The Women's Movement in the Philippines

Author(s): Dorothy Friesen

Source: NWSA Journal, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1989), pp. 676-688
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
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 Report

The Women's Movement in the Philippines

Dorothy Friesen

On the streets, in rallies and marches, in the coffeehouses, in classrooms

and factories, in businesses and the professions, the women's movement
in the Philippines has displayed a unique cross-class and nationalist flavor.
Situating a feminist perspective and organization within a Third World
nationalist movement presents dangers and opportunities for its health
and growth. The unique history of the women's movement in the
Philippines-growing out of the nationalist struggle-has contributed
to international feminism by bringing the women's perspective and needs
to bear on shaping the national agenda and attempting to deal with the
contradictions of class through a genuinely cross-class movement.
This particular description of the women's movement in the Philip-
pines is based on personal experience and some historical research over
a twelve-year period. I worked in the Philippines from 1977-79 as co-
director of Mennonite Central Committee, a church related development
agency. Since 1980, I have returned to the Philippines seven times for
two-week to two-month periods to conduct interviews and to lead fact-
finding delegations. Although I do not work directly with any particular
Philippine women's organization, I have participated in and witnessed
activities of various women's groups. Thus this paper relies heavily on
conversations with women directly involved in organizing and the printed
statements which grow out of their organized events.

The characteristics of the contemporary Philippine women's move-

ment-militant, nationalist and cross-cultural-are more readily under-
standable in the context of Philippine history. The strength and militancy
displayed in the current women's movement have roots in the pre-
Spanish period when women in this Pacific archipelago were active in
social, economic, and political decision-making. The imposed Spanish
colonial culture (1578-1898), which stressed male superiority, turned
the tide against women, and the American colonial presence after 1898
reinforced male control of both economic and religious life. This control
heightened the imbalance between social strata and further created an

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Dorothy Friesen, Synapses,
Inc., 1821 West Cullerton, Chicago, IL 60609.
NWSA Journal, Vol. 1, No. 4, Summer 1989, pp. 676-688.

676

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Philippines 677

inequality between men and women, intensifying the conflict and thus
the urgency for women to respond in a corporate and organized way.
The contemporary women's movement can look back on Philippine
colonial history and find it dotted with stories of strong women who
led in the resistance against foreign rulers. Gabriela Silang is probably
the best known. In the eighteenth century she formed an army of two
thousand men after her husband Diego was killed. They fought the
Spaniards with homemade muskets, blowguns, and arrows. Gabriela was
finally captured and hanged in full view of her followers. Many stories
emerge of elite women during the colonial periods who dedicated their
lives to alleviate the suffering of the poor, to fight injustice, and promote
the rights of women. In addition to reports of individual heroism and
sacrifice or locally led resistance, there are also examples of cooperative
work and organizing on a national scale; for example, in 1937, during
what is known as the commonwealth period of American colonialism,
women won the fight for suffrage. They mounted a campaign which
prompted almost a million Filipinos to ratify the amendment in favor
of women's suffrage.
The current obstacles in a poor country like the Philippines are
exacerbated for women. Women make up half the landless peasants and
almost half of the factory and agribusiness workers, all of whom suffer
because of inadequate pay, lack of medical benefits, and job safety. Two-
thirds of all children under six suffer from some degree of malnutrition,
according to World Health Organization statistics. International tourism
is often a euphemism for prostitution which targets mainly women and
children, and military rape is a standard interrogation procedure for
women political detainees.
In response to contemporary problems, an energetic nationalist move-
ment, composed of both legal and underground organizations, has grown
up in the Philippines in the last two decades. In the context of the
student radicalism of the 1960s which sought major changes in Phil-
ippines society, the first revolutionary women's organization was born.
The organization, Makibaka (Fight Back) supported the goals of the
underground New People's Army but also recognized that women suffer
from political, clan, religious, and male authorities which are expressions
of a feudal-patriarchal ideology and system. In response, Makibaka's
organizational efforts were aimed at stimulating the formation of wom-
en's associations in both rural and urban areas.
When Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, Makibaka was
forced to go underground, and they moved to the hinterlands of Quezon
province to continue their struggle. Several of the Makibaka leaders
were killed in a 1976 encounter with government military troops; how-
ever, for the most part, Makibaka apparently quietly flourished as an
underground organization. During the brief democratic space early in

