DR. REXIT OCHOSA- REPOTENTE
THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY
I gazed with awe at the most wonderful woman my father owned. Once again, like she had been doing the first 15 years of my life, my mother taught me something that sitting in a classroom could not do. The year was 1961.
One hundred years earlier, the man whose picture adorned most classrooms, public offices and many private living rooms across the country; whose face appeared on stamps, coins, matchboxes and kerosene cans; who, in his overcoat, presided over the town plazas; whose name was given to streets, barrios, municipalities and a province, Dr.Jose Rizal, was born.
I am vain enough to presume that my paternal grandparents must have still been hurting from the loss of this great man, when my father, their youngest child came in 1905, that they named him "Jose", and even called him "Pepe".
The most comprehensive statement of Dr. Rizal's concept of the ideal role of women in society was his letter to the young women of Malolos.
"let us be reasonable and open our eyes, especially you, women, because you are the first to influence the consciousness of men", he had written to them. "Awaken and prepare the will of your children towards all that is honorable, judged by proper standards, to all that is sincere and firm of purpose, clear judgement, clear procedure, honesty in act and deed, love for fellowmen, and respect for God; this is what you must teach your children."
"The people cannot expect honor nor prosperity so long as they will educate their children in a wrong way, so long as the woman who guides the child in his steps is slavish and ignorant. No good water comes from a turbid, bitter spring; no savory fruit comes from acrid seed."
In his speech delivered during the banquet on the evening of June 25, 1884 to celebrate the double victory of the Filipino artists, Luna and Hidalgo, in the National Exposition of Fine Arts in Madrid, he said: "...if the mother teaches her child her language in order that she may understand his joys, his necessities and his sorrows..."
In a letter to his sister, Trinidad, on March 11, 1886, he wrote: "Now that you are young, you should strive to read, read and learn."
My mother did not even enter college. She was enrolled at an excellent high school for girls run by the St. Paul Sisters when the war broke out. She was only 19 when my father married her. Her much older sister, his first wife, had died one year earlier leaving him and their 7-year old son.
My mother adored her nephew and step-son. When I was small, I sometimes resented her affection for him. She would hug me and my two little brothers, and say, "love your Manong and be kind to him, he doesn't have a mommy anymore."
She was the catalyst that closed the gap between the four generations that inhabited our home.
When my brothers and I sought permission that was beyond her sphere of authority, she would say, "come, let's ask your father or grandmother", and steer us towards whomever she thought was more likely to say "yes".
She didn't speak Tagalog, but her English was good ("better than a college graduate " my father used to say ) and her Ilocano was impeccable. She never missed an issue of Bannawag, the local weekly, which inevitably became my regular intellectual stimulus even before my formal schooling started. There, especially in the poetry section, I encountered many words and phrases for the first time. She explained them all to me.
She loved Literature but was interested in other subjects too. When I was in high school, I sometimes caught her peering into my notebooks in Physics and Algebra. This embarassed her, but we both got used to it and even learned together.
In the fifties, outside our home, women were clamoring for recognition. Women all over the world organized themselves. Not wanting to be outdone, the National Federation of Women's Clubs of the Philippines sent field representatives to all regions of the country to orgnize women's clubs in the bigger towns. My cousin, the 27-year old secretary of theJuniorFederation, was assigned to Northern Luzon. My mother declined her offer to lead the local club because she was neiher the mayor's wife nora professional. But she provided her names and addresses of her intellectual friends who might be interested to join. She even arranged for chaperons because the organizational meetings often lasted till after dark.
The feminist lobby during the sixties puzzled my mother. Perhaps because she never felt the need to assert herself. She had always been on an equal footing with the men in her life- her father, her four brothers and my father.
The Women's Liberation Movement became relevant to her though, and she even became sympathetic to it after I told her that in order to qualify for admission to the UP college of Medicine, female applicants had to obtain higher grades in Pre-Med than the males. Besides, she had to get used to the idea that her only daughter could soon struggle to survive in a profession dominated by males.
It might interest you to know that right now, 60% of students enrolled in German medical schools are females. In the Philippines last year, 54% of managerial positions were occupied by women.
One of the main responsibilities of a married person is to prepare the spouse for widowhood. My fatherdid a good job. After he left, my mother started presiding over meetings of her barangay. There were no more big meals to prepare, family picnics in the backyard to organize, nannies and laundry women to supervise. There were no more endless chess games to watch, beer bottles to sort out, and gaping ashtrays to empty. In the years that followed, we received pictures of her clad in some native costume, crowning fiesta queens. And news about her, launching fund-raising campaigns for various humanitarian projects. But she continued to supply my brothers and their families with her inconmparable home-made longaniza.
In his letter to the women of Malolos, Dr. Rizal also wrote: "The cause of the backwardness of Asia lies in the fact that there, the women are ignorant, are slaves; while Europe and America are powerful because there, the women are free and well-educated and endowed with lucid intellect and a strong will."
In a few day, my husband and I will fly to San Francisco to attend a global reunion of my former town-mates. We shall meet friends of my mother who outlived her: women in their 80's doing things their contemporaries in the Phil. and other Asian countries also do: dancing the jive, singing karaoke, exchanging pleasantries through the internet, solving a tricky suduko, and helping a granddaughter choose a sexy dress for a date. We shall meet women who excel in professions formerly dominated by men; women who grew intellectually with their years; women who accepted change and adapted to it.
Even now, I can see Dr. Jose Rizal smiling proudly and applauding them.
RESURRECCION OCHOSA-REPOTENTE, MD
ADVISER
KABABAIHANG RIZALISTA, INC.
HAMBURG, GERMANY
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