Women and politics: a critical analysis of sexism, misogyny, and religious christian women in Duterte’s Philippines

Abstract

From the campaign for presidential elections until Duterte’s incumbency as the president of Philippines, he has publicly committed sexist and misogynistic behaviors and utterances. Consequently, women across all sectors have been victims to these sexual misbehaviors. Since women are important actors in the public and political affairs of the society, how they respond to Duterte’s misconducts will affect the latter’s legitimization as the man wielding the highest position and power in the land. This research zeroed on the reactions of religious Christian women toward Duterte’s sexist behaviors and remarks. Literature have produced competing theories regarding this matter. At one hand, scholars are arguing that religious Christian women have the tendency to tolerate these sexist behaviors because the Bible, as the central religious text of Christian religions, carries a plethora of sexist teachings in it. On the other hand, other group of scholars argue that women can use the same religious text to emancipate themselves from the sexist society. Using semi-structured interviews conducted among religious Christian women from: (a) the Roman Catholic Church, (b) the United Methodist Church and, (c) Greenhills Christian Fellowship, the researcher explained the following: (1) religious Christian women’s experiences of sexism both inside and outside religious institutions, (2) their perceptions of sexism, (3) women’s emancipation and (4) how these three affect their political support and approval for the president. The results showed that there truly exist sexist traditions and preachings in religious institutions, but despite this, religious Christian women are able to use the same scripture to emancipate themselves. Moreover, this emancipation affects their perspective of sexism and allows them to view it as prejudicial and discriminative to women. The results also affirmed that people consider other factors aside from the image priming of the president in evaluating him.