Women’s Rights and Rights-Seeking Behavior during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic through the Tisya Hustisya Chatbot in the Philippines

Abstract

The Tisya Hustisya (Tisya for Justice), an online pro bono legal services initiative by Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (IDEALS), recorded 26,763 sessions from 17,102 clients, 13,319 of which were legal queries, during its first year of operations. Flaunting a mascot of a fierce female lawyer, Tisya Hustisya has gained traction among Filipino women — roughly 75 to 80 percent of the platform’s clientele are female, mostly residing in urban areas. This quantitative study seeks to examine the legal rights concerns triggering Filipino women and the corresponding socio-political barriers affecting the realisation of gender justice in the Philippines based on the data amassed during Tisya Hustisya’s first year of operations. To analyze trends in legal-seeking behavior among Filipino women, IDEALS lawyers and paralegals processed and examined data collected from its chatbot’s Queuing Management System from June 2020 to June 2021. The majority of female clients sought legal advice on domestic violence, child support and custody, infidelity of spouses and romantic partners, piling debts, and economic downturn in the era of COVID-19. While grappling with the health and economic risks, Filipino women still face already-inherent social barriers because of gender-based violence, social stigma, and inability to seek marital redress because of unaffordable annulment fees and the absence of divorce in the country