Meeting Remmy Rikken, acknowledged babaylan by many in the Philippine women’s movements, was life changing for me. She introduced me to feminism, through her work and her life, both of which inspired me to help change the balance of power between women and men in our society, and to help raise the status of women in their families and communities.
In 1986, Mrs. Rikken recruited me to serve as her Executive Assistant at the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) to where she was appointed Executive Director by President Corazon C. Aquino. In that job, I did not only wake up to the realities of Filipino women’s lives. I also had a platform on which I could directly open the minds of public officials and civil servants to the reality of discrimination against women, the worst manifestation of which is gender-based violence in its many forms, i.e., sexual harassment, wife beating, incest, sexual abuse, and rape. The same job allowed me also to help public servants to envision a society where men and women are equal, and to define what role they can play to help make their vision a reality.
“To make government work for women,” is the mission that we defined for ourselves who were then NCRFW staffers. Appointed Project Director of the NCRFW Institutional Strengthening Project in 1992, I led the design and conduct of many workshops and seminars for raising awareness on gender discrimation and building skills on gender planning. Majority of the participants were the members of the Gender and Development (GAD) Committees of nearly all government line departments and their attached in agencies, government owned and controlled corporations, and local government units. With funding from the Government of Canada, the NCRFW Project gave us the resources for this massive undertaking to transform mindsets and processses so that “women participate and benefit equally from development.”
What are some of the concrete outcomes of our efforts?
Women are now recognized as farmers, not merely farmers’ wives, so that certificates of land transfer by the Department of Agrarian Reform bear the names of husband and wife.
Child caring has been acknowledged as a shared responsibility of the community and the family, not its private responsibility, so that child care centers are mandated in all barangays and child minding facilities in government and private institutions are encouraged.
Wife beating is now considered by law as a public crime unlike in the past when law enforcers treat wife beating as private matter to be settled within the family, a practice that puts many lives of women and children at grave risk. Republic Act 9262 or the Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act of 2004 penalizes domestic violence, which covers physical, psychological, sexual, and economic abuse.
Many more changes in policies, programs, and services of the Philippine Government have happened during and since I left my post as Deputy Executive Director of the NCRFW in 1998 to join the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). I was recruited to serve as Programme Coordinator of the UNDP Project Promoting Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific. In a sense, it allowed me to apply what I have tried and learned working with the Goverment of the Philippines in the technical advise that we in UNDP provided to other governments in the Asia-Pacific region. The UNDP Project helped promote participation of women and girls in science and technology, as well as in politics. It also advised governments as they sought to implement their obligations as state parties to the UN Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Making visible women’s contributions to the economy through their unpaid work was another objective of this regional gender project.
Our batch of NCRFW staffers, led by our Executive Director Remmy Rikken, were considered pioneers of what is now a well-known policy approach to women called “gender mainstreaming.” The only training we received from the Canadians was one short course on Gender Analysis. We were also coached by the Asia-Pacific Adviser of UN Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Dr. Rosalinda Miranda, on Gender Planning and how to train others in Gender Analysis and Planning. We had but one resource material, our bible of sorts, which was Caroline Moser’s book entitled Gender Planning and Development: Theory, Practice and Training.
We had to innovate and we made mistakes. I still remember two seminars when, midway into my session, I was practically told to stop by the participants. In the first one, which was attended by planning officers from the National Economic and Development Authority, I made the mistake of asking them to go through an exercise of reflecting on the significant women in their lives and what lessons they taught. The participants asked, “What does this exercise has to do with our jobs?” In another seminar that had women NGO leaders in Davao City in attendance, I walked them through the concepts in Gender Planning. They asked, “What do we need these definitions for?” On hindsight, the exercise in the first case would have worked for the NGO women leaders while my lecture in the second case would have been more appropriate for planning officers!
Eventually, I took a course on Training of Trainers from the Ateneo Center for Continuing Education to better equip me to design and conduct learning activities.
My expertise in gender mainstreaming brought me to many other countries like Afghanistan and Timor-Leste as UNDP Adviser on Gender Mainstreaming. I eventually ended my globetrotting to return home and look after my mother. Who says feminists don’t embrace traditional women’s tasks like care giving? By the way, I did not start accepting assignments abroad until my youngest, my son, entered college. As a solo parent, I did not think it right to leave my 2 children in the care of my mother, regardless of promise of highly paid job in the United Nations.
Today, in retirement, I continue to be involved in defending women’s human rights. I am part of a feminist collective called “Baigani,” which is a portmanteau of the Visayan Bai (meaning woman) and Bagani (meaning warrior), hence woman warrior. We founded Baigani in April 2017 when women’s right advocates held a listening session with women who lost their relatives in the anti-drug operations or vigilante killings. We support the women and their children left behind by victims of extra-judicial killings through psychosocial interventions, humanitarian and livelihood assistance. We hold sessions to promote human rights awareness among the widows so that they can articulate and assert their claims to their rights. We also help build solidarity among and with the families of EJK victims.
Presently, I am Women’s Human Rights Adviser for Access to Justice Philipine Project of UN Women.
Remmy Rikken is recipient of the 2021 Lingkod Sambayanan Award of the Ateneo de Manila University. That my role model is awarded so by my alma mater reminds me that my Jesuit education molded my mindset and inculcated in me values that moved me to dedicate my life to the pursuit of feminism, a radical change towards de facto equality between men and women.
