The passage of the long-stalled absolute divorce bill will help the Philippines clinch a high spot in a World Economic Forum (WEF) index report tracking gender parity.

The projection was made on Friday of no less than Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, the staunch proponent of the proposed Absolute Divorce Act, which narrowly hurdled the divided House of Representatives on 22 May.

“The pro-woman measure will bridge the gender gap and achieve gender parity as abused and tormented wives will be given the opportunity to regain their freedom, self-respect, agency, and happiness together with the right to alimony, primary custody of their children and support for the latter from the offending party, and to remarry,” the veteran lawmaker said.

“However, getting married again is the least of the aggrieved wives prayers as they principally want to be liberated from a long entombed marriage,” he said.

From 16th last year, the Philippines dropped nine spots in the 2024 report of the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report published on Tuesday, 11 June.

Of 146 economies, the Philippines placed 25th in terms of gender parity, with a score of 77.9.

In 2023, the Philippines had a gender parity score of 79.1 percent.

Sudan had the highest gender gap in 2024 WEF, while Iceland, New Zealand, Germany, and Spain, among others, had the lowest gender disparity.

Lagman lamented how the country’s ranking slipped over the years when it clinched the sixth spot in 2006, the year the Global Gender Gap Report was launched.

Passing the absolute divorce law has been the subject of a decades-old controversy and a flashpoint between progressive and religious groups.

Conservative groups and a significant number of lawmakers who were not supportive of breaking a union deemed it a grievous act against God.

The Philippines is the only country aside from the Vatican — the seat of the Roman Catholic Church — that outlaws absolute divorce, believing in the sanctity of marriage.

Critics have said that legalizing absolute divorce is a blatant violation of the Constitution, which considers marriage an inviolable social institution, the foundation of the family that the state shall safeguard.

Nearly one month after it was passed, the House-approved absolute divorce bill was finally transmitted on 10 June to the Senate, where its prospects remained unclear.