Filipino Women: A Century After
Lucid Interval
First posted 04:25am (Mla time) Sept 27, 2005
By Rowena Guanzon
INQ7.net
THIS year we celebrate the centennial of the feminist movement in the Philippines, a century after La Asociacion Feminista was founded in 1905. Women may have changed their ideologies, strategies, “faces” and fashion as the years went by, but the zeal and passion with which they attack their work is similar in every decade. It was definitely not only for the sake of better nutrition for poor children that they worked hard for their right to vote in a plebiscite held on Sept. 15, 1937.
Today’s women, girls and women’s rights advocates have to thank, among others, Pura Villanueva Kalaw and Josefa Jara Martinez of Asociacion Feminista Ilongga which was founded in 1906 (the latter is the mother of Ming Ramos), Concepcion Felix Rodriguez, Rosa Sevilla ALvero, Rosario Lam, Pilar Hidalgo Lim, Josefa Llanes Escoda, Librada Avelino, Encarnacion Verzosa, Encarcion Alzona, Natividad ALmeda Lopez and Dr. Maria Paz Mendoza Guazon for fighting against many odds to make sure that women could vote. Tarhata Putri Kiram was the only Moslem woman leader involved. Of these women, only Minerva Laudico, former Vice President of Centro Escolar University, is still alive today.
I found the history of the Filipino women’s right to vote in the separate opinion of Justice Reynato Puno in the case of Romulo Macalintal versus Commission on Elections, Hon. Alberto Romulo and Emilia Boncodin, Secretary of Budget and Management [G.R. No. 157013. July 10, 2003]. Our first election law was Act No. 1582, which took effect on Jan. 15, 1907, and which allowed only men to vote like its foreign counterparts. Women were considered only as extensions of their husbands or fathers and could not take part in public affairs, very much like women in the time of Jesus.
The first bill on women’s right to suffrage was filed by Senator Vicente Sotto of Cebu in 1907. On Nov. 9, 1933, an enlightened the Philippine Legislature enacted Act No. 4122 extending the right of suffrage to Filipino women starting Jan. 1, 1935. However, before women could exercise their new right, the Philippine Commonwealth’s 1935 Constitution was adopted, and despite the efforts of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs (which still exists today) and other women’s groups, the 1935 Constitution did not grant women the right to vote, but required a plebiscite in which women would vote for or against their right to suffrage.
The 1935 Constitution stated: “Suffrage may be exercised by male citizens of the Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law, who are twenty-one years of age or over and are able to read and write, and who shall have resided in the Philippines for one year and in the municipality wherein they propose to vote for at least six months preceding the election. The National Assembly shall extend the right of suffrage to women, if in a plebiscite which shall be held for that purpose within two years after the adoption of this Constitution, not less than three hundred thousand women possessing the necessary qualifications shall vote affirmatively on the question.”
During the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, the right of women to vote, was opposed on the following grounds: (1) there was no popular demand for suffrage by Filipino women themselves; (2) woman suffrage would only disrupt family unity; and (3) it would plunge women into the quagmire of politics, dragging them from the pedestal of honor in which they had theretofore been placed. Trust the men to put women in pedestals when they don’t want to share power.
In Macalintal versus Comelec et al., Justice Puno quotes the Committee on Suffrage’s report: “The committee refrains from stating in this report the reasons on which it bases its decision to withdraw the right of suffrage from the women and will merely say that the principal idea in the minds of the members not in favor of extending suffrage to women was that the sweet womanliness of the Philippine women should be projected from political strife and passion in order that sweet home may not lose any of its sweetness.” Had these men won, our great-great-grandmothers would have been excluded from political and public life, and kept in the home to take care of babies, where they could not organize. But that situation would have changed eventually, since external forces such as a worldwide movement of women fighting for equal rights with men were to come in the years ahead.
But the proponents of woman suffrage were not deterred, and argued that the right to vote would make them more interested in the management of the affairs of government and that “it was necessary as a matter of justice to extend the frontiers of our democracy to our women who had labored hard side by side with our men for the progress and development of the country.” Women leaders distributed a petition to individual delegates that read:
“We, the undersigned, duly elected representatives of women who believe in the justice and wisdom of the enfranchisement of the Filipino women, protest most solemnly against women being deprived of the vote in the Constitution of the Commonwealth and against any change in the existent Law, No. 4112, passed by the Ninth Philippine Legislature on November ninth, 1933, and signed by Governor-General Frank Murphy on December seventh, 1934. We call the attention of the Constitutional Assembly and the Legislature to the plea for liberty made before the Congress and the President of United States for thirty-seven years by the Filipinos; a plea based on the fact that we are a liberty-loving people equipped and capable of self-government. Such government cannot exist ‘half-slave and half-free.’ The women of this Christian land, serene in the knowledge that in peace or war they have never failed their men or their country, in this crucial hour of the realization of the sacrifice and devotion of the years, insist upon their political recognition and their share in the triumph of the cause of liberty.”
Nobody could have said that better. Then the real work began. The women had to get at least 300,000 votes. But according to the research of Ana Lea Sarabia, there was a trick question. The registered voters were only about 280,000. So the first step that the women took was increasing the registered women voters to about half a million. I have no data on how many women there were in 1937, or if 300,000 was reasonable, but 447,725 voted yes.
The highest number of votes came from Leyte, Iloilo and Cebu in that order. The Visayan women were well organized, and remember that this was a time when women had no telephones and very few had cars. No one could tell why the Visayas gave more votes, but I can only speculate that many of the leaders in the Visayas were landowners, and thus had easier access to female voters in groups. Much like today, many landowners in the Visayas greatly influence the voting choice of their workers unless there are unions in their farms.
A century after, we celebrate what those women leaders did for the women in this country, but we still don’t have a “women’s vote.” Unlike in Norway and other Scandinavian countries, which are industrialized, a women’s vote could make or unmake prime ministers. With few exceptions, and those are the organized and progressive women’s groups, our female voters vote in the same way as the male voters. Patronage politics, which is a male domain, and massive vote buying are the election strategies in this country, which has worked for a century. Unless electoral and political reforms are instituted, the outcome of next election will be pretty much the same as the last one.
Unless we have electoral reforms and women have economic and political power, equal access to education and other resources, we would not be able to put our right to vote to better use. We will continue to follow the lead of male gatekeepers of political parties, settle for low level positions in local governments, and gain no more than 20 percent of the seats in Congress. And in a country where we are not sure if our vote is really counted, our first feminists would probably say that their struggle was in vain.
Now comes the charter change, which may change our form of government but cannot change the corrupt nature of our politicians. When I recall the beautiful words our feminists used a century ago, I have no doubt that if they could, they would rise from the grave.
