Name : Indira Ninutchka Ramayana Graca Tabamo Roxas

Category :B

Gender : Cisgender, Female

Country : Republic of the Philippines

Name of YMCA : Cagayan de Oro YMCA, Inc.

E-mail : ramayanaroxas@gmail.com

Phone Number : 0995 190 1759

50-word Biodata : Indira, more widely known as Ramayana Roxas is the 22-year-old
author of the bestselling book, UNWANTED. An accountancy student,
a part-time businesswoman, and an all-time Philippine island-girl, Indira
spends most of her time at home writing, painting, and wondering about
the world and people, with her family and five dogs.

Essay Title : Not a Maria Clara

Word Count : 3000 words

 “Holding back women is holding back half of every country in the world.” said Amal
Alamuddin Clooney, a Lebanese international lawyer and counsel to Nobel Laureate Maria
Ressa, the inspiration to the Amal Clooney Award launched by Prince Charles to celebrate
incredible young women, a United Nations panelist on commissions regarding human rights
and freedom of the press, the Champion of the International Rule of Law, mother of two, and
yet still more widely known only as the wife of the Academy Award winning actor, George
Clooney.

How come that on the world stage, even in this century, a woman’s greatest
achievement may still only be her association to a man?

Despite the advancements humanity has achieved over the thousands of years of
civilization, there is one aspect of progress we have failed to advance. Despite it being a
problem that has been with us since the dawn of time, it has remained a struggle in modernity.

When we discuss gender, our minds have been conditioned to think of these three
things; Of Men, then of Women, then of the Other. Women and the Other are considered the
second and third sex. There is a succession of recognition; a first, a second, and a third. And
why might this be?

Gender has remained a hierarchy.

We can all declare that the root of civilization is the belief that all men are created equal.
Equity remains one of the ideals we pursue. We, as a society, especially in recent years, have
had a reawakened flame within us to achieve equality. But this problem has remained the same
since then.

“All men are created equal.”

Those words echo on multiple constitutions. But we remain missing; the women and
the others who do not sit at the opposite sides of the spectrum are denied space within the law
as if we do not exist, as if it does not serve us. Because put simply, it rarely does.

In law classes, I have been told that “men” in these contexts mean all humans. But if
that was truly the case, then why didn’t the writers simply make room for two more letters?

I got the answer soon enough. The writers were men. No one in those rooms where they
made those important decisions were women or the other. We have been denied a seat at the
table since the “he” started writing “his” story.

But that never meant we were content with being shut out even when our call for basic
human rights were met with violence.

Emily Davison died in 1913 after she stormed into a horse racetrack to get the people’s
attention so that women in the United Kingdom could vote. Viola Liuzzo from America was
killed in 1925 for fighting for women’s rights as well, after being run off the road in her car.
Malala Yousafzai was shot in the face when she was fifteen for trying to educate girls in her
country in 2012.

Leni Robredo, my country’s vice president, has been the punching bag of sexist remarks
from her colleagues since the day she ran in 2015. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Indira Gandhi,
Corazon Aquino, all leaders of their countries, in spite of their own achievements and awards
were most known for their relationships with the men in their lives; their fathers, their
husbands, their sons.

More often than not, women have needed to act like men to be respected as men, and
were degraded for not being feminine enough at the same time.

And these attempts at a better life have always been met with attempts to silence.

I can start writing about the statistics of how women are paid 24% less than men for
comparable work across regions and sectors worldwide. I can even speak about how 781
million illiterate adults are women. I can tell you how 153 countries have laws which
discriminate against women economically.

I know for a fact that Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen concluded that many more than 100
million women are “missing” because when women are pregnant, some cultures and traditions
prefer that they get abortions if their children are girls.

Girls are killed before they get to be girls, and even when they’re allowed to live, it
may be a dismal life awaiting them.

I can tell you how men in low-income families live longer than the women because
their families seek medical attention earlier if they’re sick compared to when their sisters are
sick. I can speak of how boys don’t mature slower than girls; they’re merely tolerated longer
for behavior girls are punished earlier for. I can scream about how there have always been more
men than women at schools, especially in higher education, because they’re the ones expected
to reach further in life.

I can even whisper about how worldwide, one in three women will be abused or will
experience violence in their lifetimes.

But people find it difficult to empathize with faceless numbers. So let me tell you about
how I have lived as a woman.

I was born and raised as an only child of a lower middle-class family. My mother has
always been a career woman with her doctorate in law, both my grandmothers served the
government in the sectors of education and politics. My father and my grandfathers have
always trusted my judgment and my ability to reach my goals. While they raised me, they have
never made me feel any less of a person because of my sex.
 In the Philippines, I lived my childhood under the command of a female president. I see
women in offices, I see women running businesses, I see women winning international
pageants, I see women running households, raising children, being productive members of
society.

