At Large
What her life means
By Rina Jimenez-David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:24:00 11/19/2008
Filed Under: Personalities, Women
I won’t tell you her age, but it was telling that during her recent birthday celebration, a nephew of Ging Quintos Deles asked if his mother was really older, since Ging, alone of all the Quintos sisters, sported a silver head of hair. Actually, Ging is the youngest of the Quintos siblings, but that just tells you what kind of a person she is, and how she lives out her commitment to honesty (to self and to others), integrity, simplicity and feminism.
As our mutual friend Remmy Rikken said: “This reminded me of how I envied her when she decided not to dye her hair. Now that I have done the same, I realize what a time-saver it is; I did it quite late.”
Ging was, and is, a trailblazer in so many other ways, other than not having her hair dyed (something I still have to work up the courage to do). Though I did not make it to the party, Remmy kindly sent in reflections on the work that Ging has done, and on what her leadership and friendship has meant for us and the women of the group Pilipina, and of the country as well.
As I have written previously, Ging was my teacher in high school, my favorite teacher, in fact. When I remind her of our days in Maryknoll High School, Ging smiles and says: “If there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that I was a good teacher, as you all keep reminding me.” But what I haven’t told her yet is that she continues to be a teacher, to me and to so many of her friends in the women’s movement, as well as the larger movement for social change and transformation.
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Here’s Remmy (herself another remarkable woman) sharing her memories of Ging:
“I have seen her leadership in Social Development Index [an NGO she founded with husband Jojo in the late 1970s] that influenced a lot of us. Although we were all living simple ‘lifestyles’ with our development worker salaries, Ging went further and made it a community affair. Once a year, we would all go through our stuff for things we no longer needed like maternity dresses, toys, cribs, books and bring them together to swap with those who needed them. (And this was long before recycling and sustainable development became buzzwords.)
“In 1985 in preparation for the Nairobi End of the Decade Conference on Women, Ging suggested that we should write Alternative Reports for the conference, getting us together with other women’s groups to help write the report. That’s when we met the likes of Inday Ofreneo, Rosario del Rosario and other women who became very close friends of Pilipina. Some consider those little pamphlets as collector’s items these days.
“When President Aquino called for a new constitution, Ging pushed us to see to it that an ‘Equality Clause’ must be enshrined in the new constitution. I remember the day when she told me: ‘We should go beyond the anti-dictatorship groups and get the ‘elder, more traditional groups’ with us.’ We agreed that the best person to approach was recently appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Leticia Shahani. Ging was able to get a breakfast appointment with her and Letty Shahani agreed to call the meeting for as long as everybody will be there. Most memorable to me was the Biggest Women’s Gathering in Folk Arts Theater where we individually signed a long scroll—the provision for an Equality Clause which was later presented formally to the Constitutional Body.
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“As peace continued to be an ongoing concern, again she called us to take a good look at the issue of peace which led to organizing the Coalition for Peace. Again she so immersed herself in the issue that her persona became identified with it, especially after she became the first executive director of the Gaston Ortigas Peace Institute.
“As chair of Pilipina, she pushed us to go beyond knowing in theory to researching in truth. One of our first issues was that of day care. I was shocked when as part of our research I interviewed women working in Marikina City’s shoe industry and met a woman who used to leave her five-year-old son to take care of her one-year-old baby. She tied the boy with a rope short enough to make sure he couldn’t walk out the door, but long enough to reach the bottle to feed his baby sister!
“I invited her to present the result of that research when I, as executive director of NCRFW [National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women], organized the First Congress of Women in Government, with the support of Chairperson Patricia Santo Tomas of the Civil Service Commission. Attended by almost 1,000 delegates, they affirmed the need for day care in government offices in support of Women in Government.
“Personally, I consider Ging as one of the pillars of the initiatives that put the Social Reform Agenda in the center of the debate in both civil society and government.
“This gave birth under the [Fidel] Ramos administration to the law that created the National Anti-Poverty Commission, or NAPC, which she later headed.”
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Having been a leader in the anti-Joseph Estrada movement that resulted in the impeachment hearings and the ouster of the President, Ging joined the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, given first the NAPC portfolio, and afterwards appointed as the first woman (who moreover had no military experience) peace adviser. Today, she is best known as one of the so-called “Hyatt 10” who, frustrated with the way the Arroyo administration conducted itself, resigned en masse. She is now involved in the work of governance with Incite-Gov.
And through the years, says Remmy, “Ging has kept her sense of humor. When she invites us to her home for dinner, we always ask for her recipes and her reply is: ‘I have given that to you, but you do not cook naman.’ This must be her secret: whether with food, with love and with life—it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”
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