The history of women's organizations THE FOLLOWING speech was given by Maita Gomez to the Third National Congress of GABRIELA on International Women's Day last year. THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT, through time, all over the world, has been •through many peaks and troughs. Nevertheless it survives, continues to grow and increasingly fulfills for us a worldview that corresponds to the actual realities of our experience as women; realities that we have always been denied by the predominant male bias that defines social questions and solutions.
The phenomena of imperialism and colonialism cut through our common experiences as women. Our experience of foreign domination continues to define, deny, complicate and exacerbate our struggle to survive and our right to liberation. The struggle to end imperialist control of Philippine life is paramount to Filipino women.
No facet of Philippine life has ever been separate from this struggle to be self-determining as a people. And our women's movement, its history and current evolution is no exception. From the Spanish colonial period, the times of our heroine Gabriela Silang, women's organizations in the Philippines have been offshoots or developments of national and political movements that enhanced or augmented different standpoints to the question of Philippine independence and sovereignty.
There are three important points that I would like to make in connection with this observation:
First, that these movements were begun and dominated by men. Being generally confined to the home (especially during the 300 years of Spanish colonialism), women's access to information and discussion, and thus their social awareness and influence was severely limited.
Second, that women's involvement in these movements gave them liberties and roles that were traditionally denied them. Philippine history bears witness to many women leaders who
PHILIPPINES capably and willingly accepted these non-traditional roles. But in these struggles we do not yet see a woman's consciousness distinct from that of men's perceptions to social problems. Although these women inevitably developed the movements they led with their own ideas, a view on social questions particularized from a women's point of view is more or less absent. It is also significant to note that the leadership of these women was most legitimized when it carried the stamp of authority derived from their men. Thus Gabriela Silang led the • rebellion she inherited from her slain h"sband, and today Cory Aquino proclaims, "Let us continue Ninoy Aquino's fight!"
Third, that the goals and objectives of these movements were valid for a greater or smaller section of Filipino women that represented different standpoints to the question of Philippine independence. Needless to say, 300 years of struggle that culminated in the Philippine revolution against Spain and later the Philippine-American war was the answer to an immediate and urgent demand of the Filipino people, including Filipino women. Women's movements during US colonialism
A lesser dimension of this third point is demonstrated by the women's movements during the American colonial period, when women's organizations were established as part of the American "pacification" campaign against the Philippine revolutionaries, and later to seek suffrage and reforms within the framework of American domination. The women's movements and organizations in this period were party to the legitimation of a new and more sophisticated form of colonial domination.
This was the era of selling American "democracy" to the Filipino people, the elite democracy where the Filipino ruling class would consolidate its recent access to political and economic power in collaboration with the new colonial master. It was the women of this elite who led the various women's suffrage and reform that were part of a trend to seek liberalization and political rights from the colonial master, a trend which by design failed to call attention to the illegitimacy of the colonial presence in Philippine life. It was a subtle brand of political mendicancy and collaboration promoted by the Filipino ruling class, which had already made a break with the Philippine
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revolution.
Since that period, and progressively, as US-style democracy and a semi-colonial status were legitimized, women's organizations have taken the pattern of clearly auxiliary organizations to enhance the status quo: posing as moral guardians of society, promoting inutile reforms, glorifying charity work, drumming up support for the causes of the ruling elite, even for the dictatorship that has just fallen, and reinforcing the role of women as wife, homemaker and auxiliary to men. These women's organizations with their moralistic, elitist and condescending programs, even when they attempt to take up women's issues, cannot address themselves to the progressive and democratic demands of Filipino women. Today, the majority of women's organizations outside of the nationalist and cause-oriented movements still maintain this profile.
In the early "70s the re-emergence of another revolutionary women's organization occurred during the period of nationalist and • student activism that we now call the First Quarter Storm.
True to the pattern discussed earlier, MAKIBAKA also developed from a predominantly male-led activist movement: its origins can be traced to the militant youth organization, the Samahan ng Demokratikong Kabataan (SDK). As part of the national democratic movement, the women of MAKIBAKA sought not only to mobilize women for a national democratic struggle, but also to develop a women's consciousness. A distinct women's movement integral to the national liberation struggle, MAKIBAKA, the Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan, was the first movement in Philippine history to raise the issue of women's liberation. The emergence of MAKIBAKA signifies the most advanced revolutionary tradition of Filipino women.
