Women, the vote and power

ONLY A few Filipinos, perhaps, realize that the right to vote was not always enjoyed by Filipino women, even after we had thrown off the shackles of colonizers and were on our way to becoming a republic.

April 30 marks the day, 79 years ago, when women trooped to the polls to vote in a plebiscite on women’s right to suffrage. The “pros” won a total of 447,725 votes (90.94 percent of voters at that time), signifying their agreement with the proposal to give women the right of suffrage. Some 9.06 percent of voters, totaling 44,307, disagreed.

In the elections immediately following the plebiscite, Carmen Planas, who ran for councilor of Manila, won her seat, becoming the first elected Filipino woman-official.

Shall we say, “you’ve come a long way, baby”? Certainly, from having to organize and barnstorm the country at a time when people moved only with the most rudimentary of transports, the suffragists succeeded in raising the awareness of women about our rights and duties as citizens. Voting not only conferred on us a voice in the running of the nation, but also the power to shape and determine what that “nation” should be.

We have since had two women presidents, and two women are vying for president in the May 9 polls, while one woman hopes to be elected vice president. The number of women in public office—in local governments, in Congress, in the Cabinet, in the courts—continues to rise steadily, though still not in the numbers considered to constitute a “critical mass.” Elsewhere, including the private sector, education, health and social services, women continue to play leading and pioneering roles.

But the occasion of the grant of the right of suffrage to Filipino women is today shadowed by an ugly, frightening and indeed enraging phenomenon. And that is the continued denigration and belittling of women, reducing us to sex objects “ordained” for the pleasure of men, as exemplified in the campaign demagoguery of one presidential candidate.

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ON THE occasion of the anniversary of women’s right to suffrage, women’s groups are organizing a gathering cum protest rally that calls on all us sisters to “defend our rights,” and asks everyone not to vote for candidates who see nothing wrong with debasing women.

The memorial event takes place in the afternoon (starting at 5 p.m.) this Friday, April 29 at Plaza Roma, in front of the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros.

This occasion, the women’s statement says, is the perfect time for women (and men who love and respect women) “to reflect on whether we have properly and rightly used our right to vote.”

“It is sad to realize,” says the statement written originally in Filipino, “that the so-called ‘women’s vote’ remains a distant dream. In truth, we have not yet used the combined power of our vote to choose candidates who would champion the equal rights of women and men. We are wasting our votes on the corrupt, on the violent, on the openly and indeed boastful ones who proclaim that they see nothing wrong with violating human rights.”

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A CANDIDATE’S open (and unabashed) admission of his violations of women constitutes a danger to Filipino womanhood, the organizers of Friday’s rally say.

And this, they add, is the challenge that women voters confront in the May 9 polls. Women, they continue, must use “the power of the drops of ink on our fingers as weapons in the fight to bring to victory candidates who will support the welfare of those on the fringes of society, who can be counted on to do what is decent and right, and not those with a violent mindset!”

Their rallying cry: “Sisters, let us defend our rights; do not vote for violators of women’s rights! Our vote has power, use it against the killers!”

By this time, readers must know who among the candidates I’m referring to. But he is not alone in his culpability or guilt. The mayor of Davao may be the most boorish and loud-mouthed in his denigration of women. But many other men—and women, as can be seen in the crowds he attracts— share the same views, the same execrable attitude toward women, the differently-abled (or just the different), the old and infirm, and even children. Other candidates for local and national office likewise share his narrow, anachronistic views, including his disdain for human rights. But because they are not running for president, they are “allowed” their “slips” of the tongue and consciousness.

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FEMINISM, the “absurd belief that women are equal to men,” as a T-shirt slogan says, tongue-in-cheek, is not a recent development among Filipino women and in the Philippines. In the early years of the Commonwealth, the Asociacion Feminista Filipina and Asociacion Feminista Ilongga planted the seeds of women’s suffrage, going around the country to awaken the consciousness of women to their emerging role as equal partners to men in nation-building.

With the requirement of at least 300,000 votes in the affirmative for the grant of the right of suffrage, the feministas “bearing their materials and carrying their shawls and overskirts on their arms (for which reason they were dubbed the “panuelo activists”),” launched a national campaign to bring in the vote for suffrage.

The women—our great-grandmothers, our grandmothers, our mothers—risked all, their safety, their social standing, their comfort, perhaps even their marriages and relationships just to win for us—Filipino women of today—the right of full and meaningful citizenship. Let us not squander their gift just for a few easy laughs and the disdain of a certified woman-hater.