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678 Dorothy Friesen

the Aquino administration, Makibaka sponsored several semipublic press

conferences in early 1987 to remind Filipino citizens of its subterranean
presence.
The flowering of lawful militant women's organizations duly registered
with the government came into public view in 1984 with the founding
conference of General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity,
Equality, Leadership and Action (GABRIELA), the umbrella organization
of various women's groups around the country. Named in honor of the
Filipina heroine, Gabriela Silang, who fought valiantly for liberation
from Spanish rule in the eighteenth century, GABRIELA is the largest
nationalist women's coalition in the country. Its related organizations
are active in almost every one of the seventy-three provinces in the
Philippines. For purposes of brevity, feminist organizations like PILI-
PINA and other women's groups independent of GABRIELA will not
be my focus here; rather, this paper will draw mainly from the GA-
BRIELA experience.
The groundwork for GABRIELA started much earlier than the 1984
founding conference. The conference brought together already existing
associations of peasant women, urban poor, women workers, tribal women,
religious women, professional women, and housewives from the middle
and upper middle class. Because the women's movement is rooted in
the nationalist struggle, it was possible to create a cross-class women's
coalition where the marginalized women have a strong voice. Though
the problems of rich and poor are not yet resolved, the possibility of
equal face-to-face encounters brings Filipinas closer to the heart of that
dilemma and thus closer to a resolution. By providing a venue for poor,
middle, and upper middle class women to act together, GABRIELA is
developing a remarkable ability to include more diversity and to channel
women's energies.
In the midst of a life and death struggle for Filipino control of their
own political and economic life, the tension of dealing with women's
particular agenda demands creativity. The women's movement in the
Philippines is hammering out new ways of exposing and dealing with
oppression in the crucible of day-to-day experience. Some of the women
involved in leadership of GABRIELA and its member organizations had
been in the militant nationalist movement for many years before they
began to focus their energies directly on the oppression of women. Two
such leaders are Nelia Sancho and Maita Gomez. Experience and grass-
roots exposure convinced the two that a strong women's organization
was crucial if women were to successfully change their conditions. Years
of dedication and commitment working on issues of economic justice
within the nationalist movement earned Sancho and Gomez the trust
and respect of the movement's decision makers. This helped pave the

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Philippines 679

way for the possibility of creating a genuine women's organization in

the midst of a revolutionary nationalist movement.
"The Filipino Women's Manifesto," a mimeographed sheet prepared
for the Women's Protest March, October, 1985 speaks poignantly of
the national crisis and the women's crisis and links the problems of
foreign intervention, economic inequality, and the particularities of the
women's experience. Ferdinand Marcos was the dictator at the time the
manifesto was written; however, the situation in the Philippines remains
the same for most women under the presidency of Corazon Aquino, so
the essential ingredients of the document are still relevant.
Our nation is in crisis.
We, the women know because we live the crisis everyday. This crisis
has exacerbatedthe specificforms of oppression that we have to contend
with as women.
We are the housewives who can barely make ends meet because of
the dwindling value of the peso and spiralling prices. We are the
consumers, victims of monopolies, price fixing, hoarding and false ad-
vertising.
We are the mothers who grieve over the future of children we can
neither clothe nor educate.
We are the peasant women who do not have access to basic social
services, who do not have a voice in the decisions which affect our lives
and who bear the double burden of unpaid labor at home and in the
fields.
We are the urban poor who live in extreme poverty, yet must defend
our shanties and meager possessionsagainst harassmentand demolition.
We are the women workers who suffer in sweatshops, receive ex-
tremely low wages, are sexually harassed at work and the last to be
hired and the first to be fired, while profit hungry companies-both
local and transnational-feed on our labor.
We are the marginalized women who are forced to eke out a few
pesos selling whatever we can, scavenging in garbage heaps and begging
in the streets.
We are the migrant women workers who are degraded as entertainers
or who accept demeaning employment as domestics abroad.
We are the mail order brides for whom marriage has become an
escape from the shackles of poverty. We are the prostitutes who are
dehumanized into selling ourselves as tourists' fare and objects of lust
of American servicemen.
We are the students whose minds are warped by irrelevant, uncritical
and sexist education and who, as women, do not enjoy the same edu-
cational opportunities as our brothers.
We are the women professionals who in every field, are limited to
subordinate positions. We are the teachers who are paid starvation
wages and are repeatedly deceived by broken promises.

