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The revolution will come home: gendered violence and transformative organizing from the Philippines to the U.S.

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The revolution will come home: gendered violence and transformative organizing from the Philippines to the U.S.

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THE REVOLUTION WILL COME HOME:

GENDERED VIOLENCE AND TRANSFORMATIVE ORGANIZING

FROM THE PHILIPPINES TO THE U.S.

by

Huibin A. Chew

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of American Studies and Ethnicity

August 2016

(December 2016 Degree Conferral)

Copyright 2016 Huibin A. Chew
ii
DEDICATION

To
the women, tibos and baklas, men
and queers of GABRIELA,
and
to movement-builders

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many incredible spirits and firebrands made this project possible. To you all, I’m
indebted. First, I must thank Laura Pulido, whom I had the fortune to have as my committee
chair. Her timely feedback and dedicated, consistent support at each stage of research and
writing truly went above and beyond. I can only offer heartfelt thanks for your mentorship,
continual labors – including wading through punishingly long drafts – as well as your well-aimed
pushes to refine my own tools and make this study stronger.
My committee members have been a dream team. Your scholarships’ courage, rigor,
relevance, and accessibility serve as personal inspirations and guides. I thank Ruth Wilson
Gilmore for her deep engagement with political and intellectual investments I’ve carried, even as
she has honed my analysis with her incisive questions. Much of this project was written and then
rewritten with your critiques in mind; thank you for posing key tensions and reorienting me
regarding them. Robin D.G. Kelley’s warm encouragement was a large reason I embarked on
graduate studies, and has been hugely motivational for continuing. Thank you for conversations
that inspired as much because of your kindness as your broad historical insights. Over the years,
Rhacel Parreñas offered many strategic pointers regarding fieldwork and analysis, detailed and
thoughtful feedback I will continue to carry.
At UP Diliman, I am enormously grateful to Judy Taguiwalo for generously reading a
full manuscript and offering valuable suggestions; I also thank her and Sylvia Estrada-Claudio
for graciously welcoming me to their classes. Carolyn Sobritchea and Sarah Raymundo helped
start off my research by orienting me with crucial references and historical context; Nathalie
Verceles and Weng Laguilles offered useful tips; and Rosalinda Pineda Ofreneo welcomed me to
the College of Social Work and Community Development.
iv
A wonderful team of translators and transcribers was essential to the research itself. I am
deeply indebted to Joanna Lerio, Gia Cabangon, Mykhel Falguera, Brenda Yasay, Kristine
Dayawon, Joe Amores, John Carlo Mercado, Jane Balleta, Miko Mendizabal, Terence Lopez,
Edwin Quinsayas, Joan Salvador, Ekis Gimenez, Rosanne Trinidad, Jho Abueg, Darylle
Solomon, Sandee Flores, Pia Besmonte, Angela Lara, Erra Zabat, Bonnie Ruiz, Kaliska Peralta,
Charlotte France, Joy Garcia, and Eugenio Soco for your thorough and patient labors. I also
thank Marcelino Cadiz Jr. and AJ Golo for all your language assistance. Furthermore, my
warmest gratitude goes to Kristine Dayawon, Joanna Lerio, Gia Cabangon, John Carlo Mercado,
Miko Mendizabal, Terence Lopez, and Edwin Quinsayas for your conversations, critical insights,
and input on this project’s subject-matter.
I’ve been sustained and refueled by a soft cushion of informal mentors. Valerie
Francisco and Kathleen Coll have been invaluable sounding boards over the years, and I thank
them for their helpful advice. I would like to thank my cohort and classmates, especially Treva
Ellison, Jessi Quizar, Jih-Fei Cheng, Yushi Yamazaki, Nic Ramos, Ryan Fukumori, Celeste
Menchaca, Ellen Shiau, Jolie Chea, Analena Hope, Crystal Baik, Laura Fugikawa, Orlando
Serrano, Sriya Shrestha, Christina Heatherton, Tasneem Siddiqui, Sophia Azeb, Deb Al-Najjar,
Shannon Zhao, Bekah Park, Jenn Tran, Becka Garrison, Freda Fair, Ren-yo Hwang, Patricia
Torres, Kai Green, Stephanie Sparling, Umayyah Cable, Jennifer DeClue, Naazneen Diwan,
David Stein, Joshua Mitchell, Sa Whitley, and Bradley Cardozo, for nurturing me and making
