Philippines

During the first few years of the Women’s Liberation Movement decades back, it wasn’t uncommon for men to be portrayed as the victimizers and the oppressors of women. In many patriarchal communities, men have often been singled out as the perpetrators of domestic violence and as the roadblocks to the path of women empowerment.

It is only more recently when developing countries like the Philippines have realized that men are not necessarily a hindrance to gender empowerment. Rather, they can be partners in empowerment and in development.

It was a funny experience, really, but a point worth pondering. When we asked a group of children to describe a farmer, all of them immediately said that a farmer was a man who planted and harvested crops in a field or a farm. Naturally, the definition, although simplistic, did make sense. But the point of the matter is that none of the children ever pictured the farmer as a woman.

In the Philippines, men and women may still not have achieved equality, but the condition of women in this Southeast Asian country is way better compared to that in Nepal. Whereas women in the Philippines can almost compete neck to neck with men for executive positions and plum jobs, in Nepal, many women have found it hard not just to break the glass ceiling but to actually join the paid labor force.

Mindanao, the third major island group in the Philippines, strikes most of us as a culturally diverse region—along with many Muslims and Christians, its population is also made up of many local ethnic groups. This cultural diversity, in as much as it accounts for Mindanao’s uniqueness, has also been the root of the ongoing war which is taking its toll mostly in the regions of Sulu, Jolo, and some parts of Cotabato.