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680 DorothyFriesen

We are the women, who, in addition to all these, have been relegated
to supportive and subordinate roles in society; who are discriminated
against even in our laws; whose contribution to the productive and
reproductive processes are not fully appreciated; who are treated as
objects especially in media; who are caricaturedas weak and dependent
by our male oriented values and institutions.
We are the street demonstrators whose legitimate protests are met
with water cannons and truncheons, tear gas and bullets. . . . We are
the women in the countryside whose peace has been shattered by
intensifying militarization. . . . We are the martyrs who have been
arrested, tortured, raped and murdered.
And we say, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
We who make up the bulk of the silent majority, will no longer be
silent. We who have been called the weaker sex, will no longer be
cowed. We who have been relegated to the home will no longer be
confined.
In unity we will raise our collective voices, we will build our collective
strength.
The particular tone and stance of GABRIELA, as expressed in the
manifesto, is intimately connected with the way in which it began and
the history of its leadership; however, the analysis and issue-focus ob-
viously resonated with Filipinas because women's organizations sprang
up quickly across the country in the 1980s.
I witnessed this resonance between the existing national women's
organization and the local needs of women when I stayed with a farming
community on the island of Mindanao several years ago. While visiting
a community just outside of the city of Butuan in order to better grasp
the rural women's situation, the men of the barrio, eager to entertain,
showed me the ricefields and explained in detail the cost of inputs like
fertilizer and pesticides, the cost of renting a hand tiller and of irrigation
so the "miracle rice" will grow miraculously. "We are not officially
organized, but we men meet regularly to discuss farming and economic
problems," they told me.
In the evening, it was traditional for everyone to gather together for
an informal discussion. During the dialogue, I asked if there was a
women's group in the barrio. The women, seated at the edges of the
room shook their heads. One of the more talkative men offered the
comment that "The women are too jealous; they can't get along with
each other." The women were silent, but as soon as the meeting was
over they quickly surrounded me. "We want you to know why we don't
have a women's group," began Mely, the oldest in the group. Plump,
slightly stooped, work and worry lines in her face, she looked at me
with blazing eyes, "We do the housework, look after our children, do
the marketing and help in the fields. By the end of the day we are
exhausted. We are not jealous; we are tired." A younger woman ex-

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Philippines 681

plained, "Then our husbands want to meet in the evening or they want
to go see a movie in town. I have only young children, so I have to
stay home and look after them." My hostess for the week, a quiet
emaciated-looking woman added, "When we are frustrated we go to
Mely's to talk. She gives us good advice." Mely concluded the discussion
with a statement of hope, "We want to be organized as women. ...
Maybe the next time you come and visit us, we will be."
What are the possibilities for a young woman in the barrio? If her
community is allowed to stay on their land, she could marry a farmer
and do double duty in the home and in the fields like Mely and her
friends. If her family loses the land or finds it impossible to make a
living on its small acreage, she could go to the nearest town or city to
look for work in a factory, department store or restaurant, usually at
less than the minimum wage.
Women participate in large numbers in the Philippine workforce and
are preferred by foreign companies because of their ability to do precise
hand-and-eye work and of course, because employers hope they will
prove to be obedient and uncomplaining. Over 80 percent of the twenty-
six thousand workers at the Bataan Export Processing Zone (BEPZ) on
the island of Luzon are women, almost all under twenty-five years of
age. BEPZ is home for sixty transnational corporations, which import
materials, use Philippine labor, and export all goods produced. Many
women at BEPZ are active unionists, and they form the backbone for
the national women's division within the Philippine's militant labor
movement, the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) or May First Movement.
Young women are also recruited from the poverty-ridden barrios in
the Philippines to work in the bars of Olongapo, the rest-and-recreation
town adjacent to the American Naval Base at Subic Bay on Luzon island.
Buklod, a women's drop-in center run for hostesses in Olongapo estimates
that the majority of the fifteen thousand women are between ages 18
and 30. The women cite poverty as the major reason for coming to
Olongapo, but other reasons given are broken homes, troubled mar-
riages, a sense of adventure, and hope of marriage. Prostitution is
technically illegal in the Philippines. Officially there are no prostitutes-
only hostesses, waitresses, cashiers, entertainers or go-go dancers.
Clearly many of the issues which occupy the attention of the nationalist
movement overlap with the concerns of Filipina women-control over
their own economy which means control over wages and prices. GAB-
RIELA and its member organizations have been active in the nationalist
campaigns which emphasize these concerns and have brought a certain
panache to these efforts.
A good example is the drafting of the new constitution in 1986-87.
President Aquino appointed forty-eight members to a Constitutional
Commission, but GABRIELA maintained that "the task of drafting this

