In
a conference on women’s role in Philippine history in March 1989, feminist
historians were excited over discussions on the etymology of the word bayani.
They said the word bayani comes from the combination of two words - bayan
which means community or village or settlement and babayi woman. This
affirms of course the present day notion of usually referring to country in
feminine terms - motherland , etc. More significant perhaps is the
implication that the notion of woman in the Philippines is also affixed to
the concept of nation, of heroism and valor - a revelation which seems to
defy the western notion of referring to heroism, patriotism and valor
usually in masculine terms.
The historical
revelation on the word bayani is supported by a cursory review of the
history of the Philippines. From pre-colonial Philippines to the present,
women have played an important role in the development of the village and
town until the emergence of the Filipino nation . From the pre-hispanic
babaylan or katalonan - the chief priestess in the barangay to the women
leader and advocate of recent times , history presents a tableau of the
Filipinas bravely asserting their inherent rights to participate in the
shaping of the community and nation equal to Filipino men.
The Suffragists
In the arena of
politics and legislation, the role of women was first heightened by the
Suffragist Movement (1898-1937) which gained for the Filipino women the
right to vote and be voted upon. The suffragist movement brought to the fore
the activism of such women as Concepcion Felix de Calderon who formed the
Asociacion Feminista Filipina in June 1905, Rosa Sevilla de Alvero and a
young Trinidad Almeda, Miss Constancia Poblete, founder of Liga Femenina de
la Paz, Pura Villanueva Kalaw and Paz Mendoza Guazon, Pilar Hidalgo Lim,
President of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs and Josefa Llanes
Escoda, president of the Girl Scouts of the Philippines. Province-based
women were represented by Maria C. Manzano of Pangasinan.
Organizations like the
Woman’s Club of Manila later convened into the National Federation of
Women’s Clubs, the National League of Filipino Women and the Philippine
Association of University Women. The members of these groups attended the
public hearings of the Committee on Suffrage of the Constitutional
Convention of 1934, as well as published informative articles in the
Liwayway and Taliba. To coordinate their activities, they formed a General
Council of Women with Mrs. Escoda as secretary and Mrs. Hidalgo-Lim,
president of the Federation of Women’s Clubs which was spearheading the
suffragist movement, as head. Incidentally, it was with the Federation where
the young Minerva Guysako-Laudico worked right after her master of arts
degree in social work.
The advocates succeeded
in their campaign because Article V of the 1934 Constitution extended
suffrage to women, provided that 300,000 women qualified to vote would vote
for the right. Of course, this meant another round of intensive campaigning
by the General Council of Women for the plebiscite on April 30, 1937 but
they managed to exceed the 300,000 ‘yes’ votes required by the Constitution.
They rounded up a full 447, 725 ‘yes’ against 44, 307 ‘no’ votes. And so on
September 17, 1937, Filipino women finally gained universal suffrage when
its legal basis was signed by Manuel L. Quezon, President of the Philippine
Commonwealth.
The Legislative
Phase
The law-making body of
our government underwent many periods of development, starting from the
American Period when the First Philippine Legislature convened in 1907.
Within these 27 years, ten Philippine Legislatures came and went without
producing any woman member. It took the Philippine Commonwealth to get a
woman elected to the National Assembly - the second of three such assemblies
at that. In 1938, the Honorable Elisa Ochoa from the province of Agusan was
elected to the House of Representatives. We should also note that in the
national election of December 14, 1937, no less than 24 women were elected
to various positions. Among them was Carmen Planas - "Manila’s Darling" -
who became the first woman to be elected to the city council of Manila.
But soon after women
broke into electoral politics, World War II broke out. The Filipinos had
another government, this time formed by the Japanese. In 1943 a
Constitutional Commission composed of 20 members drafted a new Constitution
but again, there was no woman member in the Commission or in the National
Assembly that soon convened.
With the end of World
War II, the First Congress of the Republic came together. Since then, a
total of 10 Congresses have convened and the number of women getting elected
has increased from one
in the First Congress - in the person of the Honorable Remedios O. Fortich,
lawyer, banker, rancher and social worker - but there were Congresses when
there were no women elected to office. The highest number of Congresswomen:
22 in the Tenth Congress .
In the Senate there was
only one woman senator in both the Third and Fourth Congresses - educator
Geronima Pecson and social worker Pacita Madrigal-Gonzales; this number
increased to three during the Sixth Congress of 1965-69 in the persons of
Honorables Eva Estrada-Kalaw, her sister-in-law Maria Kalaw-Katigbak and
Tecla San
Andres-Ziga- the first
woman bar topnotcher in the Philippines and the first congresswoman to be
re-elected.
In the Senate the honor
of re-election goes to Sen. Eva Estrada Kalaw who was re-elected in 1969 to
the Seventh Congress even without the endorsement of the Marcos
administration, a strong testimony to her political leadership and
legislative achievements. Also in 1969, the Senate welcomed two more women:
the Honorables Magnolia Wellborn Antonino and Helena Zoila Benitez. As some
of us will recall, Congresswoman Antonino took over the candidacy of her
husband when Sen. Gaudencio Antonino died in an aircrash as he was
campaigning for re-election. Although she had only one stint, Mrs. Antonino
did well as a senator. One of her successes was a law transforming private
schools into tax-exempt foundations whose profits should fund the
professional development of teachers and the improvement of facilities. Sen.
