Situating Women in Politics and the Political in Women

by Luisa Gabriela Jarabe

Society is no stranger to seeing women in politics. Accepting them, however, is another story.

Once seen as arm candy of men in power, women have emerged as figureheads in society and paved the way for other women to see beyond their socially imposed roles as homemakers. However, politics is no simple game of black and white: women in politics are varying shades of gray, and their power is not determined only by the gender they bring to the table.

Two undermined and ostracized female politicians in the most recent presidential elections in the Philippines and America were 2022 presidential candidate Leni Robredo and 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Banking on similar democratic, progressive, and women-oriented advocacies, Robredo and Harris are seen as the “could-have-beens” of countries in tumultuous economic and political times. However, the dangers of comparing these two women come when the yearning for better times results in the blinding of ideals: while Harris may advocate for concrete social services and women’s bodily autonomy, it is without a doubt that she carries the Biden democratic vision alongside its war crimes in pushing for Israel’s genocide against Palestine. To see only the gender and the advocacies tied to it is to do society injustice.

“We are raised by social institutions — family, church, mass media — according to our sex. Gender norms and roles are socially constructed based on how one is engendered,” said Dr. Malou Turalde, an assistant professor and chair of the Diploma of the Women and Development program at the University of the Philippines Open University.

“The heteronormative paradigm asserts that the white male is the standard. Thus, men are expected to have productive economic roles, while women are boxed into reproductive roles,” Turalde added.

A process most female politicians often undergo in relation to being engendered is called the de-gendering process. By donning themselves in the same suits as men, or raising their fists in the air with “manly” conviction, women have seen better success and acceptance in political positions by stripping themselves naked of their socially imposed femininity and wearing a mask of the strongman personality. Politicians such as Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and even the Philippines’ own Sara Duterte have undergone such a process to be “taken seriously” in a game of chess only men have been allowed to play.

Interestingly enough, politicians today such as Leni Robredo, Risa Hontiveros, Arlene Brosas, France Castro, and Sarah Elago have flipped the game on its head: proving that politics is not separate from their assigned genders and furthering advocacies related to anti-violence against women and children and sexual orientation, gender identity and expression. Furthermore, Castro’s proposed educational reforms, Elago’s expressed condemnation of red-tagging practices, and Brosas’ pressing of the human rights issue of the extrajudicial killings under former president Duterte’s war on drugs and the demilitarization of the West Philippine Sea show that female politicians’ advocacies go beyond issues of gender only. And yet, these leaders are still subject to gender-based discrimination: a slap across the face that waters down their representation into “NPA na naman,” or “babae ka lang.” Driven by the hand of internalized and expressed misogyny, it leaves a sting that stays — a deep reminder that “women have no place in politics.”

Too weak, too feeble, too emotional: these are the words used to ridicule women aiming to enter the political world with a warning sign of “MEN ONLY” at its front door. The high society of politics is a dog barking at women to stay away, while those at decentralized levels are docile creatures accepting of women in lower levels of power. It begs the question: has the issue always been about gender?

The staggering answer to the question only comes after a deep deliberation of the power dynamics at play: ones that have existed before formal government structures have even come to fruition. The political in women has never been a question of gender. The politics of gender is a child of the systems of oppression brought about by class: people — free of gender — have always been seen as mere ants under the boots of political and economic elites. The struggle of women in politics is an incomplete story when only the visible ones are discussed. People who participate in informal economies, people who work the “double job” of domestic labor, and farmers who till the land — who are all, more often than not, women — are the unseen politics aided by the context of gender.

The perception of women in politics still remains to be a tunnel vision centered around the ruling class of women that run however much political power a capitalist patriarchal society allows them. When gender is used as a trump card in politics by elite women, keeping the rose-tinted glasses of female representation only blinds the masses to the red streaks of blood from war injustices and fingerprints on evidence of blatant corruption.

“Class is an organizing principle and cannot be watered down in the issue of feminism in politics. You really have to be grounded and not up in the clouds with theories. Kailangan mula sa masa, tungo sa masa,” said Dr. Turalde.