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682 Dorothy Friesen

new constitution is not theirs alone. Each and every Filipino woman,
man and youth should be involved."' To that end GABRIELA organized
nationally for women to produce tapestries from pieces of cloth that
bore the demands, issues, and rights of women. Women from the
coalition and member organizations visited communities, schools, fac-
tories, and other areas where there was a concentration of women in
order to discuss women's needs in relation to the constitution. Each
group discussion concluded with the women interpreting their oppression
and demands on a piece of cloth. These pieces were collected and sewn
together in one big tapestry during a camp-out in front of the building
where the constitutional commissioners were meeting. It was then un-
furled for the commissioners, the public, and the media.
GABRIELA articulated three major concerns: recognition and pro-
motion of the rights and welfare of women; promotion of the welfare
of the family and the rights of children; and the guarantee of the general
economic, political, and social conditions necessary for the meaningful
exercise of women's rights and for the full promotion of the welfare
of women, the family, and children. GABRIELA specifically demanded
that men and women receive the same wages for the same work and
that they be equal before the law; in marriage that property management
and disposal be by the mutual determination of both spouses; and that
women have the right to maternity benefits and the right not to lose
jobs because of pregnancy.
GABRIELA also focused on international economic and foreign policy
questions. In order to promote genuine economic development, the
women requested that the constitution guarantee "limits to the entry
of foreign capital and multinationals, . . . trade relations based on
equality and mutual benefit, control over our natural resources and the
responsible utilization of resources for our needs and benefit." In order
to protect freedom and national sovereignty, the constitution must,
"institute a non-aligned foreign policy, institute a no foreign bases policy
and keep the Philippines nuclear-free."2 GABRIELA's national demands
reflect their understanding that without national political and economic
changes, women's specific situation will not change. The group also
recognizes that its attitudes and participation now give it some credibility
to influence decisions in the future. "The women of the Philippines
have a lot to offer in the development of our country," says Nelia
Sancho, "but we women can only have a voice in influencing the future
of the country if we participate fully in the struggles for democracy and
justice now."

'GABRIELA, "A Call for a Meaningful Constitution" (Quezon City, Philippines: GA-
BRIELA, 1986), 2.
2GABRIELA, "Meaningful Constitution," 8.

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Philippines 683

The struggle, however, for specific women's needs in the midst of a

political and economic revolutionary struggle also reflects the perception
that unless women's demands are included in the nationalist agenda
from the beginning, these demands may never be dealt with. Women's
leader, Maita Gomez reflects on the frailty inherent in the roots of the
Filipino women's movement as a result of a predominantly male-directed
nationalist struggle: "We should recognize a weakness or rather a lop-
sidedness in our development as activists. While our involvement in the
nationalist struggle has given us the decided advantage to swiftly build
a women's movement, this same experience has only lately been infused
with an orientation that recognizes the distinctiveness of women's oppres-
sion. '3 But Gomez also notes an advantage of rooting the women's
movement in the nationalist struggle, "Having developed from nationalist
and democratic movements, our women's movement today has some
decided advantages. Years of painstaking organizing among different
classes in society has given us the venue to build a multiclass or multi-
sectoral women's mass movement. This movement organized along sec-
toral lines is in more of a position to give full play to the initiatives
and contributions of women in different classes . . ."4 Organizing the
marginalized meant that peasants, workers, and urban poor women were
able to form the backbone of the women's movement.
The middle class member organizations of GABRIELA did not come
into being until after the murder by Marcos's soldiers of former Senator
Benigno Aquino in August 1983. Aquino's murder and the rise of the
urban middle class women's movement were separate but not uncon-
nected occurrences. Plans had been laid for several years to start women's
organizations within the middle and upper middle class. The murder
of Aquino galvanized the urban middle class into action. They realized
that if someone as well-known as Aquino could be killed in public, no
one was safe. Aquino's death also introduced further economic instability
in an already precarious investment climate. The national business class
became convinced that Marcos had to go. The women from this strata
of society were looking for a vehicle to express their sentiments. While
many attached themselves to mixed organizations put together by pre-
dominantly male members of the upper class, others joined specifically
women's groups.
One organization which bloomed during this time in response to the
political situation was Women for Ouster of Marcos and Boycott (WOMB).
The organization continued after Marcos fled, keeping the acronym and

