A Passerby’s Trail

To look back into the historical role of women in my country is to regain moral strength and to reclaim a sense of self strong enough to face a world where women and girls struggle endlessly for justice, equality and personhood. Because to relive women’s history is to unwrap the added distortions to the total image of Filipino women as it has been shaped in the past and to discuss about women’s fate is to discuss about the moral situation of our country as women’s conditions are intimately intertwined with the society; it is, therefore, necessary to look back into the past. And then perhaps when we get there, we will be able to appreciate how women literally used to be publicly regarded in the past.

We might even feel one with them as we see how history fragmented them from such a role that hindered their development as fully Filipino women by heart. For indeed, popular consciousness on women’s high status has been so deeply inculcated in our hearts though such valuing of women has long been elided in concrete context. And because we, Filipinos, though sentimental about our past, seem to be a people without a sense of history so that we tied ourselves to what we thought were Filipino women before and failed to assess and act on what has happened to them in the present. There is no need, however, to discuss on the history of the Philippines, even to take all the significant points when women made history. I only want to cite some historical roles played by certain exceptional, courageous and assertive women in our past most especially those who attempted to contribute in the gradual moral recovery of our country.

Geronima T. Pecson, civil libertarian, writer and scholar, in one of her studies noted that: “Centuries before Magellan arrived in the Philippines in 1521, foreign visitors, mostly traders, had written accounts of their observations which showed that the Filipino women enjoyed high social esteem and leadership. There were even woman rulers …” And since Filipinos lived in small scattered communities called barangays which were based on kinship ties and were relying for sustenance mainly on subsistence agriculture, they had no surplus to build temples or palaces for self-glorification.

There was no need to create relations of dependence nor of exploitation so that women had as much role and rights as men except in the case of a defeat in tribal wars when men and women could be bought and sold as slaves. Women were priestesses who held communities united and medics and consolers of souls. The concept of private property then only came later along with the Spanish conquistadores, hence, the concept of woman as property of a man had no historical basis for existing.

Filipino women, therefore, originally used to be women enjoying equal status with men, respected for their human rights and heard for their maternal wisdom. This was where the concept of putting woman on a pedestal as an object of veneration and adulation took its roots.

B. Colonial

When the Spanish intruders came to the Philippines in the 16th century, they demanded the Filipinos to produce surplus by forced labor and paying tribute to the government or dues to the churches to institutionalize the socio-economic structure of the country. The women, then, had naturally become part of such painful struggle and disturbance that relations of dependence and exploitation were created.

If the Filipinos had really come to accept Spanish rule willingly, it was only through the influence of the religious, whom they saw as their defenders against injustice. But even if Spanish colonization contributed much to our being the only Christian country in Asia, it will always remain the primordial culprit for the distorted image and undervalued role of Filipino women today because it was during the Spanish conquest that the transformation of women from highly-respected equals of men to objects of subjugation began.

When the Spanish masters brought in their institutions and transplanted them on native soil, the social being of women was invested with new meanings, new dimensions; or rather, these were imposed on them, and their social consciousness - that is to say, their perception of themselves and of the world changed accordingly. The image of the Filipino woman then became tied to the house whose only duty was to take care of the husband and the children. It also became a father’s good girl, a husband’s subject, and a long-suffering woman with sealed lips and silent sobs and has no right to participate political undertakings.

There were, however, some women who, perhaps unconsciously, refused to accept such imposed image and role like our own heroines Gabriela Silang who after her husband’s death took over the leadership of a rebellion in Ilocos, Gregoria de Jesus who was the wife of Andres Bonifacio and was a full-pledged member of the Katipunan, Trinidad Tecson of the anti-colonial Women’s Masonic Lodge and the other women of the Katipunan and of Malolos, Bulacan who actively campaigned for women’s right to higher formal education.

There was also Madre Ignacia del Espiritu Santo who initiated the retreat movement among Filipino women, thus allowed the Filipino women to reclaim their dignity as children of God. In 1684 - at the very height of the disturbances caused by the exile of Archbishop Pardo - a young Ignacia, a mestiza of Binondo, decided to form a religious community to which not only mestizas like herself but pure-blooded native Filipinas would be eligible for admission. Her piety and penance attracted many so that the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary was born.

These women led in the maturity of Christian faith in the country. Theirs is a story of women who find bread for their table. Theirs is a story of women who asserted the spiritual strength and depthness of the Yndios whom the Spaniards underrated. Theirs is a story of women with a smile on their lips and prayers in their hearts, ever willing to plunge into the missions of the unexplored Mindanao where they were first called to go.

Today, the RVM Sisters are women for and with others making their feminine genius available not only in the Philippines but in other countries as well. They are Filipino religious women who from a long history of struggle against colonizers strive to be faithful in proclaiming Christ - the one who came to the world so that men and women may have the fullness of life.

Though Filipino women were likewise excluded from full participation in religious life, as has been seen in the case of the convent of Santa Clara, they proved to be perhaps more persistent than the men. Though juridically recognized formal religious life remained closed to them until the end of the Patronato Real, they managed to create what was its equivalent in all but name and law in the beaterio movement, beginning in the late seventeenth century.

The first beaterio envisioned was that of Santo Domingo, originally intended to be for both Spanish and Filipino women. But by the time the obstacles put in its way were finally overcome and it was founded in 1696, its membership was limited to Spanish women. In the meantime, a strictly Indio and mestizo beaterio had come into being, under Jesuit encouragement, though not juridically connected with the Society of Jesus.

C. Modern

The distressing picture in the Philippines where women are seen prominently is exploitation due to the rising flesh industry, export of women as domestics and entertainers, mail-order brides. In the struggle to survive the unending economic crises, Filipino women, with the burden of housekeeping on their shoulders, join the labor force but are paid so little.

There seems to be no room for their intelligence and creativity because society dictates that they should not work but should get married, have children, and stay at home. Hence, the number of women occupying leadership roles in the government is very minimal.

Filipino women experience regular and daily discrimination - the multiple burdens they carry as they have to be confined to the home; the despair of battered wives who cannot separate from their husbands “because of their children” or because of social disapproval and cultural notion of dependence on men; sexual harassment on the job; gang rape in prison cells; prostituted little girls. But their innate common sense, wisdom, inner strength and courage kept on breaking the bonds of their confinement, especially during the times of emergency and need.

These qualities which Filipino women used to enjoy as a status in the Pre-Colonial society are not actually shared by other women from other parts of the world at that time and despite of the imposed identities as women, they still by nature flow in their bloodstreams. No culture can totally efface such qualities from them because they are all given to them by God.