ONLY in the Philippines do we go in for overkill for a worthy cause. Presidential Proclamations 227 and 224, have declared the month of March every year as women’s month, and the first week of March as Women’s Week, respectively. And March 8 is Women’s Rights and International Peace Day. All these executive issuances make Republic Act 6949, which declared March 8 as National Women’s Day, seem almost like an afterthought.
Filipinos aren’t alone in having founding fathers, but apparently, no founding mothers. The birth of the Filipino nation came at a time when women were supposed to feed and tend to the wounds of men, but leave the building of a new nation to the menfolk.
Jose Rizal, writing to the women of Malolos, outlined his vision of what women should be — a moral influence on irresponsible men: “Why does the girl not require of her lover a noble and honored name, a manly heart offering protection to her weakness, and a high spirit incapable of being satisfied with engendering slaves? Let her discard all fear, let her behave nobly and not deliver her youth to the weak and faint-hearted. When she is married, she must aid her husband, inspire him with courage, share his perils, refrain from causing him worry and sweeten his moments of affliction, always remembering that there is no grief that a brave heart can not bear...”
Filipinas came to challenge the old Rizalian belief that women were there merely to be a kind of moral cheerleader. A generation of Filipina women said they had to organize themselves, if men were to stop being so condescending. And so, since politics is addition, women played a major role in our independence movement and united it with the effort to insist on equal rights for themselves.
Women like Concepcion Felix de Calderon who formed the Asociacion Feminista Filipina in June 1905, educator Rosa Sevilla de Alvero and Trinidad Almeda, Constancia Poblete, herself founder of La Liga Femenina de la Paz, and the writer 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, all came to the fore as campaigners for independence and the right of women to vote alike.
The Woman’s Club of Manila later expanded into a national association known as the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National League of Filipino Women and the Philippine Association of University Women. It attended public hearings of the Committee on Suffrage of the Constitutional Convention that drafted our 1935 Charter.
Their efforts resulted in Article V of the 1935 Constitution extending suffrage to women, on one condition.
That condition was 300,000 women qualified to vote would vote “yes” for the right to vote. An umbrella organization, the General Council of Women campaigned to get out the vote. And on April 30, 1937 the result was 447, 725 “yes” against 44, 307 “no” votes.
But another wrinkle remained to be smoothed out. In a story on Sept. 20, 1937, Time Magazine reported that Filipino males had had to pay a head tax of $1 or 2 pesos apiece. The cedula receipt was the means by which voters are identified. The male leadership of the country insisted women should be taxed, too, recommending 25 centavos a head as a minimum tariff for Filipinas.
Filipina suffragettes erupted with indignation, according to Time. No way that a tax should go with the right to vote, they said. And so the National Assembly passed a bill which evaded the question of the poll tax by substituting a different method of identifying voters. Filipino voters would have to put their thumbprints on their ballots. You owe your messy fingers to the suffragettes, a small price to pay instead of being taxed to be able to vote.
And so on Sept. 17, 1937, Filipino women achieved the right to vote. Needless to say, Filipino men were rather shocked. If you were a Frenchwoman at this time, you’d have looked on Filipinas with envy — women in France didn’t get to vote until after World War II, and women in Japan didn’t vote until the Americans imposed a new constitution after the war.
By December 1937, a total of 24 women, including opposition Carmen Planas, who was elected councilor in the city of Manila, were elected to office.
The House of Representatives had its first female member elected in 1941, Elisa Ochoa from the province of Agusan. The first Congress in 1946 also had a female member, Remedios O. Fortich and in 1961, the House for the first time featured two female representatives, rising to six in 1965 and nine for the Interim Batasan Pambansa in 1978 and ten in the Batasan Pambansa in 1984.
By 1987, when Congress was restored, the number of female representatives had risen to 19.
On a national basis, female representation took place a decade after the vote was secured for women. The first female Assistant Executive Secretary, Geronima Pecson, became the first female senator in November 1947; she was elected twice. The next female senator was Pacita Madrigal Gonzalez in 1955, Maria Kalaw Katigbak in 1962. By 1966, the Sixth Congress had four female senators: Magnolia Antonino, Eva Estrada Kalaw, Maria Kalaw Katigbak, and Tecla San Andres Ziga, incidentally the first woman to top the bar. The last premartial law Congress had three woman senators, Antonino, Kalaw, and Helen Benitez. In 1987, our first post-EDSA Congress had two woman senators, Leticia Ramos Shahani, who would become the first female Senate president pro tempore in the next Congress, and the first female Muslim senator, Santanina Rasul.
By 1992, the number of women holding elected office was truly impressive: Four senators, 21 representatives, 7 governors, 5 vice governors, 77 provincial board members, 3 city mayors, 116 municipal mayors, 6 vice mayors, 135 municipal vice mayors, 72 city councilors and a whopping 1,572 municipal councilors.
In the snap elections of 1986, former senator Eva Estrada Kalaw ran for vice-president in an election that toppled President Marcos and replaced him with Corazon Aquino, our first female president. Miriam Defensor Santiago almost won the presidency in 1992; in 1998 Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became the first female vice-president, then our second female president.
Today, of course, Article II, Section 14, of our present 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.”
Women were involved in the drafting of that charter, just as they were in the effort to draft a constitution in 1971-73. We have to be thankful that they haven’t left the question of rights and freedom only to the men.
