Women’s right to vote
Midway into Women’s Month, I looked into sources on the long and complicated campaign on women’s suffrage in the Philippines. I plowed through this to put context into the historic photograph from Sept. 17, 1937 when then President Manuel Luis Quezon signed Filipino women’s right to vote into law. There are many people around Quezon in the photo and yet the caption in Wikimedia Commons focuses on the men: Speaker Jose Yulo, Executive Secretary Jorge Vargas, and partly hidden in the back, Vice President Sergio Osmeña. Looking at the photo, Aurora Aragon Quezon dominates, her right had firmly planted on the president’s desk, as she witnesses intently. Half a dozen women stand behind Mrs. Quezon, one of them beaming with a wide smile. Were they just trying to look solemn or serious? The men do not smile nor look pleased.
One should not even wonder why women had to wait so long to get their right to vote. From the Philippine Assembly in the early 20th century to 1941, all the representatives were men. Elisa Ochoa was the first woman elected to Congress in 1941, she was to represent Agusan but the war broke out and she assumed office only in 1945 after the Japanese Occupation. In the upper house, Geronima Pecson was the first woman elected to the Senate in 1947.
When I looked up the 1935 Philippine Constitution, Article V Section 1 limited the vote to men: “Suffrage may be exercised by male citizens of the Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law, who are twenty-one years of age or over and are able to read and write, and who shall have resided in the Philippines for one year and in the municipality wherein they propose to vote for at least six months preceding the election.”
It is safe to assume that Quezon, at the time, had the government under his thumb and could have influenced the constitutional convention to give women the right to vote. He made them wait. In the same section of the 1935 Constitution it says: “The National Assembly shall extend the right of suffrage to women, if in a plebiscite which shall be held for that purpose within two years after the adoption of this Constitution, not less than three hundred thousand women possessing the necessary qualifications shall vote affirmatively on the question.”
On April 30, 1937, women cast their vote in a plebiscite and with 447,725 affirmative votes breached the 300,000 required for women’s suffrage. While history records this victory I have always been curious about the women who voted “NO” and their reasons for doing so. While we are on contested histories, there are two dates given for the beginning of women’s suffrage in the Philippines: Pura Villanueva Kalaw said the fight began in 1907 when Filemon Sotto presented the first bill for women’s suffrage in the First Philippine Assembly, while historian Encarnación Alzona said it was 1912 when Melecio Severino presented the bill in the Third Philippine Assembly. Due to my column deadline, I wasn’t able to follow the paper trail to establish which date is correct. I did find the interesting article “Manuel L. Quezon and the Filipino Women’s Suffrage Movement of 1937” by Veronica C. Alporha that uses Quezon’s different statements over time to show his ambivalence over the issue.
Alporha references the debate from different voices that deserve to be read in full when I have the time. Francis B. Harrison was an early advocate, voicing his support in 1918. So was Rafael Palma a year later who drew parallels between an earlier issue on the education of women and their right to vote. If women were not only literate but educated why deny them the vote? Dr. Maria Paz Mendoza-Guanzon asked why she couldn’t vote when her male servants, lower in social class and education, could?
Anti-suffragists were laughable in their arguments. Alporha dug up Zambales Rep. Gregorio Anonas who said in 1931 that giving women the right to vote went against their purity and selflessness. Just like a current member of Congress who is clairvoyant, Anonas had a premonition that suffrage would encourage women to abandon family and home for politics! Following this line of thinking Quezon was quoted in 1937: “To the women I want to say this. This is your opportunity to secure all the rights and privileges that the women of other countries enjoy. The opportunity is not yours to mix in politics every day, attend meetings and make a lot of noise which is unbecoming to ladies. What I mean is, that this is your opportunity to secure for yourselves [what] you and they deserve.”
It is not well known that in 1933, the Administrative Code of the Philippines was amended by Act No. 4112 granting women the right to vote and eligibility to hold public office. Why wasn’t this implemented in the 1934 Commonwealth elections? Your guess is as good as mine. Act No. 4112 was repealed with the adoption of the 1935 Constitution that gave women the right to vote if 300,000 of them voted in favor in a plebiscite. Knowing the backstory of legislation helps us appreciate the difficulties that went into the rights and privileges we enjoy today.
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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net
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