Filipino women celebrate 100 years of feminism

Celebrating 100 years of feminism in the country, dozens of influential and successful Filipino women gathered for a forum at the Australian Embassy in Makati City yesterday to share how women are becoming more empowered every day.

They cited statistics showing women are advancing in politics and corporate business, and may even come to dominate these fields within 30 years.

Thirty years ago, few Filipinas were corporate businesswomen or politicians, let alone the President of the Republic. And much more is expected to change in the coming decades.

Key speakers and guests at the forum shared their experiences of rising in the ranks from housewives to business executives, diplomats and political leaders through the years.

Former foreign affairs secretary Delia Albert cited figures from a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey conducted last year that found women to be "better government executives."

The survey, sponsored by the Australian Agency for International Development, said women are perceived to be better public officials than their male counterparts.

Albert explained that of the 1,440 adults surveyed nationwide, 52 percent said women in politics were more efficient in allocating government resources while 48 percent said both men and women in government were equally honest or, on the negative side, prone to corruption.

"However, 38 percent said female public officials were more honest as compared to 14 percent saying that male public officials were more honest," she said.

Albert noted the survey showed that the "general belief that women do better than men as public officials cuts across gender, geographic area and social class."

To show that women are slowly overtaking men in the fields of government service or politics, she cited the example of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

The gender composition of the DFA’s workforce, Albert said, is at a nearly 50:50 ratio with 1,115 females and 1,177 males. But while men still hold 62 percent of the ambassadorial or career minister posts, women are on the rise in the mid-officer level.

"At the mid-officer level, 43 percent are female and 57 percent are male, while at the staff level, women outnumber men 55 percent to 45 percent," she noted.

Women are not only advancing at diplomatic levels, but as corporate and international business leaders, according to Maria Perez, who compared life for Filipino women back in the 1980s to now.

She noted she studied in Australia shortly after graduating from University of the Philippines in 1985.

During those times, it was common for Filipinas to be asked: "Are you a mail-order bride?"

She got so tired of fending off this question, she came to respond: "No, but do you know someone who is actually looking for one?"

Perez even had a Filipina classmate who asked her if people in the Philippines lived in trees.

She noted Filipinas have come a long way from those days of discrimination, and now excel in the fields of consultancy, pharmaceuticals, sales, government service and finance and banking.

A recent international study for the year 2003, she said, shows the female to male ratio in the corporate world to still be a disproportionate1:13. But that ratio is predicted to shift to 1:10 by the year 2010, and to 1:3 by 2020.

Australian Ambassador Tony Hely, for his part, congratulated the Philippines on celebrating 100 years of the women’s movement.

"It is women who prove to be the best catalysts for change. They are the most active in the daily struggle to survive and they offer and work for solutions to issues of national peace and development," he said. High praise, indeed, from a man.

Hely reminded attendees, though, that women still make up 20 percent of the world’s poor, and that two-thirds of the world’s illiterate are women. And women still only hold 15 percent of seats in the world’s parliaments.

"All of us have a role in responding to this challenge," he noted.