csdfFEU Public Intellectual Lecture Series | Dr.

Amaryllis Torres | Part 1

Made by Wordtune Read | Open

Introduction
Dr. Amarilli Torres will discuss feminist ethics from oppression to empowerment. She
is a former Executive Director of the Philippine Social Science Council.

What is Ethics
Since our participants will be students second year students here at Feu, I think we
have to go to the basics first. So may my first question be something fundamental,
which is what is ethics and what is Feminism Because these are the two topics that
we put together in this discussion on Feminist Ethics.
There are ethics set by religious groups, institutions, and even feminism. If you are
living on an island by yourself, you probably don't need ethics, except maybe in
terms of how you will treat the animals living on the island.

What is Feminism
Feminism talks about the relationship between genders, particularly in the beginning,
and how men have been conditioned to be the dominant of the two gen of the two.
This is the root of women's oppression and subordination.

What is Patriarchy
For us to appreciate Feminism, we have to talk about patriarchy. The notion that
Adam leads Eve comes out of Saint Paul's teachings that God created Adam before
Eve, and He is the one who should follow.

Patriarchy in Property
When we marry in the traditional right, we say the fat the Priest tells us, and we
promise to love and respect our wife. Because of male privilege, property is titled in
the name of the husband, and the wife cannot accept gifts without the husband's
consent.
The man is considered the leader, the spokesperson in communities, and the
women are well in the traditional. So patriarchy looks at male privilege and justifies
the subordination, oppression, and sometimes violent actions against women.

Manifestations of Patriarchy
When you talk about what is going on in the world, many times the woman becomes
invisible, and the language is also very relevant here where you say he or they
meaning they men are running the world.
Two pictures that I have are of Soviet posters and a website on work ethic. The
posters depict men working hard and pushing a big rock, and the website says the
factors to demonstrate a strong work ethic.
Strong Work Ethic
The work ethic statement says that a professional employee arrives early, gets his
coffee, scorches to other employees, doesn't take random breaks, and understands
his job and is prepared to do it. It doesn't even say they or she, so it's gender biased.
The work that women do at home is worthless, yet when we look at the national
accounts, it is only men's work that is often given value, so women's work is
trivialized.

Value of Work
Because of this, many more men are at work than women, and many married
women say they don't enter the labor force because of child care. However, in this
digital age, women can work from home.

Doubleedged Situation
If you can have a tele work or online work, you can stay home and look after your
baby, but it can have a backlash because the man says, okay, you just do that, stay
home and take care of the baby, rather than saying I can also work at home.

Multiple Burden
In women's studies, we talk about productive work and reproductive work. When a
woman wants to work and settles for home base work and take care of the baby,
she's working in two realms: the productive sphere and the reproductive sphere.
A woman is doing multiple work, including working on the computer, washing,
cleaning, and sinking. If she has to take care of ducks and feed them, is there a
system so that the caring for the young children or the caring for the old parents is
being done by somebody else?

Gender Gap Index

The Philippines is actually doing well in the recent Gender Index, and is therefore not
as bad as other countries where violence against women is more rampant.
The Global Gender Gap Index looks at four measures: health, economic
empowerment, political empowerment, and gap. The Philippines is rated well on
health, education, economy, and politics, and has many more equal paying jobs for
men and women than in other countries.
We are the only Asian country in the top ten, and we share the top 10 spot with New
Zealand in this part of the world. We have many women politicians, and we have
surpassed the critical mass of 33 percent needed to make a difference in politics.

From oppression to empowerment

When you look at the gender gap index, women in the Philippines don't seem to feel
that they are better off than their counterparts. So before we understand Feminist
ethics, we need to understand the multiple oppression that women experience.
Feminist ethics is a way of looking at the world where you say that you have to
overturn male dominance and that is because they have been the sources of
oppression and subordination. So if you are a woman in a rural area, you may not
have a good education.

Gender class
Now we know that we have free, universal education for tertiary education, but you
still need to take the tests, and you probably have to pay for the tests. This could be
a source of oppression or discrimination, because you cannot travel to the testing
place.
There is this older woman who is a widow, and her income is very little because her
husband's Sss premium is only 3 000 a month, so she has no support. Her
oppression could be something like being unemployed, being an ethnic person, or
being a member of a political affiliation.

Religious Identity
She wore a hijab to heal a taxi, but the next one took it off.
A religious identity could be a source of oppression for a woman. A woman who has
been victimized sexually could also be oppressed because of her gender.

