Pre-Colonial Philippines

Gender and Society

Chapter 5: Status and Roles of Women in Philippine Society

PRE COLONIAL
Politics and Religion (Leadership):
- A woman could become chief of the barangay, leader of a clan, perform the
role of babaylan (Visayan priestess/katalonan in Tagalogs), hold property,
and even name her own children.
- Some were engaged in rutual healing (mananambal), others used herbs to
cure ailments or engaged in fortune telling or divination.
- Babaylan were called to help the dying by calling upon the anitos (souls of
the ancestors)
- Cross-dressing men such as the asug who seemed to have been accepted
in their roles as religious functionaries

Economics:
- had the right to own property. They could trade with their own money and
maintain an independent income from their business (porcelain, gold
ornaments, metals, mirrors, and silk fabrics).
- In-charge of billings, contracts, and correspondences
- No centralized system of production

Sociocultural (Marriage):
- Male and female children did not experience any form of inequality.
- Sexual inhibitions regarding virginity in marriage was not universally
valued
- "Women should be experienced before getting married" - Antonio Pigafetta
- Bigay kaya (dowry given by men) at paninilbihan Abortion as an option
- They could obtain divorce and re-marry (common practice until a child was
born)
- In case of separation, they were entitled to a share of conjugal earnings;
and to a share of the children.
- Prior to marriage, they could not leave the household residence and make
their home elsewhere
Spanish Regime

Sociocultural (Laws):
- The same kind of punishment (death) to both sexes in cases of marital
infidelity except to women who became concubines of the village chieftain.
afraid of global warming

Politics and Religion:

- Denied for political rights and an enlightened education
- Belief: Roman doctrines of patria potestas and paterfamilias as absolute
ruler and the wife's subordination to the authority of her husband.

Economics:
- Economic participation (retail businesses like weaving, dressmaking,
embroidery, hat making, and slipper making)
- Women in lower classes remained active in economic production as traders,
farm workers, and weavers
- There was a sexual division of labor in farming and fishing

Sociocultural:
- Ideal women: Sweet, docile, obedient, self-sacrificing
- Values: chastity, purity, modesty, and forbearance (patient/restraint)
- Husband must protect the wife and the wife must obey the husband
- Active at home and withdrawn from
- public sphere (communal)
- Status display and maintenance (organizing parties and keeping
appearances)
- LGBT: Employs discourses of sinfulness and homosexuality as immoral
- Non-conformist gender variations were socially unacceptable.

Sociocultural (Marriage):
- Prohibited the wife to acquire or dispose conjugal properties without the
consent of the husband (e.g. purchase of personal items like jewelry or
household furniture)
- Widow was prohibited to remarry util after 301 days and loss of parental
authority (if pregnant when the husband died)
- Dowry (from parents of women) are required
- Spouse can file for divorce
Grounds for divorce
- The adultery of the wife in all cases, and the husband when it results in
public scandal or in disgrace to the wife
- Maltreatment by deed, or serious insults
- Violence exerted by the husband upon the wife in order to force her to
change her religion
- The proposal of the husband to prostitute his wife
- The attempt of the husband or the wife to corrupt their sons or to
prostitute their daughters, and the connivance in their
- corruption or prostitution
- The conviction of the spouse to the punishment of cadena or reclusion
perpetua

Sociocultural (Education):

- Schools: classified into colegios, which offered academic and vocational

courses, and beaterios, which were run like orphanages.
- Educational institutions prepared women for either motherhood or the
religious life and offered little academic instruction
- Subjects: Reading, writing, and arithmetic; geography, Christian doctrine,
deportment and needlecraft
- Focus: Church, kitchen, and children Women should be careful with what
they read

Pivotal Events in Spanish Regime

- Her entry into the world of wage labor, which came with her employment in
government-owned tobacco factories in 1781
- Her demand for a more enlightened education, made in 1888 when the
women of Malolos petitioned Governor General Weyler to open an academy
where they could learn Spanish
- Her admission to a teaching career in 1894
- Her involvement in the liberation of the country in 1896

