This is an excerpt of an interview lifted from the now defunct
National Midweek dated September 19, 1990. We are reprinting it here because much of what was said then still holds true today.
Feminists must also pay a lot of attention to helping all women realize their rights, because women who are unaware and fearful of change could be the movement’s worst detractors.
Twila Jacobsen (TJ): How has your own consciousness about women’s struggle developed?
Carolina S. Malay (CM): Before joining the movement, my ideas about women’s liberation were quite shallow. As one of the few women reporters at the time, I was flattered to be “one of the boys” even as I enjoyed the attention and solicitude they gave me as a woman. I accepted, as a matter of course, that top jobs would be out of the question for me. Women’s lib was just starting then, but I didn’t feel it was for me. I was only thinking for myself.
Life in the underground turned the indifference around. Being in close contact with ordinary women, and sharing their same life conditions as a mother and wife myself—our daughter was three and half years old and our son just a year old when it became too dangerous for them to be with me— my eyes were opened to the reality of unequal opportunities, feudal values and practices, and the heavier burden that poverty imposes upon women. I developed close friendships with more women than before.
Maybe it was better that my feminist consciousness emerged this way, through immersion in the life of the masses. Because it was part of my actual experience of the revolutionary struggle, I am convinced that women’s oppression in our country today is first of all a function of mass poverty and underdevelopment in general, and secondly of backward attitudes held by men and women alike. We must solve both these problems without one waiting upon the other.
TJ: Has being married to Satur given you any additional advantages or disadvantages regarding your personal role within the popular struggle?
Now that you ask, I think that being married to Satur has not been a decisive factor in determining what kind of work I have done, and how well I have performed my tasks. In the first place, we didn’t see each other even once in the more than nine years that he was in prison, and that half of our entire married life. That I chose to carry on underground instead of surfacing to take up the conventional role of a spouse, probably speaks for itself. I think it’s fair to say that as far as the movement is concerned, my merits and shortcomings have had to do only with myself.
I would note though that it was I who had to make an adjustment to the fact that Satur is a public figure. Some of the limelight falls on me too, something I wouldn’t have volunteered for.
Over and above everything, I want it on record that I have been strengthened in my own work by the quality of our relationship. Satur is a man who does not feel demeaned by “woman’s work.” A strong and caring person, a good father.
TJ: It seems to me that the local media portry you more as “the wife” of a leader rather than a leader in your own right. How does that make you feel, and how does it reflect in your own work?
CM: Feeling secure that I stand as a person and a revolutionary in my own right, and knowing moreover that my husband and our comrades and friends see it that way, I don’t feel I have to take pains to differentiate myself more aggressively in public at this time. However, I certainly don’t want to be confined to being a “human interest” angle. Nothing against “human interest” stories, but when media people interview us, most of the time, they ask Satur the “political” questions and they ask me to fill in the “lighter side.” Wouldn’t you wish for more imagination and less gender stereotyping?
TJ: Can you explain how the National Democratic Front (NDF) sees the struggle of Philippine women within the popular struggle?
CM: Women’s liberation is definitely an operative goal of the national democratic movement. The NDF program of action spells out quite concretely what the movement intends to do about women’s liberation in the given Philippine conditions. This is a program that derives flesh and blood from the struggles, both practical and theoretical, and emotional, that have been launched by progressive and revolutionary Filipino women through the years. What’s more, it is a program that enjoys the support and commitment also of the men.
I can say without hesitation that we in the Philippines can be proud of what has been achieved in the sphere of women organizing. All of us certainly recognize the role and actual contribution of women in all aspects of the revolutionary struggle.
But that is not to say that what we have done is enough. Significant numbers of women are active participant and leaders, but this is not attributable to a consciously feminist perspective making a tangible impact upon the movement’s priorities and options. Feminism has been largely identified with the progressive middle class, and it still has to make its influence felt more strongly among the masses of the poor. You see, organizing among the peasant or working class women has focused more on class issues, economic and political issues. It has tended not to be gender-related.
I do think that the entire revolutionary movement would stand to benefit greatly from an emphasis on feminist organizing and more attention to women’s issues as an integral part of trade-union or peasant organizing, and community organizing. Of course it would be directed against men, but rather against structures, values, attitudes that fetter the development of women as individuals and as members of Philippine society. It would be a challenge to the unique energy and militancy of all feminist organizations to produce the many more activists and cadres who will do this work on a full-time basis. We must not rely on the underground organizations to produce all the results we want to see.
TJ: Within the movement, is it usual to see women in the kitchen and the men around the table talking politics? And is this a problem for the overall movement to address or a separate issue for women?
CM: It is not unusual in the movement to find women in the kitchen and men talking politics. On the other hand, it is not unusual either to find men in the kitchen and women talking politics.
What I am saying is that structurally women can and do break out of the kitchen and bedroom, and this is encouraged. There are enough women in leadership bodies to substantiate that. I get the impression though that customary patterns are harder to break in the case of couples in the movement who maintain a “normal” life. In a milieu where inequality is the norm, even a politicized husband finds it onerous to be unorthodox within the marital relationship. I guess it’s easier in the underground because there is greater pressure in support of the wife.
Still women in the movement have more obstacles to overcome than men. For one thing, men generally feel freer of family concerns and so they have more time available for other work. Child care, to my mind, is the most crucial area. It legitimately makes demands on a mother’s time for years on end, but ideally the responsibility should be equitably shared between both parents, and between them and society. We in the movement have not yet found a satisfactory solution to this problem. There is still too much sacrifice and pain because parents, especially mothers, are forced to choose between a normal family life and full-time revolutionary work.
TJ: How do the many different issues of women here in the Philippines—the peasant farmer, the factory worker, the urban poor, the tribal woman, the Muslim woman—connect with the overall struggle?
CM: Let me give a personal point of view, inasmuch as I can’t presume to speak for everyone because of my limited involvement in the women’s movement.
The struggle for genuine equality between men and women is an important part of the revolutionary struggle—subordinate but essential. It is not something to be postponed for later stage, even as we recognize that the problem can be tackled in a really systematic and thoroughgoing way, only with the emergence of a more fully developed national economy and political democracy.
I believe that consciousness-raising by itself can achieve a lot even now. Many men are ready to accept women’s liberation, although they have to be shown, pressured, to practice it in their everyday lives. At the same time, feminists must also pay a lot of attention to helping all women realize their rights, because women who are unaware and fearful of change could be the movement’s worst detractors.
Tumba Lata 