The woman you want to be
WHAT would you want to be after all this?” the community service professor asked us, all 200 plus of us jammed in that college auditorium. “After college,” she meant.
What a way to start a summer class, I thought. We were in college; did she really have to ask that question reserved for the wide-eyed preschoolers? Of course, those who were taking up journalism would want to be journalists, those taking up film would want to be in the entertainment industry — that’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?
The question snaked through the auditorium. We had five seconds to answer, one by one. All 200 plus of us.
One answer stood out in the blur of those 5-seconders. A girl — long, shiny hair, fair skin, round eyes, long, curly eyelashes — blurted out: “Housewife.”
Housewife?!
I didn’t get it. I turned to my seat mate, snickered and grumbled, “Why is she here then? Why study so hard if that’s all she wanted? What is she here for? A husband? What an easy life to live.”
Today, eight years later, I am disgusted at my 17-year-old self and at how I judged that girl.
I couldn’t even remember my own answer.
Whatever it was, I’m pretty sure I didn’t mean it, because if anybody would ask me now what I wanted to be, I’d tell him: “Housewife.”
A homemaker. A mother. To wake up early every morning to prepare breakfast and pack lunch boxes. To kiss my kids and my husband goodbye as they head out the door.
From where I stand right now, that looks like a distant dream.
It’s been five years since I finished college and I am currently on my third job. I am earning more than I ever did and they say the future looks bright.
But I feel trapped, forced to climb a corporate ladder that will never take me to where I really want to be. It’s like living someone else’s dream.
An empowered woman
Women empowerment has come a long way since Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her friends wrote and released the “Declaration of Sentiments.” Today, a world where women cannot work, vote and be part of the government is unimaginable.
But the fight for women’s rights and gender equality is far from over. Little girls are still being forced into marriage. Wives, girlfriends, daughters are still being beaten black and blue. The rape culture — oh, the rape culture — seems to be getting worse. Working mothers and women in general are still not getting the pay they deserve — and, in some cases, are not getting paid at all.
In the Philippines, women have lower employment rates than men, with a gender gap of 26.2 percentage points, according to a 2013 gender equality study of the International Labour Organization and Asian Development Bank. Women’s significantly huge share in household duties, 84 percent, and being unpaid contributing family workers have also been taken to be a possible deterrent to women’s participation in “paid” work.
The numbers tell us that the struggle is real for women, as far as inequality is concerned.
Statistics like these, however, also make it easy for people to think that work, or labor force participation as they call it, is an important measure of women empowerment. That may be true, for the most part, but at the same time, it alienates women who stay home by choice — and not because their fathers and husbands tell them to do so.
If a social construct uses “work” as a measure of empowerment, the lack of it ends up as a sign of weakness. But is it?
Women’s many faces
“I have spent the last 60 years of my life taking care of the family. Raising children, trying to make ends meet and just serving God,” said Lourdes, a 76-year-old grandmother, commerce graduate from University of the Philippines in Diliman. She has never had a job.
“I went straight from school to becoming a wife and a mother. I have never felt incomplete. It has been a full, wonderful life,” she said.
In Lourdes’ generation, there was nothing wrong about women who just stay at home and wait for their husband’s paycheck every month. In fact, during those times, it was quite expected.
“We [women] were still not used to working. It was OK to work, perfectly acceptable, but to stay at home was still the norm, especially when you were married,” she shared.
Lourdes became a homemaker almost by default. But did she regret it? “Never,” she said.
The society is fond of calling women up the stage for leadership awards, for breaking barriers, for being the first woman to do this and that, for showing the world that the Janes can do this and that.
Ah, the telling signs of empowerment.
Kaye Roxas (not her real name) was the first Filipino who won an Asian women leadership award for a certain global outfit. She didn’t want her identity disclosed for this article because people in her circle, her family included, still did not know about her life story. She plans to share her story through a book.
Managing partner in an agency, a mother, spokesperson for various government offices, marketing strategist — Kaye has the look and the reputation of an empowered woman. But in truth, it was only recently that she found the sense of freedom she had always longed for.
“I was a victim of domestic violence for more than a decade,” she told Popped!. “I got pregnant at 21 while I was in law school, so I had to quit, get married and work hard.”
“My husband was a psychotic control freak. I had always known, though, that he was not like those good guys you know. He was fond of guns and his friends, who had become my friends as well, confessed to having killed people. That was the scenario I lived with long before we had sex. So that part of him was something I had always known,” Kaye shared.
Their marriage was a Russian roulette that she had “miraculously” survived.
“Everyday fights were a matter of life and death. The psychological abuse was so intense, I often had to drag my daughter out of bed at 2 a.m. and find some place to crash. He always had to get what he wanted. I should forever remain at his disposal, that was the rule.”
One time, Kaye planned to take a break from it all and fly to Hong Kong to be with her friends. She told her then husband that it was a business meeting.
“He took my passport away. I couldn’t ask it from him because it would spark a fight. He would start by saying, ‘Pinagbibintangan mo ba ako?’ and then all hell would break loose.”
“When I told my friends about it, they reminded me that I was smart enough to get my passport back. So what I did was, I called him up, and said with the sweetest, calmest voice, ‘Honey, I’ll be working late and wouldn’t have the time to prepare my things. Can you please pack my bag for the trip? Ikaw na bahala ha? You know exactly what I need. I haven’t found my passport yet, pero baka andito lang ’yun. Thanks, Hon, I love you.’ I was trembling but I had to take a chance.”
The husband brought her bag straight to the airport — along with her passport. “He said, ‘Ikaw naman kasi, kung saan-saan mo nilalagay.’ I flew to Hong Kong and that was the one of the freest moments of my life.”
All throughout the marriage, Kaye would work till the wee hours of the morning if she could. Her office desk was her safe haven. The longer her to-do list, the better. She lived and breathed work because it was the only way to survive.
“Not too many people know but I think that was a huge part of the reason why I am where I am now. I worked as hard as I could,” Kaye said. Her job, which paid well, also afforded her what little control she could have over their family life.
She and her husband separated legally four years ago — it was a hard battle to win but it was her sweetest achievement.
“That moment, that was my empowerment.”
Freedom
I am not saying career women all have skeletons in the closet that belie their image of an “empowered” woman. Neither did I mean that wives and mothers who stay home live the most fulfilled lives like Lourdes’. The point is — there are no boxes here.
To be empowered is to be free to live a life you choose for yourself, and this goes for both men and women.
If she finds happiness in business, in her career, nothing should ever stop her. If she finds her calling at home, in raising children, in managing the household — even if she had graduated with flying colors from an Ivy League school — who are we to judge her?
I agree, equal economic opportunities for women drive growth. But in a society bombarded with women empowerment studies that say “an increase in female labor force participation results in faster economic growth,” it is hard to live the domestic life without being branded as “inferior,” “submissive.” It’s like you are one big blob of potential wasted.
In fact, stay-at-home mothers are expected to say, “I gave up my job for the family,” only to “justify” why they are not working at the moment.
That’s a statement I will never identify with. If and when I finally get the chance to have a family of my own, I can see myself saying, “This is where I have always wanted to be.”
A woman’s dream of building a home is never secondary to a woman’s dream of running the world.
Never be afraid of what you really want to be. You are empowered the moment you own your life.