Women's Responses to Oppression

Pre-Colonial to Colonial
Babaylans led the resistance
- Propaganda Movement and Katipunan Women's Chapter
- Roles: leaders, soldiers, healers, and heads of logistics operation
- Women in the masonic lodge (gathered anti-Spanish sentiments)
- Gabriela Silang and Gregoria de Jesus
- Trinidad Tecson (Ina ng Biak-na-Bato)
- Teresa Magbanua (battles in Visayas), Susan Nacional
- Melchora Aquino (Tandang Sora)
- Hilaria del Rosario-Aguinaldo (Red Cross Organization)
- Gregoria y Partido led 30 katipuneros against colonial military forces
 - Rosario Lopez donated firearms to the revolutionary forces
American Era and the Commonwealth

Politics:
- Suffrage to women were granted the right to vote and be made eligible for
all public offices Economics:
- The government adopted policies to protect women in the work force, but,
in fact, these merely restricted employment opportunities. Educated women
entered male- dominated professions but the income status doesn't
improve

Sociocultural (Education):
- Education was a priority (more subjects offered to both sexes)
- Subjects specifically for boys and girls based on their physical/biological
characteristics
- Marked segregation of the sexes in special educational program for the
manufacturing industries and household industries
- Admission to state universities and colleges was open to all regardless of
sex
- Free primary education for boys and girls and gave access to a normal
school, a trade school, and a school of agriculture.
- The education of the Filipina made her socially and politically aware Upper
class women

Sociocultural (Marriage):
- Absolute divorce was instituted which provided that a petition could be
filed for adultery on the part of the wife or for concubinage on the part of
the husband if committed in any of the forms described in the Penal Code.
- The stereotype of women as wives and mothers remained.
- Special protection was based on the relative physical weakness of the
average woman and on her child-bearing and maternal functions.
- Queer identities as 'abnormal' and unacceptable continued Passing laws
against homosexual acts on its own shores, yet no laws were passed
criminalizing homosexuality in the Philippines

Sociocultural:
- Gay bars and red-light district was established Running parallel to the
emergence of concepts of 'gay' and 'gay liberation' in the West, a gay scene
emerged in the late 1960 in Ermita, a tourist district in Manila, with gay bars
and discos The gay bars tended to be seedy establishments with 'macho
dancers', live sex and male sex workers.
- A 'free-lance' scene for cruising and for commercial sex was much more
vulnerable to police harassment, using anti-vagrancy laws, to such a
degree that the term 'bagansya' referred to being picked up by the police
and paying extortion money to avoid prosecution.
 - Women in lower class and upper class have varying experiences, and
sometimes upper class causes the distress to other women in lower class
- Freedom is for the upper class
- Social work and services (charity work) as part of women's activities
(Philippine Red Cross)
- Communist and socialist movement in the country
- Nationalist and Militants Movement
- MAKIBAKA (Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan)
- PILIPINA (Kilusan ng Kababaihang Pilipina
- KALAYAAN (Katipunan ng Kababaihan Para sa Kalayaan)

Japanese Occupation
- The sexual enslavement of women by Japanese forces occupying the
country

Comfort women
- Nationalist and Militants Movement Divorce law was promulgated
- More liberal divorce law was promulgated and the allowable reasons for
divorce were as follows
- Adultery on the part of the wife and concubinage on the part of the
husband The attempt by one spouse on the life of the other
- A second or subsequent marriage by either spouse before the first
marriage was legally dissolved
- A loathsome contagious disease;
- Incurable insanity
- Impotence;
- Intentional or unjustified desertion for one year
- An unexplained absence for three years
- Repeated bodily violence of such a nature that the spouses could not
continue living together without endangering the lives of both or of one of
them
- Slander by deed or gross insult to such an extent that further living
together was impracticable.