3Maita Gomez, "Women's Organizations as Offshoots of National Political Movements,"

in Essays on Women, ed. Mary John Mananzan, OSB (Manila: St. Scholastica's College,
1987), 58.
4Gomez, "Women's Organizations," 59.

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684 Dorothy Friesen

adding Giving Birth to a New Society under the word WOMB. The
women held their public breakfast discussions or Kapihan in expensive
coffeehouses, their presence adding a certain glamour to the street
demonstrations. "Our theme is really, 'Women's Place is in the Strug-
gle,'" says Myrna Arceo, a WOMB member and theology professor at
St. Scholastica, an elite women's college. She brings her students-
daughters of the rich-to urban poor communities and rural barrios to
interact with the people and to reflect on what is happening in the
country and to themselves. After years of experimenting with the teach-
ing method of Paulo Freire, Myrna is experienced enough to confidently
send the young women around the city to set up their own learning
encounters. "There is a real change happening in these young women,"
Myrna said in 1987. "There's an openness among them that I don't
remember in students a few years ago." The patient work of teachers
like Myrna Arceo who have emphasized experienced-based learning is
bearing fruit for the future by creating an aware middle class within
the women's movement.
WOMB joined the many other women's organizations of GABRIELA
despite the warning from organizers against the mixing of people from
different social strata. These warnings were extended to Christian com-
munities, that are part of a church that sees itself as multisectoral and
open to all. The fear is that the peasants will not be comfortable in
the presence of the landlords and the traditional feudal relationship will
continue. Nelia Sancho explained, "The women's movement needs the
skills, experience, contacts, and money of middle and upper middle class
women. This is a struggle for equality for all, but we in the middle
class should understand the realities of our country from the perspective
of our poorer sisters in order to make our contribution."
Middle-class and college-educated women have provided resources
and staffing for health seminars as well as pilot socio-economic programs
for peasant and urban-poor women. They have also helped with putting
together radio programs since radio is the primary source of information
and entertainment in both rural and urban areas. The programs include
mini-dramas, songs, interviews with women, and news. Middle-class women
have also helped in conducting seminars on low-cost visual media which
can contribute to making women's education more effective and livelier.
Women participants are encouraged to visualize their own ideas and
then produce them in cartoons, caricatures, silkscreen, posters, charcoal
drawings, and lettering. The women's movement also emphasizes de-
veloping writing skills. Most people in the Philippines can read and write
at some level; but too frequently at school, writing skills are learned in
English, which is ineffective for the vast majority of Filipinos who still
express themselves in Tagalog or Cebuano or one of the many dialects
in the Philippines. A spokeswoman for the Women's Studies and Re-