Helena Benitez, on the otherhand was a tall figure in the Senate introducing
a series of laws on rent control, housing development and early legislation
on protecting the environment.
The Eighth Congress
resumed after the period of martial law and its unicameral legislative body
known as the Batasang Pambansa. There were two women elected to the Senate
of the Eighth Congress - the Honorables Senators Santanina Rasul and Leticia
Ramos-Shahani , the first woman President Protempore in the Senate. The
number doubled in the next Congress with Senators Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
and Anna Dominique `Nikki’ Coseteng joining our senior senators. And in the
just-concluded Tenth Congress, elected were the Honorable Miriam Defensor-Santiago
joining Senators Shahani, Arroyo and Coseteng.
Since 1935 the
Philippines had already two Constitutions where women have participated as
members. The first was the 1971 Constitution, the product of the
Constitutional Convention composed of 320 delegates directly elected by the
people. A number of women were elected to this body, including Congresswoman
Mercedes Teodoro and Carmencita Reyes. The second Constitution was the 1987
Constitution, the product of a Constitutional Commission composed of 48
members appointed by President Corazon Aquino after the 1986 People Power
Revolution. A number of women were again in the body. In fact, a woman
became its President - Supreme Court Justice Cecilia Munoz Palma. The other
women commissioners were Dr. Florangel Rosario-Braid, Sr. Christine Tan.
women’s right advocates Ma. Teresa Feria-Nieva and Felicitas Aquino, and the
late health activist-public health professor Minda Luz Quesada.
Our 1987 Constitution
is unique for a number of reasons. For one, it guarantees equality between
men and women - a right which is not enshrined in the United States
Constitution and those of many other countries. Article II, Section 14, of
the 1987 Constitution provides that " The State recognizes the role of women
in nation-building, and shall ensure the fundamental equality before the law
of women and men."
Secondly, 1987
Constitution enshrines the representation of marginalized sectors, including
women, through the sectoral representatives and the Party-List System.
Thirdly, it institutionalizes the role of nongovernment organizations and
peoples organizations.
Women’s
Legislative Agenda
We looked into
the legislative contributions of women lawmakers of the post-war Congress by
scrutinizing the bills and laws they had framed. We looked at the work of
around 130 women legislators who had been elected to Congress in the 80
years of this legislative body and the Constitutional Commissions. Indeed
the number is so few, through the years, only about 10 percent of the total
number of men elected into office In fact women’s representation in
policy-making from the start of our legislative history to the 1950s seems
to be totally negligible. Until the start of the United Nations Women’s
Decade (1976-1985) - congresswomen advocated generally for education and
social amelioration rather than what are presently considered specific
gender issues and concerns.
The earliest
congressional records are on Rep. Medina Lacson de Leon of Bataan, and they
show that she filed bills for social amelioration - to update the nursing
profession; grant benefits to veterans; and establish the Women and
Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor and Employment (at the Third
Congress this became a reality with RA 2714, which was authored by Sen. Ziga).
Still on social amelioration, in the Sixth Congress , Sen. Kalaw pushed for
the conversion of the Social Welfare Administration into a Department of
Social Work, and Sen. Katigbak authored the Consumer Protection Act (RA
3765) as well as an law regulating financing companies.
At the Seventh Congress
(1969-72) Sen. Benitez authored the Medicare Law (RA 6111) and provided for
the uplift of dislocated families (RA 6026). However, she started veering
away from traditional concerns by a legislative agenda on housing,
resettlement, forestry, energy and the environment. She filed laws amending
the Home Financing Act (RA 5488); establishing forests, tree parks and
watersheds in every city and municipality; widening the mandate of the
People’s Homesite and Housing Corporation (RA 6091); establishing the Rental
Control Law (RA 6124); and authorizing the Office of the President to
contract loans for development projects (RA 6142). She followed these up at
the Batasan Pambansa with laws on the National Building Code, the Ministry
on Human Settlements and Ecology, the Oil Exploration Incentives and the
Omnibus Mining Act, as well as laws protecting the monkey-eating eagle (RA
6147) and the tamaraw.
The concerns of the
senators for social amelioration were paralleled by the congresswomen. For
instance, during the Fifth Congress from 1961 to 1965, Rep. Juanita
Nepomuceno of Pampanga sponsored a major bill authorizing the construction
of multi-tenement buildings for the poor and the homeless. For her home
province, Congresswoman Aurora Abad provided Batanes with electricity,
hospitals, schools, recreation centers and opportunities for economic
development.
Education was the other
concern of the lawmakers before 1975. In the Second Congress Rep. de Leon
filed bills creating the Mindanao Institute of Technology and the Bataan
School of Arts and Trades. In the same vein, the first woman senator - the
Honorable Geronima Pecson -- was responsible for the Free and Compulsory
Education Act as well as for the Vocational Educational Act. She also worked
for a law on training instructors in schools of arts and trades; upgrading
the UP School of Forestry into a College; and establishing the Roxas
Memorial Agricultural School, a fisheries school in Albay, local libraries
through the Municipal Libraries Act and lastly, the UNESCO National
Commission.