Post-Colonial Philippines
Politics:
- Gradual restoration of women's rights
- Women of at least 21 years of age were qualified for all acts of civil life,
except cases specified by law
Economics:
- Wives were allowed to exercise their profession or Occupation or engage in
business
- A wife could repudiate an inheritance without her husband's consent

Sociocultural (Marriage):
- Age of consent for marriage at 16 years of age for males and 14 for females.
Parental consent was required for females below 18 to marry and for males
below 20
- Legal separation was allowed involving cases of concubinage by the
husband and adultery by the wife
- Parental authority over children was given to both father and mother
- A mother could not be separated from her child below seven years of age
except for compelling reasons
- A daughter could not leave the parental home without the consent of the
father or mother in whose company she lived except when she became a
wife or when she exercised a profession or calling or when the father or
mother contracted a subsequent marriage, and these requirements did not
apply to a son

Martial Law Era

- GABRIELA (General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality,
Leadership, and Action)
- Abanse! Pinay (Solo Parents Welfare Act, Anti-Trafficking of Persons Act,
VAWC)
- Akbayan (RH Law, Magna Carta of Women
- Other party-list groups and NGO to liberate women, focus on marginalized
women as national interest

·20th Century Philippines

- A woman of legal age could practice any profession or engage in business
or enter into contracts, but when she married, she could no longer accept
gifts without her husband's consent and her husband could object to her
engaging in any profession or occupation if his income was sufficient for
the family according to its social standing and if his opposition was based
on serious and valid grounds
- The father's power to administer the property of unemancipated children
- The father's preferential right to give or deny consent for the marriage of a
child
- The husband's administration of the conjugal property
21st Century Philippines

- Multiple roles of Filipino women as housekeepers, wives function as

"co-managers" of the household rather than mere subordinates to their
spouses.
- The wife is designated the family treasurer.
- An increase in the level of educational attainment also improves women's
status in decision making.
- Prostitution became the oldest profession
- Widows were also discriminated against. No marriage license shall be
issued to a widow till after three hundred days following the death of her
husband, unless in the meantime she has given birth to a child.
- In a marriage between a Christian male and a Muslim or pagan female, the
general provisions of the Civil Code govern, but when the marriage is
between a Muslim or pagan male and a Christian female, special rules
permit the marriage to be performed in accordance with the customs, rites,
or practices of the man (if he lives in a non-Christian province) if so desired
by the contracting parties.

- The 1987 Constitution and Family Code of the Philippines

- The State recognizes the role of women in nation-building and shall ensure
the fundamental equality before the law of women and men." The Family
Code introduced drastic changes
- Divorce to annulment
- The parties to a marriage are expressly required to be male and female The
prohibition against the issuance of a marriage license to a widow until 300
days have passed since the death of her husband has been eliminated.
- Foreign marriages of Filipinos are recognized in the Philippines.
- There are more grounds for annulment of marriage
- Both husband and wife shall fix the family domicile, and in case of
disagreement the court shall decide
- Authority of the father over children's property
Grounds for legal separation
- Before the adoption of the Family Code of 1987, discrimination against
women was also manifest in the grounds for legal separation. For the
husband, proof of only one sexual contact by the wife with a man not her
husband was sufficient to grant the separation
- But for the wife to be entitled to a separation, the husband must be guilty
of concubinage as defined by the Revised Penal Code (art. 334): (1)
maintaining a mistress in the conjugal dwelling, (2) having sexual
intercourse with the other woman under scandalous circumstances, or (3)
cohabiting with her in any other place.
- "Cohabit" here has been held to mean "dwell and live together in the same
house as husband and wife."

Grounds for annulment

- Psychologically incapacitated
- could not comply with the essential marital obligations of marriage shall
be void even if the incapacity becomes manifest only after solemnization of
the marriage
- The age of consent has been raised to 18 for both males and females
- Parental consent is required for those over 16 and under 21 and parental
advice is required for those over 21 and under 25 Repeated physical
violence or grossly abusive conduct directed against the petitioner, a
common child, or a child of the petitioner Physical violence or moral
pressure to compel the petitioner to change religious or political affiliation