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Philippines 685

source Center (WSRC) in Davao explained the need for women writers'
workshops, "Now women will write about themselves and use this means
to advance their emancipation process." The WSRC also published
participants' evaluations after one writing seminar. A forty-seven-year-
old farmer wrote, "It was gay in the seminar as we worked together
with enthusiastic and alert lecturers. At the start I felt insecure seeing
that I was the least educated in the group. I soon found out this was
not true because I could write after all."5
Middle- and upper-class members of the women's movement ran for
Congress in 1987 and served on the Constitutional Commission, but
much of their agenda came from the needs and analysis of the urban
poor, women workers' and women peasants' organizations. The Phil-
ippine women's movement has demonstrated a remarkable ability to
absorb and use the strengths of cross-class plurality by mounting cam-
paigns around issues which affect everyone's life. A glimpse of this
plurality was evident in 1984 during a three-day women's walk to the
Bataan Nuclear Plant, over one hundred kilometers from Manila. The
plant has since been mothballed by the Aquino administration, but in
1984 residents in the area were terrified that it would go on line. The
reactor itself had safety problems, and the site was situated on an
earthquake fault on the slope of a volcano in an area subject to tidal
waves. Even the Marcos-appointed mayors of the neighboring towns
were opposed to the plant. The concern about the nuclear plant reached
women from all strata of society. The march began at Ayala Avenue,
center of the international business district of Makati in Manila, with a
rally attended by many well-dressed professional women. In addition to
the jeepneys (jeep engines with elongated bodies which seat twelve, used
as public transportation in most towns and cities of the Philippines)
rented for the occasion, several sleek-looking private cars joined the
slow motorcade procession out of Manila.
I was assigned to an air-conditioned car with an obviously wealthy
Chinese-Filipino family. The women were well-dressed and laden with
jewelry. The only person who looked out of place in the car was a
young woman in a simple t-shirt, jeans, and thongs. It soon became
clear that she was a coordinator of the march. Inbetween giving directives
to runners who occasionally walked by the car, she explained, "The
police might target the organizers at the beginning of the march, so
extra precautions had to be taken." The plump Chinese women turned
around from the front seat and smiled at me. They (upper class Filipinas)
and I (a foreigner) were the extra precaution. When the motorcade
reached the outskirts of the city, the organizer hopped out, pulled me

5Womenews 14 (April-June 1987) (Women's Studies and Resource Center, Rm. 207,
Santos Building, Malvar Extension, Davao City, Philippines), 9. (Translated from Cebuano.)

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686 Dorothy Friesen

with her, and the air-conditioned car sped away in the direction of
Manila. The remainder of the protest march was on foot, predominantly
by urban poor, farmers, and workers.
During the antinuclear march, I glimpsed yet another aspect of the
commitment to work within the nationalist movement-the importance
of the changes which men must make in order to build a society of
equality and mutual respect. I realized, for example, during the three-
day march that the men and women of the Manila press on this trip
were no ordinary writers and photographers. They worked cooperatively,
with virtually no competition between them. Though they rode in the
media jeepney while most of the participants walked, they shared in the
meager food and lodging of the rallyists (the floor of a school gymnasium
one night and benches of a church the next night). A few of them had
themselves been political detainees at one time.
The women led the march through central Luzon and at each town
local demonstrators greeted the marchers and escorted them to the
town plaza. After two days of walking under the hot sun and attending
late evening meetings, the exhausted women orchestrated their grand
finale. Homemade torches flaming, they began to march into the night,
led by the two former beauty queens, Maita Gomez and Nelia Sancho.
Ominous storm clouds in the afternoon developed into an evening
thunderstorm which quickly extinguished the torches. The rain lashed
against the resolute faces of Maita and the other women walking behind
the jeepney. They were gasping for breath against the downpour, as
water literally streamed down their faces. Then suddenly someone yelled
and the procession stopped. A young man shaking with the cold was
stuffed into our already overcrowded media vehicle. One of the Filipino
photographers quickly put away his camera equipment and grabbed a
towel and t-shirt from his bag. He removed the wet shirt from the
shaking figure, tenderly swabbed him with his towel and offered him a
dry t-shirt. His instinctive act of human kindness shamed me, because
all I could think about at the time was my own discomfort-no space
for my legs in the cramped vehicle, clothing damp and cold, rain spilling
through the pathetic plastic covers hung over the open windows.
I watched this display of compassion from a member of the working
press and remembered the words of Carolina Malay, National Democratic
Front spokesperson, as she described what happened to men and women
in the nationalist movement. "One difference is that the men cry more
easily and the women cry less than their counterparts in the broader
Philippine society." The development of courageous women and com-
passionate men is an historic process, even more impressive when it
arises in the context of poverty and militarization, where the necessary
leisure to mentally process internal change is not available. This change