With the imposition of martial law, activist and nationalist organizations were declared illegal and forced to go underground. Temporarily, the open mass movement was effectively stifled. The women of MAKI BAKA answered the call for revolutionary underground work, for urban and rural basic masses organizing, for armed struggle. The pressures of martial law on the national democratic movement caused the disbanding of the still young and strug gling MAKIBAKA. But the tradition that this women's organization has left behind remains.
Let us talk of our own women's movement, the women's organizations of today, many of which are only 3-5 years old. They too have grown out of the national struggle, g 6 out of the struggles of different sectors and classes of Filipinos. Many of these organizations also began with little or no understanding of women's issues. Like our forerunners in the Katipunan, we simply saw the need for women to be involved. We were also drawn by the goals and objectives that represent the most urgent demands of the Filipino people: human rights, economic and civil rights, social justice, democratic structures and policies and an end to foreign domination.
In this process, with the tradition of MAKIBAKA to start from, with the voices of many women clamoring to be heard not just as Filipinos, but as Filipino women, with the advances of the women's movement in other countries to learn from, our women's movement has begun to see the Philippine problem as expressed particularly in the oppression of Filipino women; it has begun to see the exploitation and oppression of Filipino women in its entirety. Organizing the mass women's movement
Women's organizations of the basic masses (the workers, peasants and urban poor) form the backbone of our women's movement. These organizations are vital to any women's movement's claims to legitimacy in terms of representing the demands and aspirations of the most oppressed women in Philippine society, of the majority of Filipino women. Women's alliances such as GABRIELA promote the solidarity and support of various issue-oriented, class or sector-based women's organizations. GABRIELA also functions as a center for coordinating and expanding women's campaigns. As it grows, it should and is developing into an educational, informational, propaganda and mobilization center, acting as a political center for the women's mass movement. It is a powerful vehicle for unifying women in perspective and action.
Over a decade of political activism under the harshest conditions of repression and dictatorship has provided our women's organizations with organizational skills and political acumen to lead and further develop the women's movement. We should be proud of this strength acquired through dedication and commitment, even as we recognize a weakness, or rather a lopsidedness, 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 such as we have today, this same experience has only lately been infused with an orientation that recognizes the distinctness of women's oppression.
Our women's movement has to address itself to more intensive social investigation into the conditions of women in Philippine society and conduct research on the nature of specific women's problems as reflected in the lives of Filipino women. The more thorough study and firm grasp of the nature, manifestations and roots of women's oppression in Philippine society are among the most urgent agenda for our women's mass movement.
Our development as a women's movement should also evolve forms of organizing and mobilization better suited to develop women's fullest participation in the struggle of the Filipino people in general and the Filipino women in particular. The organization of cooperative day. care centers, the creation of women's desks in mixed organizations are already steps in this direction. Our social investigation must also give birth to new sections of women organizing: women domestic workers, workers' wives, non-factory wage earners, part-time workers, self-employed women. The women's viewpoint of our national situation must be comprehensively developed.
Today, just after the dictatorship has fallen, we have begun again to breath the air of liberty. But we must continue to be on our guard because a strong fascist bloc associated with the dictatorship, though at the moment forced to toe the liberal line, still persists in power.
Democracy in our country has always been under tremendous pressure and remains tenuous against the power and maneuverings of the imperialist aggressor that seeks to keep our people in poverty, and promotes fascism and dictatorship to protect its illegitimate interests and preroga. tives, which stand contrary to our survival and progress.
The basic question for centuries of Philippine history - that of independence and self-determination remains unsolved. Conditions today are only more favorable to continue the struggle for Philippine liberation.
We will continue to seek every opportunity to advance the cause of freedom for our people and the liberation of Filipino women. We will not be co-opted into complacency. We will struggle hard to protect our gains and forward our cause. We will not cease now to work in the daylight, even as we have learned to toil in the dark years of dictatorship from which we kave just emerged. •
International Viewpoint 9 March 1987