Working together for gender equality

MANILA, Philippines - To Kara David, it could be something as basic as blurring the faces of women the TV cameras catch unawares in a sex raid. Or something more complex like giving men and women equal exposure in the films director Joyce Bernal directs.

It could be telling a woman’s story so that the audience understands where she’s coming from, as in the case of Laurice Guillen’s The Dolzura Cortez Story. In knowing her situation, the audience will not condemn but understand and even respect her.

Surprisingly, it could also be just keeping your mouth shut as Boy Abunda points out in the case of Maricar Reyes after the Katrina Halili-Hayden Kho sex video scandal.

“The choice of keeping quiet is a form of fighting,” Boy declares. “Fighting is not just punching your enemy. It’s also keeping quiet so your enemy keeps quiet.”

Whatever form it takes, you just can’t sweep gender equality under the rug. Not when you see women as sex objects on screen, wife battery at home, people calling women names.

Thus, the Presidential Communications Operations Office in cooperation with the MTRCB (Movie and Television Review and Classification Board), the Gender Equalty Committee and Philippine Commission on Women held a forum on the role of media in pushing a far portrayal of women in media, film and advertising.

The forum, held at Malacañang’s Mabini Hall underscores the value of the annual 18-day campaign to end violence against women, which runs from Nov. 25 to Dec. 12.

The lively debate centered on the theme Magna Carta ni PiNay Gawing Tunay: Karahasan sa Kababaihan, Wakasan!

All guest panellists agreed you just don’t stop worrying about women just because the Magna Carta for Women (RA 9710) is now a law.

Karen Davila insists you have to let the whole world know about it – she, through more women-related stories.

“I’m a woman. It’s I who understands a woman more. A man can’t profess to have the same understanding (on women) that we do.”

Men who understand women will treat them well. They will agree with Karen that a woman’s body is her own, and nobody else’s. So only she has the right to decide what to do with it. It’s up to her whether she will say no to a man’s advances or not.

They will rally behind Boy when he says a woman has the right to privacy during intimate moments with the man she loves. It is one way of seeing to it that the Katrina video scandal never happens again.

A woman can fight back when a man touches a woman’s private parts in the MRT or whistle at her while she passes by a construction sight.

“It starts with a simple no,” direk Joyce relates.

Actually, it all starts in the home.

“I, for one, am very close to my mom,” says Boy. And anyone close to his mom won’t dare exploit a woman.”

“It all goes back to the family,” he goes on. “A mother who tells her child to switch channels when she sees a TV show exploiting women has the power to make that show die”

Thus, he refuses to blame solely the TV network. The audience is just as culpable. He insist that things happen because we allow them to happen.

Turns out the gender equality issue is something we can resolve on our own.

It is, as direk Joyce says, not just about what’s happening in Bangladesh. It’s about what’s happening to women in the MRT or in front of a construction site. And what they’re doing it about it.

Government will help, yes. It will put the guilty behind bars. But at the end of the day, the answer is still in our hands.