift their families out of poverty. Instead, they land themselves in poverty. They're placed in positions of disadvantage from the get go."

Despite the centre's attempts to stop the Filipino sex trade, a recent study shows that more and more nannies are working as prostitutes on the ships, in Filipino nightclubs and escort agencies. There is also evidence that this phenomenon is happening in Toronto and Montreal, too.

While Lisa's co-founding of the centre helped many women avoid prostitution, she continued to work in the sex trade for more than a decade. She felt she had no choice. Money from prostitution paid for her to return to school and become a nurse's aid. She was also able to send her children to a top Philippine University, Santo Tomas, where her son is now a hotel management professor. But along the way, Lisa admits she lost a lot of her pride. Her family still ridicules her even though she turned her last trick in 2001. "My parents, sister and brother, were disgusted when I told them what I was doing, but they couldn't change things by helping me out financially," says Lisa. "So I just swallow all the bad things they say about me now. My kids, though, they cried for me. My daughter said she understands that my sacrifices were for her."

Lisa feels she has sacrificed much of her happiness for her children. But she does find solace in that her activism may have helped the next generation of nannies. "If my story keeps one woman from becoming a prostitute, then I will be happy," she says. "If my story makes the federal government change the live-in program so women are paid more, then I will be even happier."