Seventy years ago today, over 300,000 Filipino women voted for the first time in a plebiscite that eventually paved the way for their participation in govern-ment.
“On account of the heroic and dynamic struggle and fight for women’s right by women leaders in the ’30s, women voted in favor of whether or not the right of suffrage would be extended to them,” election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said.
Macalintal said that under the original version of Article V, Section 1 of the 1935 Constitution, the right of suffrage was limited to male citizens aged 23 or older.
Those opposed to giving women the right to vote said there was no popular demand for women’s suffrage and that it would only disrupt family unity and plunge women into the vicious quagmire of politics.
Unfazed, women leaders, in a petition to the delegates to the 1935 Constitutional Convention argued that suffrage is a “right earned, deserved and, therefore, claimed.”
The registration of female voters for the holding of a plebiscite was held April 10 and 17, 1937 – a first in Philippine history and a precedent that has since ex-panded Filipino women’s roles in the arena of politics and in nation-building.
The plebiscite results, as cited in www.wikipedia.com, were: 447,725 yes votes for giving women the right of suffrage and 44,307 no votes. The voters who had cast their ballots were all women.
On March 29, 1984 former President Ferdinand Marcos issued Proclamation No. 2346 declaring April 30 of every year as “Woman Suffrage Day” to enable Filipino women to “renew their advocacy and support for clean, honest and free elections and pursue with greater zeal their efforts towards this direction.”
The momentous day, however, seems to have faded from memory.