Multiple Layers
A black woman still earns less and has less privileges than the white woman, and a
black man has less privileges than the white man.
Since the 1960s, the women's movement has achieved a lot, including the creation
of laws that are supposedly gender sensitive.
The famous feminist Cats C-a-t-t-s came to the Philippines around 1912 to try to
organize women because the women in the Philippines were prayerful, dressed if
they were middle class or upper class with their peasants, and voting and elections
were out of their mindset.
Goto de Leche is one of the oldest ngos in the Philippines put up by women. It was
allowed to get money from the Philippine charity sweepstakes until the Marcus era
when that was removed.

Feminism
The early women put up periculture centers, became senators or congresswomen,
and looked up what women needed. They understood society and politics and
culture as a woman, and not as a man, and were able to look at science, culture and
philosophy from their own experience.
In 1932, women won the right to vote, but in the 60s, we had a loss on women and
minors, labor laws and all that.

The Decade for Women

The decade for women happened because of all the scholarship that women writers
had been doing, including the scholarship of women in the humanities whose poems
were novels and short stories.
Because of the feminist notion that you have to open up all forms of oppression and
find ways to alleviate them, we were able to get an anti-rape law passed. But it took
time, and the anti-sexual discrimination bill is still pending.

 Talked about feminism, patriarchy the root cause of oppression of women.

 I believe the society is patriarchal in default

 Adam and eve, Einstein wife, driving policy in Saudi

 Women are burdened more than men ( they have to prove so many thing first
than men. Ex. Kpop groups Jennie & V scandal

 There is a progress in society( laws, employment, education)

 The progress is due to opening and revealing all the struggles of women
through different mediums(arts, novels

 However, this progress have yet change the mindset of people about
women( stay at home mom, leni robredo)

 Internal misogyny in women

Dr. Amarilli Torres started the talk by defining ethics, feminism, and
patriarchy. Ethics is a set of moral standards that guide us to identify right
from wrong. It tells us how to live our life. Next, feminism is a belief, a
movement to advocate that women should and must have equal opportunities
as men and be treated equally. And the reason why feminism exists is
patriarchy. It is a social system where men dominate, control, and hold the
power to decide for the family and community and rule the society. I believe
that society is patriarchal in default. As mentioned in the video, the narration is
that God created Eve because Adam felt incomplete and needed a
companion. In science, Albert Einstein's wife contributed intellectually to his
works, but it was not known and credited in her name. She was not
recognized in science history. When the Spaniards came to the Philippines,
women were deprived of various rights, and the only thing that was assigned
to them was to stay at home and take care of their kids and husbands. Now,
we can see most of our Filipino heroes are men because even when we were
colonized, society still favored men. The talk also discussed the multiple
burdens women must carry to survive in this system. They have to pursue a
career while taking care of the kids and do household chores, and when they
decide to do one of those things, they are selfish. In the workplace, men have
it easier to climb higher positions because they believe their male attributes
are equal to effective leadership. This proves that women must always prove
more and triple their effort so that their capabilities will be recognized by
society. They must sacrifice many things before society says, "You can." Next
is progress; it is good to know that the Philippines is doing better than other
countries regarding women's empowerment. We now have laws, programs,
and organizations that protect women's interests. This progress resulted from
many years of fighting the crooked system that oppressed women and
hindered their growth. Next is the ethics of care, which is grounded in
feminism. It is concerned with the morality and integrity of women, which are
primarily concerned with interpersonal interactions. Women, maybe not all,
are inherently caring, empathetic, and gentle, and this may be because we
are assigned motherly duties. This is powerful; women decide for themselves
and others out of care, love, and sympathy, not superiority. Unfortunately,
despite our progress, these strengths are still deemed weaknesses of women,
and therefore, they cannot participate in societal issues. For example, when
Leni Robredo was running for the presidency, some still did not believe in her
capabilities to lead because she was a woman, a mother. This proves that the
patriarchal mindset has not left people's minds even when we have numerous
laws, programs, and representations. Lastly, I strongly agree that feminism is
not superior to men because that will not solve inequality. We must now be
careful as other genders are fighting for equality. We also must be wary of our
internal misogyny against fellow women because I have seen other women
shaming stay-at-home moms on social media. We could solve the struggles
with gender equality when we accept that all of us are human and deserving
of basic rights, respect, and opportunities.