The gendering of post-war Philippine politics

Abstract

The martial law years in the Philippines (1972-1986) have often been depicted as the ‘Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos’ (Mijares 1976). That title points to the exercise of power by both the Marcoses, power emanating, however, from different sources: Ferdinand Marcos was the president-cum-dictator in an authoritarian regime while Imelda Marcos’ power derived from both her marriage to the president and her own location within a powerful kinship network. This chapter will discuss the ways in which the dynamics of power and politics in post-war Philippines are gendered by focussing on official/unofficial power in the practice of kinship politics (defined here as the use of political power to benefit the kinship group). The main argument of this chapter suggests that an understanding of kinship politics is vital to understanding the gendering of politics and images of power. I explore the way in which women exercise power behind the scenes as wives, daughters, sisters, mothers and sometimes mistresses of male politicians, even though men have the monopoly over the official symbols of power. In other words, although men dominate Philippine politics, women are not denied access to significant sources of power and active political agency.1