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Philippines 687

is not so much an intentional goal as a by-product of working together

on the pressing needs of economic and physical survival.
However, a nagging question remains which Filipina feminist Jurgette
Honculada describes as "the division of human labor into production
of goods and services on the one hand and the reproduction of labor
in terms of maintenance and in producing the next generation."6 Jurgette
Honculada, a member of a Philippine feminist coalition called Pilipina,
points to the double burden of home and work duties and says its
resolution is of extreme urgency for poor women in the Philippines.
Mely and her friends whom I met in the barrio near Butuan faced this
double burden. They had not yet joined a national women's organization
in which poor and rich women could sit down together and witness the
implications of gender oppression in a class society.
Despite Sancho's implacable confidence in the call for women to join
together based more on what they can contribute to the shaping of the
national agenda than on what immediate benefit they can receive, this
cross-class and urban-rural mix can not proceed without organizational
problems and tensions. I glimpsed this during a visit in early 1987 to
the GABRIELA office in Quezon City. A predominantly female American
lawyers' group were eager to talk with Filipina women, and GABRIELA
determined that the professionals would fit best with our group, so we
waited at the office for our resource person. Time passed and she did
not show up, but other women-peasants, squatters, and workers stopped
by the office and, noticing the visitors, sat down to chat. A few hours
later, Regina, a high school vice-principal, swept in and joined us. Well-
groomed, manicured nails, a hint of perfume, she carried herself with
pride. "I'm very sorry," she said, "but there is a demonstration today
to protest the massacre of the peasants in Manila last month. I had a
lot to prepare." Lita, the peasant representative who had been chatting
with us, smiled and said, "Yes we know-I am speaking at the rally."
Before Regina's entrance, Elly, a woman from the urban poor com-
munity of Navotas described the struggle in her household about the
responsibility for daily chores. "I just had to make my husband under-
stand that our political ideas and work were really the same and if he
believed in equality, it had to be practiced in our house, too. But what
really persuaded him to help out was how tired I always looked. He
really loves me and felt sorry for me." In addition to her organizing
work in her neighborhood, Elly is a vegetable vendor in the local market.
We asked Regina the same question about democracy within the home.
"Oh, well fortunately I don't have to ask my husband to help, because

6Jurgette Honculada, "Women's Double Burden: The Question Which Will Not Wait,"
in Kamalayan: Feminist Writings in the Philippines, ed. Pennie S. Azarcon (Quezon City:
Pilipina Press, 1987), 27.

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688 Dorothy Friesen

I have a helper who does all the cleaning and cooking. My husband is
a lawyer and he is too busy for that sort of thing." I looked at Elly
and Lita. They were sitting expressionless, their heads down. "Will your
helper be at the demonstration this afternoon?" we asked Regina, "Oh,
no, she has extra work in the house because I had so much running
around to do in preparation for this action." Elly and Lita glared. The
moment passed quickly and the discussion moved on perhaps in deference
to the "foreign friends." Later the same afternoon, we saw Lita, Elly,
and Regina arm-in-arm at the rally in support of the farmers.
Honculada writes, "Where no real child care support exists, state
sponsored or otherwise, the emancipation of middle-class women hinges
on the subjugation of a sub-class of women-household help-however
benevolent the terms of the subjugation might be. . . . Until feminism
and socialism can adequately address this core of female oppression
through such short term measures as socialized child care and equal
pay for work of equal value and through a long term vision that posits
freer and more creative structures, roles and relationships, . . . the
liberation of one half of humanity shall remain an unredeemed promise
of the socialist vision, and feminism will never mobilize the revolutionary
potential of women as women and as classes in transforming the old
society into the new."7
The summary of the women's movement in the Philippines properly
belongs to the women there. What follows is an excerpt from a poem
written by Filipina researchers in 1983 after working on a social research
project on the situation of women. They reflect on the process the
women's movement in the Philippines has chosen to resolve the con-
tradictions of class and gender oppression: "But we have found a way
to survive using our pain and keeping us whole./Our past is one long
thread-sewing our present weaving our future./Let us press forward
and break the silence./Sew our problems into demands./Let us find
ourselves in the drama of history-making."

7Honculada, "Women's Double Burden," 29.

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