Surrounded by powerful girls, I grew up knowing the top ten students of my class were
girls. The school president was a girl, the school directress was a nun, the valedictorian was
me.

If men were superior to women, I surely was not informed. The evidence contradicted
that… until I realized society has kept it true.

I was seven when I was told that I shouldn’t wear shorts in public or else the men will
whistle at me like an animal… and I wasn’t sure if they were the animals, or if they saw me as
one.

I was ten when I was told I was bossy for asking to be made a leader of a class project,
despite being qualified.

I was fifteen years old when a boy tried to kiss me without my consent. I was sixteen
years old when my car broke down and the men who passed by me attributed its mechanical
malfunctions to my gender instead of helping me.

I was nineteen years old in the library when a man who sat beside me touched himself,
smiled at me, and continued on his merry way. I vomited in the bathroom that day, and I didn’t
know who to tell that I wasn’t okay.

All those experiences, and the countless more I still remember to this day, at twenty-
two. I don’t speak of them, I try not to think of them, I try to live my life as normally as I can
and I pretend those things don’t upset me anymore because I’ve been told they were as part of
life as breathing was.

Because nothing happened to me, at the end of the day. I am intact, I am not scarred,
my reputation is just as good.

Others have it worse.

But every night when I walk home alone in an alley, I still get goosebumps. I still walk
to my car with the key in between my fingers. I still look at myself in the mirror before I go
out and make sure I show no skin, because no one will catcall me or whistle at me like a dog if
I cover myself.

How astonishing it is to learn that gender inequality is the most pervasive form of
discrimination. But shouldn’t the train of thought head in that direction?

Half of humanity is ruled by the other.

 This stigma lives on when a single mother is criticized for her choices even when she’s
the parent who stayed. This is why the penalty of a woman’s adultery is higher than the penalty
of a man’s concubinage. This is why condoms are free despite sex being optional, while
menstrual sanitary products are not, despite menstruation being a monthly visitor for about half
of the population.

This is why most cases of sexual assault is not reported; because victims feel that they
will be treated worse than criminals; guilty until proven innocent.

And I write this not to hope that men be treated less than women or members of the
LGBTQ+ community. I write this to acknowledge that we have to work twice as hard to get
half as far as every man we know.

Take for example Maria Mozart. Just as talented as her brother Wolfgang, but just as
invisible as Mary Shelley. And who is Mary Shelley? Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the
first Science Fiction novel known to the world in 1817.

But the father of Science Fiction is of course, a man named H.G. Wells who published
his first Science Fiction novel seventy-seven years after Shelley.

And let’s not forget Zelda Fitsgerald who wrote in her journals some of the best words
to come out of the Great Gatsby, her husband’s novel.

To take it closer to home, I can only think of Rizal’s Maria Clara.

Prior to Spanish colonization in the Philippines, women had equal rights in the tribes
of the islands. Divorce was possible, there was barely any clothing, but also barely any sexual
assault. Transgender people were bridges to our gods, and some of our gods were nonbinary
too.

How ironic it was that the last time we were truly equal was right before the western
ideology of equality arrived at our shores?

To be a Maria Clara is the Filipina ideal; Kind, courteous, obedient, pliable, beautiful,
feminine. Generations have been raised to be like her, and every straggler has been punished
by time or by men.

But Maria Clara was a timid woman known for her beauty and little more.

Her beauty was so regarded not because she was Filipina but because she was half-
Spanish. Her value was tied to the knowledge that she was not fully an Indio.

What’s worse is the fact that she was a product of her mother’s rape by a priest named
Padre Damaso. It was also implied that she met the same fate in the hands of another priest,
Padre Salvi. And it wasn’t written, but it was implied that she flung herself from the Church’s
roof and met her end because of insanity.
 Is that the ideal we women were supposed to adhere to? A life of tortured beauty?

I refuse.

I’d like to measure myself against a happier candidate.

Not a Helen of troy, the woman blamed for a decade-long war perpetrated by greed, not
love. Not a Cleopatra, the woman who enchanted kings and generals only to be reduced to
suicide by the death of a lover. Not a Juliet, an adolescent killed by a rootless rage and an
uncontrollable brashness she mistook for love, probably due to not being raised with it.

Not a Maria Clara.

And to do this we must remember that gender is a social construct, by definition. By

relation, gender inequality and gender injustice are social constructs as well. With this we must
remember, that everything built can be torn down.

How do we do this?

First, we must invest in women’s education. The education of women has been
threatened not only by poverty, but also forced marriages at young ages, violence against
women and children, cultural and religious beliefs that gatekeep learning, and gender
stereotypes that perpetuate the belief that men are inherently more deserving of enlightenment.