The woman senator who
came after Mrs. Pecson, Sen. Ziga, continued the legislative emphasis on
education by filing a law regulating the practice of dietetics (RA 2674).
One of the two colleagues of Mrs. Ziga in the Sixth Congress, Senator Kalaw,
worked for salary increases of public school teachers (RA 5158); the
creation of Local School Boards (RA 5447) and of the Barrio High School
Charter/Magna Carta for Private Schools (RA 6054); the Educational Financing
Act (RA 6728) and the inclusion of the presidents of student councils in the
Board of Regents of all state colleges and universities.
The third woman senator
on the Sixth Congress, Sen. Katigbak, worked for the creation of the
National Commission on Culture and the Philippine Executive Academy. In the
Seventh Congress (1969-72) Sen. Benitez authored RA 5462, establishing the
National Manpower and Youth Development Center and Program; RA 5919, giving
the Philippine College of Commerce ownership of the land on which it stands;
and RA 6014, creating the Student Loan Fund Authority. At the Batasan
Pambansa she continued this concern for education with the Education for
Development Act.
A Sea of
Change: The International Women’s Decade
As we all know, the
Philippines responded to the call of the United Nations for a decade-long
action for the full development of women by a presidential decree in 1975
establishing the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW)
in preparation for the UN International Conference on Women which was held
in Mexico City. Also in response to the women’s decade, the government
ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and committed to implement the Nairobi
Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women.
With the impetus of
other UN conferences in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s - notably
those hosted by Nairobi, Copenhagen, Cairo, Vienna and Beijing and the
parallel conferences run by NGOs - and with the globalization of issues,
women activists started widening their concerns and issues.
To their credit, women
in the post-People Power Congress promoted a legislative agenda that
reflected these concerns - women in development, gender and development,
gender equality, women’s reproductive health, the indivisibility of women’s
rights and human rights, action on various forms of violence against women -
rape, sexual harassment and trafficking in women, and the protection of and
increasing number of women in overseas contract work.
True, some of the laws
took almost a decade and three Congresses to pass - but this only stresses
the tenacity, solidarity and creativeness of women legislators in
shepherding key bills through the legislative treadmill. To their credit
too, women in the post-EDSA Congress worked to establish a Commitee on Women
with its own secretariat staff as well as to exercise an oversight function
over the implementation of laws they had painstakingly passed. Last but not
the least, they established with their male colleagues a network of women’s
resource and livelihood training centers strategically placed throughout the
country.
The Eighth Congress was
notable for a number of things but one of the most notable was for giving
women a day for celebrating their achievements - the Women’s Day Law (RA
6949) which was sponsored in 1990 by Senator Santanina Rasul. The Eighth
Congress also passed the Women in Development and Nation-Building Act of
1995 (RA 7192) which recognizes the role of women in nation building; gives
women the right to enter into contracts without having to seek their
husbands’ permission; opens the Philippine Military Academy to women; and
reserves for women’s projects 5% of the budget of government departments.
Each year and each
Congress have brought legislative gains for women - among them, increasing
maternity benefits for women in the private sector (RA 7322) in 1992, the
Accessibility Act filed by the late Rep. Estelita Juco on behalf of the
disabled, the Women in Small Business Enterprises Act (RA 7882) in 1995,
Anti-Sexual Harassment Law (RA 7877) and the Overseas Workers’ Rights
Protection in 1996, the Anti-Rape Law in 1997 (RA 8353) , the Child and
Family Courts Act, the Rape Victim Assistance and Protection Act and the
National AIDS Policy Act - all in 1998.
These laws have
limitations, as has been rightfully pointed out by the Oversight
Sub-Committee of the Committee on Women of the House of Representatives .
For instance, the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law applies only to
employer-employee situations in office and school settings but not to
colleagues. The Anti-Rape Law implicitly recognizes that rape may occur
within marriage but its forgiveness clause absolves husbands of the crime of
rape once they are forgiven by their wives.
Limited as they night
be, these laws are victories for women and guideposts for future
legislation. For indeed, Congress could not pass certain bills even with the
vigilance and diligence of its women members - the National Commission on
Women bill, the new population policy bill, a comprehensive program on wife
beating, the bill against the trafficking and commercial exploitation of
women, the Women Empowerment Act of 1993 reserving for qualified women at
least of third of appointive positions in national and local government; and
an enabling bill for elections to local board
Indeed, herstory is a
great teacher. For women in legislation and politics, there are still many
lessons to learn, obstacles to overcome, challenges to confront and gains to
reap. There are persistent demands for electoral reform and further
democratization of the political system that seems to favor men and the
socio-economic elite for political positions. There is still so much poverty
and underdevelopment among majority of our women and rampant violence is a
common feature of daily life for an increasing number. In sum , there is
still so much to be done and it is for the women legislators and women in
politics of the future to respond to the expectations of our people which
have remained great and unfulfilled. |