HOTSPOT

Which senatorial slate is fielding the most number of women for the upper house?

Quite unsurprisingly, former President Duterte’s picks for PDP-Laban candidates are all men (including one accused of sex trafficking of women and children both here in the Philippines and in the U.S.). The independent opposition fielded only two men. With Abigail Binay, Pia Cayetano, Imee Marcos, and Camille Villar in his team, President Marcos appears to have the most pro-women senatorial slate. But not quite.

Makabayan beats all the major mainstream coalitions with six women in its 11-person slate: ACT Teachers Representative and pusit slayer France Castro, Gabriela Women’s Party Representative Arlene Brosas, former anti-poverty czarina Liza Maza, nurses’ leader Jocelyn Andamo, urban poor leader Mimi Doringo, and Bangsamoro firebrand Amirah Lidasan.
The women senatorial candidates of Makabayan have perhaps more than 200 years of combined public service, community organizing, and pro-women and pro-people activism.
It was Castro, the former public school teacher-turned-lawmaker, and Brosas, who exposed the speedy spending of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President. Both figured prominently in the House investigations where they directly questioned the vice president, and later endorsed the second impeachment complaint.

A cum laude graduate of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, Castro is fighting a kidnapping conviction handed down by a lower court over an incident where she went to check on Lumad students and their teachers in the middle of Lumad school closures during the previous administration. If you’re willing to be arrested for protesting fellow teachers, that is a stellar virtue for a lawmaker.

Brosas is a principal author of the Safe Spaces Law, Expanded Maternity Leave Law, Expanded Solo Parents Welfare Law, as well as amendments to the Anti-Rape Law.
In her stint as partylist representative for Bayan Muna and later Gabriela, Maza authored landmark pro-women laws: Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act, the Magna Carta of Women, and the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act.

Lidasan was president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines, and came to national prominence as a fearless voice of Bangsamoro women during the Estrada administration’s all-out war in Mindanao. She currently leads the Moro-Christian Peoples Alliance and the Sandugo movement of Moro and indigenous peoples.

Mimi Doringo started to work at a makeup factory. She led Women Wise which aimed to provide work, livelihood and empowerment for women. Her workingclass travails later brought her to community organizing to promote the right to housing. She would bring a refreshing and grassroots voice to anti-poverty lawmaking and investigations in the Senate.
Andamo is a longtime leader of nurses, both women and men, in national and international organizations. She worked for a long time in community health nursing, and community-based health programs, which directly benefit women. She graduated cum laude from the Far Eastern University.

Those looking for credible women candidates for senator can start their search with the women of Makabayan.

Perhaps many would add to the Makabayan shortlist the name of former Commission on Audit commissioner Heidi Mendoza who is running on an anti-corruption platform. Both Mendoza and Castro were endorsed by 1Sambayan.

One can argue that sex or gender should not be that important because men can also fight for women. But that was also the argument against giving women the right to suffrage -- and that has been long debunked. There’s no substitute to women voting, running, leading for themselves as women and the country. This is especially true to workingclass and poor women who for a long time have been denied entry into the men’s and wealthy women’s club called the Senate.

The edge of Makabayan’s women senatorial candidates is that they are not coming from traditional political families or dynasties. That they are not well known is an electoral campaign challenge, but at the same time they could lay claim before the electorate that they come from the marginalized and the underrepresented and thus could be trusted to advance their most cherished concerns.

Since Bayan Muna first joined and topped the partylist race in 2001, voters have elected 23 partylist representatives for Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Gabriela, ACT Teachers, and Kabataan. Out of the 23, seven have been women. Five of the seven women served three terms each.

Heck, a women’s party helped form Makabayan.

The coming election is a chance to elect women senators from the working class, the grassroots and movements, who are as fierce and fabulous just like our mothers, sisters, titas and lolas.