The educational gender gap, which represents the male-female differences in school
access and completion has remained wide in Africa, in countries such as Niger, Mali, Guinea,
and Benin. South Asia has also had a larger gap especially in India and Pakistan.

As of 2015, less than a decade ago, 123 million of people aged 15 to 24 lacked basic
reading and writing skills. As heavy of a burden this knowledge is to carry, what’s worse is
knowing 61 percent of them are women.

School completion has also been subject to gender inequalities especially in rural areas.
Studies in Pakistan showed that 42% of males complete their primary education while only
17% of females do the same.

Empirical evidence shows that educational discrimination against girls pulls the
economy down. The education of women has shown high returns on investment. Thus,
educating women is the most obvious way of helping them.

Educated women, according to the World Bank, tend to be healthier, are part of the
labor force, earn higher incomes, and even marry and have kids at later ages. This ensures a
healthier population, a more secure next generation, and a stronger labor force that raises
countries economically.

Through education, women change their lives and the lives of those around them.
 This is the cause Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban in the face for. She is the
brave woman who fought for women’s education. And as she so eloquently said, “We were
scared, but our fear was not as strong as our courage.”

It still isn’t.

Although the Millennium Development Goal 3 which aimed to “eliminate gender

disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005” was not reached, I still have
hope.

I seek a time when there is no longer a need for a woman to be courageous in order to
be educated. I seek a time when all she has to do is exist.

Charities like the Malala Fund, and Step Up, and initiatives like these from the Asia
and Pacific Alliance of YMCAs make goals like these achievable; times like the ones I seek
nearer.

Next, the availability of menstrual and reproductive health facilities and information
should be enhanced. There is dangerous ignorance to be eliminated about the woman’s body.

Girls who have no access to sanitary products often miss days of school. Some cultures,
such as those in rural Nepal, see girls as disgraceful creatures during their periods. They are
deprived of contact from family members, animals, even plants.

Even in developed countries, menstrual products are taxed as luxury items, as if they
were not a necessity.

Irregularities in menstrual cycles are under-researched despite them being prevalent. I

was a victim of such lack of information a few weeks after I got my COVID-19 vaccine. There
was absolutely no research done on the phenomena even though women’s forums online were
bursting with questions about irregularities in their cycles. We thought something was
extremely wrong with us, because no one deemed our problems worthy of being looked into.

So many young girls, deprived of sex education, become teenage mothers. And with
that one turn in their stories, they are condemned to lives of lesser opportunities, stigma, and
judgement. Some of them even take their lives for a transgression so commonly made, so easily
forgivable.

What’s worse is that these girls did not ruin their lives. The people around them treat
them as if they already did.

I seek a time when menstrual sanitary products are free. I seek a time when teen mothers
are treated with the respect rather than condemnation, for they are the mothers who work as
fathers despite being the age of daughters.
 PERIOD, Freedom4Girls, and Advocates for Youth are only three of the hundreds of
organizations willing to free girls of the stigma of simply being girls. I truly believe that with
better support for organizations like these, the times I seek will be nearer.

And lastly, we must end violence against women and people in the LGBTQ+
community. Why? Because they’re humans. Gender must not be a reason for violence. Nothing
should be!

We must understand that this violence is not isolated, and no one is free from knowing
at least one victim. One in three women are subject to it. Most violence against women is
perpetrated by intimate partners. You either know a victim, a perpetrator, or both.

In 2015, 46% of transgender people in the United States admit to being harassed in the
past year due to them being transgender. In the Philippines, Jennifer Laude, a transgender
woman was found dead in a hotel room after her partner killed her.

She’s now the face of a bill trying to promote sexual orientation, gender identity, and
gender expression.

I seek a time where we no longer need martyrs to be awakened to facts that stand in
daylight.

Promoting laws in protection of these people, and supporting foundations like the
LGBTQ Domestic Violence Awareness Foundation and Women Against Abuse are just the
first few steps at a better future for all of us and the people who come after us.

We must take them.

These are merely the current, simple, and necessary changes we must make. It doesn’t
end here because we have yet to reach the goal. And when we reach the goal, it won’t end there
either.

There will always be people who will delight in being superior, but being superior
connotes the existence of an inferior. The loss of one dictates the loss of the other. Many will
prefer being alone, standing on the backs of millions as long as they are at the top.

But the worth of one person cannot be stolen from the worth of another.

I do not call only for the death of patriarchy, or the embrace of feminism, I call for the
fall of all forms of hierarchy. In the eyes of God and the eyes of law, we are equal. And as
people who claim to follow both, why don’t we?

Gender injustice, constructed by society, can only be deconstructed by society.