WOMEN, it is said, hold half the world in their hands. And because it is Mother’s Day today, the PCIJ checked out the status of the distaff side in the May 2013 elections.
By now, it is clear to all that only 8 — or only one in four — of the 33 candidates for senator are women. The gender divide turns more skewed, however, if one were to look at the number of female candidates down the line.
The records of the Commission on Elections show that: women make up only 20 percent of the official candidates for district representatives; only 17 percent of the candidates for governor; only 14 percent of the candidates for vice governor; only 19 percent of the candidates for mayor; and only 16 percent of the candidates for vice mayor.
In the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, two of the six candidates for regional governor are women. But down the line, the numbers thin out to zero female candidate for regional governor, and only 8 of the 80 candidates for regional assembly members.
Feminist scholars have noted a sorry picture of many women candidates running only as benchwarmers or substitutes for father, brother or spouse who typically belong to political clans. This seems to be the case, they say, for two candidates for senator, Maria Lourdes Nancy Binay and former Las Pinas representative Cynthia A. Villar.
The same narrative had an earlier example in former First Lady Luisa ‘Loi’ Ejercito, who ran and won as senator in 2001, after her husband, former President Joseph Estrada, was charged and placed under house arrest on plunder and perjury charges. Estrada’s son and co-accused, Jose or Jinggoy Ejercito, also ran and won as senator in 2004. Mother and son soon became seatmates in the Senate.
The situation of having women act as “benchwarmers” for the male members of the family is even starker in local elective positions. The twist is that in all probability, there may even be fewer women at this level were it not for the “familial” push.
Indeed, if running for office is family duty first and foremost to some women candidates, where does public service, or even, leadership by the distaff side, begin?
More than the quantity or the number of women politicians, experts say that what should be emphasized is the quality or the kind of commitment and service that women politicians should offer to the people.
Having eight women as candidates for senator, or 25 percent of the 33 total aspirants, is progress enough but it has hardly caused a stir of excitement even among women’s rights advocates.
“Ideally, it is expected that when there are more women (participating in politics), there are more voices (for women), and (that) they will be more gender sensitive,” says Mary Joan Guan, executive director of the Center for Women’s Resources.
“But based on our observation through the years, gender alone is not a basis. It is not necessary that if the candidate or official is a woman, she’ll be the voice of the women, especially the marginalized sector.”
She also says that while it is a positive development that women are entering the political arena, people should still closely scrutinize the reasons why these individuals chose to run in the first place.
“If we analyze who these women candidates are, they are (usually) from well-known and powerful families or political families, if not wives of politicians,” Guan says.
She adds, “We are still in the traditional politics practice, so our culture dictates that whoever has the money, is in power, or is in alliance with people in office, wins.”
That may be one factor discouraging many other women from considering politics as a career. Other women’s rights advocates meanwhile say that in a patriarchal society like that in the Philippines, politics merely extends the subservient role women play in the family.
More often than not, they point out, Filipino women are prompted to run for public office only because a husband, father, or brother is unable to do so at that moment or can no longer run altogether.
Sometimes, too, female family members are recruited to run for office simply because the clan wants to either widen or consolidate its power and lacks qualified male members that it can put in public positions.
Read the full report and check out the data table on the gender divide between all the candidates in the May 13, 2013 elections in PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online.