The following article would be long and would sound a bit scholarly. I've written it last semester for one of my literature subjects, that's why. Why this post? I wish to share my renewed vista of the Filipina, fruit of much reading, interview and research - my miniscule contribution to Filipina Writing Project. ~
Would you believe that in the Philippine society today, women dominate men?
Antonio Meloto, the big man (literally) behind the phenomenal Gawad Kalinga, was the culprit behind me tinkering with this idea. I could also attribute to him the inspiration that has propelled me into expounding more and perhaps to prove him right (or otherwise) through this paper.
In my colloquy with him last August he stressed that the Filipinos nowadays are living in what he calls the “slum culture” (Meloto, 2007). He describes that majority of the poor population in Manila alone live in shanties – make-shift houses built mostly from scraps and near-rubbish. Asian Development Bank says that the majority being referred to by Meloto are the 3.4 million Filipinos who find refuge in these slum communities (Comerford, 2005). They are part of the 53% of the population who consider themselves as poor, according to the 2007 Social Weather Stations survey.
These families are living in sheer austerity, living with less than a hundred pesos a day (United Nations Development Programme, 2006). I can imagine the hunger that fills their stomach, the life that they live that is deprived of dignity. Paolo Mangahas, in his article in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, depicts very well the destitute situation that is cradling a multitude of our brothers and sisters:
“My friend pointed out that she has never seen a beggar in the streets of Kuala Lumpur since she moved here and asked me if it is the same in the Philippines. […] To make things more relevant to her, I started by comparing the Philippines to Malaysia. I told her that blue-collar workers in the Philippines did not have the same opportunities as the ones in Malaysia, who can afford to eat in the same restaurants where executives eat or even shop in stores where their own bosses shop. I told her that unlike the ones I have met in Malaysia, secretaries and administrative clerks in the Philippines will eat in posh restaurants only on very special occasions and can barely afford to travel to other countries.
I then told her about the beggars, young and old, who parade the streets of Manila, the children who knock on car windows selling sampaguita, the mothers who have to forage for food in garbage landfills, and the unemployed fathers who waste their lives on drugs and alcohol. I told her about the shanties that bedeck highways and railroads, the unproductive traffic jams, the garbage-infested streets and sewers, and the regular typhoons that flood the country and exacerbate already poor living conditions.
I told her that poverty in the Philippines unapologetically hits you in the face the very moment you step in” (Between poverty and paradise, 2007).
In this light we see the horror faced by our countrymen. The horror brought about by poverty. We see how dignity and freedom is deprived from them. Meloto has seen the same thing. He said that poverty is a great burden for men. It transforms them into savages. Not only do they transform themselves but also our country. The Philippines, he exclaims, is slowly turning into a vast wasteland. Filipinos are squatters in their own country. He said that having all these at hand we have a dysfunctional society, a society that is wounded, a society dispossessed of dignity: “we have lowered our standards and tolerated poverty and ugliness, compromised our values and simply tolerated corruption.”
In spite of this woundedness, Meloto’s optimistic eye has seen something positive which, I considered as something radical. Mothers, he happily states, in the slum environment has become more productive they are even superior over men. He narrates further that poverty removes power from the fathers. Being landless, lacking in dignity, without security, without aspirations, relatively homeless, these situations bring out the beast in every man. Meloto continues on explaining that in order to survive, men had to rely on his savageness, he hunts, he forages. The latter also expresses his failings in a brute way. No wonder why Tondo was known for gangs and street fights plus other vicious hostilities and crimes.
On one hand, the women are the one who stay at home. Budgeting the nothingness that they have, attending to the needs of their children, listening to the latest gossip, talking with their fellow mothers, watching TV, listening to the radio or reading pocket books, in short, the they are using more their faculty of thinking. Meloto surmises that this renders the women superior than men knowing that the intelligence is a more complex and superior than corporeal strength.
I was kindled when he said his belief that this slum situation has grown into a culture affecting not only those who live in the squatters’ area but the nation as a whole. He recounts statistics and circumstances that are supposed to prove his thesis. One circumstance that he told was regarding the academic standing of all-girls schools versus co-educational and all-boys institutions; and the general performance of women, not only in education but also in other professional fields. Not that I don’t believe Meloto, rather his statements were so compelling that it is worthy to be verified.
