PNP: We’re pro-women but gender rule stays
The Philippine National Police said on Sunday it may increase its recruitment quota for women from 10 percent to 20 percent, citing the competence and dedication that women have shown in maintaining peace and order.
“In the PNP, gender is not the basis of competence. It is service and dedication that matters,” PNP chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. said in a statement.
To show his support for the ongoing National Women’s Month, Nartatez has started pushing the permanent adoption of a 20-percent recruitment quota for women—double the current 10-percent requirement—to sustain a strong pipeline of female leaders capable of taking on senior roles.
“Female police officers bring a unique perspective to the field, often prioritizing empathy and mediation,” said the PNP chief.
“They excel in handling sensitive cases to make people in the community feel that their voices are heard, and feel safer,” Nartatez added.
Based on the PNP data as of February 2026, women account for 52,223 out of 236,493 personnel, or 22.08 percent of the total workforce.
This figure includes 43,847 uniformed personnel, 8,098 nonuniformed staff and 278 cadets.
“I am immensely proud,” the PNP chief declared of the agency’s improving gender ratio. “This is not just a number but proof of our evolving culture.”
But official data showed that the PNP drive for gender equality remains a long way from parity.
The Philippine Statistics Authority’s 2020 Census of Population and Housing shows the gender ratio at 103 males to 100 females, meaning there was near parity between the 50.6 percent males and 49.4 percent females in the 2020 population of more than 109 million people.
Discriminatory
Despite the PNP’s profession of “shattering the glass ceiling” of equal opportunities, Nartatez has not explained the disparity in a recruitment “policy” that is evidently and heavily in favor of males.
To boost the purported spirit of gender equity, the PNP has also promoted congressional legislation that would, in fact, enshrine in the law patently discriminatory personnel recruitment policies.
The National Police Commission (Napolcom) points to Republic Act No. 6975, or the Department of the Interior and Local Government Act of 1990 and RA 8551, or the Philippine National Police Reform and Reorganization Act of 1998, as the bases for its recruitment policies.
The Napolcom itself has only one female in the policymaking board, Beatrice Aurora Vega-Cancio, but it has evidently tried to be equitable in its policies, specifying only age, height and weight in physical requirements and focusing on competence examinations.
The pertinent section of RA 8551 (Section 58) meant to prioritize the recruitment of women in the PNP, but that “prioritization” expired in 2003 after establishing an arbitrary limit of 10 percent to the PNP’s annual recruitment, training and education programs.