While reading literatures for my research proposal, I stumbled upon veracious statistics that can serve support Meloto. The National Statistics Office’s report on Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey tells us that in 2003 that 94.3% of the Filipina has basic literacy (meaning they are able to read or write in any language or dialect) compared to only 92.6% of the male population. Moreover, of the 86.3% of the Filipinas are functionally literate (they are those who can read, write, compute and comprehend), more than 4% greater than the men. The survey also tells us that of the 28,641,000 female respondents, 42,700 are graduates of high school or higher while there are only 38,400 out of 28,947,000 male respondents that fall under this category.
But these data doesn’t sound convincing enough. And so, I tried to Google about the topic at hand and was amaze by the results. I found an article titled “Women bosses outnumber men in RP workplaces – DoLE” which states that according to the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE), citing a data from the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics, “there were 1.4 million Filipino men holding supervisory and executive positions against 1.86 million women in 2002” (Blogged, 2007). The report went on enumerating the occupations dominated by women:
“In 2006, women also dominated their male counterpart in the following occupations: professionals (7.7 % versus 2.2 %), technicians and associate professional (3.6 % versus 2.2 %), clerks (7.7 % versus 2.7 %), service workers and shop and markets sales workers (12.5 % versus 7.6 %), and laborers and unskilled workers (36.1 % versus 28.8 %). […] An international survey that showed 97 percent of businesses in the Philippines have women in senior management positions, the highest among 32 countries surveyed”.
I also found an abstract of the study of Marites D. Vitug (Vitug, 2006), “The Philippines: Fighting the Patriarchy in Growing Numbers.” I was struck particularly by a clause on the second paragraph saying that women dominate the membership rolls of the National Research Council of the Philippines in the fields of biology, pharmacy, and chemistry.
This paper, at this point, may sound overly positive on the thesis upheld by Meloto regarding the slum culture and the good effect that it brings to our Filipinas. You are never hindered to think that way but actually what I am trying to drive at is a more objective view of the situation of women in the Philippine society today. I want you to see the other side of the coin – in the midst of our culture, our society where machismo is great (attributing it to the slum culture that is seeping into our society) the women are proving their prowess and skills. Looking at the collage of information above, the women are as if claiming, subtly, their right, the dignity, the freedom that has been equally given to every man. It is only my desire to present the real status of our women today and also to present that despite their status in the society respect hasn’t been perfectly attributed to them (Vitug, 2006). They are still abused; thus, Gabriela members still clamor for rights and rally at Mendiola.
Yes, the women in the Philippine society are superior over men in terms of intellect, of productivity, of skill yet they are still subservient and inferior in the eyes of the society who has believed in and is still upholding the idea of “woman for the home” (Vitug, 2006). But, they are not giving-up.
~ Kudos to Ms. Janette Toral and the Digital Filipino Club members; and their sponsors: Barangay.ph, Kababayan.ph, MyUSMailbox.com, RegaloService.com, Acclaim Butterflies, and Chikka.com; for coming up with this project. Thank you so much, Br. Vince and JM Tuazon for inspiring me to share my piece through reading their posts.
References
Blogged. (2007, August 3). Women bosses outnumber men in RP workplaces - DoLE. Retrieved September 8, 2007, from Blogged!: http://ricojr.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/women-bosses-outnumber-men-in-rp-workplaces-dole/
Comerford, M. (2005, April 15). It breaks your heart. Retrieved September 8, 2007, from Daily Herald: http://www.dailyherald.com/special/philippines/part1.asp
Mangahas, P. P. (2007, February 4). Between poverty and paradise. Retrieved September 2, 2007, from Sunday Inquirer Magazine: http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/sim/sim/view_article.php?article_id=47383
Meloto, A. (2007, July 11). Behind Gawad Kalinga. (A. J. Quinto, Interviewer)
National Statistics Office. (2003). FLEMMS : functional literacy, education and mass media survey : final report. Manila: National Statistics Office.
Social Weather Stations. (2007, March 22). First Quarter 2007 Social Weather Survey. Retrieved August 13, 2007, from Social Weather Stations: http://www.sws.org.ph/pr070322.htm
United Nations Development Programme. (2006). Human development report 2006, Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and global water crisis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vitug, M. D. (2006, August 2). Abstract of "The Philippines: Fighting the Patriarchy in Growing Numbers". Retrieved September 8, 2007, from Online Ethics Center: http://www.onlineethics.org/CMS/workplace/workplacediv/abstractsindex/philippines.aspx
Labels: an attempt, filipina, introspection