these years possible. I thank the SoCal Pilipino Studies Reading Group for their community. I
owe large thanks to Faith Kares, Andre Ortega, and Nerve Macaspac for your constant tips,
support, inspirational brilliance, and check-in’s.
Other faculty at USC were instrumental to this project. Veronica Terriquez provided
v
crucial guidance on research methods. For their help at various stages, I would like to thank Viet
Nguyen, Karen Tongson, Ricardo Ramirez, Jack Halberstam, Leland Saito, Annalisa Enrile, Phil
Ethington, and Maria Elena Martinez. I thank Manuel Pastor, Jennifer Ito, Rhonda Ortiz,
Vanessa Carter, Arely Zimmerman and other researchers at USC’s Program for Environmental
and Regional Equity for the unique chance to work together and gain experience in collaborative
research. Kitty Lai, Jujuana Preston, and Sonia Rodriguez are tremendously warm and effective
departmental staff; a huge thanks for all your help trouble-shooting and avoiding logistical
mishaps over the years.
My research and writing were supported by a Fulbright Scholarship, the American
Association of University Women, a Social Sciences Research Council Dissertation Proposal
Development Fellowship, and a USC Provost’s Fellowship. I thank Dorothy Hodgson, Pamela
Scully, and members of the SSRC program’s gender justice group for their comments and
encouragement. A FLAS Fellowship enabled my Tagalog language study at the Southeast Asian
Studies Summer Institute; thank you, Clem Montero, for such joyous teaching and your support.
For nourishing my spirit across transitions and time zones, for feeding and keeping me
safe, I thank Terrie Cervas, Bev Tang, George Lee, Andrew Chang, Cathy Chu, Ellen Shiau,
Kalayaan Mendoza, Lai Wa Wu, Lucia Lin, Vanessa Banta, Ginger Alleyne, Marko Matillano,
Bryan Ziadie, Melissa Gibson, Tala Khanmalek, Soledad Boyd, Sifu Mai Du, Nasim, Trina
Jackson, Amanda Ali, Bill Cunningham, Annie Butler, Jessica Tang, Yiming Sophia Swee,
Melina Muñoz, TK Flory, Meiver De La Cruz, Gray Chu, Eileen Hsuan, Jessica Yamane, Elisa
Armea, Tin, Sa, Miko, JC, Tey, Edwin, Jane, Rowena, Bonnie, Sheryll, Patty Tumang, Rovaira,
Dimple, Yul, Joy, Tria Blu Wakpa, Aubrey, Justin, Jayda Rasberry, Krys Shelley, Luz Elena
Henao, Robin Ellis, Povi-Tamu Bryant and the kasamas of GABRIELA for your friendship and
vi
more. To Tala and Andrew, deep thanks for helping me jump the final hurdle. For sending me
on my way, I thank George Collins, Tito Jun Cadiz, and Tita Beti Capili.
For being my collective from afar, I give boundless love and thanks to George Lee and
Diiv Sternman. Treva Ellison, Khury Petersen-Smith. There are no words. Thank you for your
friendship and brilliance in my life; for being there and being there; for being compasses and
venting chambers. For the examples of your spine and empathy.
I thank an extended political family for shaping me and helping inspire this project –
Soledad, Lydia Lowe, Karen Chen, Suzanne Lee, George, Kazi Toure, Lana Habash, Noah
Cohen, Michael Liu, Luz Zambrano, Maria Elena Letona, Diego Lowe, Najma Nazy’at, Helena
Wong, Alexandra Suh, Trina, Annie, Bill, Carol Gomez, Tita Beti, Tito Jun, Melissa Cariño,
Monique Nguyen, May Louie, Craig Wong, Chuck Turner, Jamie Bissonnette, LACAN, KIWA,
Soobak, Garment Workers Center, COiL, Chinese Progressive Association, INCITE!, FIERCE,
and others, thank you for lighting my way.
I thank my parents Chew Chin Phua and Weng Cho Chew for raising me footloose to be
a traveler, while showing me how to look at injustice with your heart; Ethan for his generous
spirit, understanding, and listening ear; and Sharon for helping smooth moves. I thank Uncle
Yoong Doh and Auntie Sandy, Auntie Lin Wu and Uncle Jizeng, Uncle Kin Keng and Aunt
Esther, Uncle Kai-Lit and Aunt Siew Guat, Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Ron, Uncle Kai Hong and
Auntie Joyce, and Nay Lourdes for their support through the years, and for providing much-
needed writing refuges. I thank AJ Golo for your love, understanding, and constant cheer; for
fielding never-ending questions with never-ending food.
Finally and foremost – numerous GABRIELAs motivated and were foundational to this
project. Unfortunately, I am unable to name you all here. I especially thank Joan Salvador for
vii
assisting with logistics throughout my research, as well as for your immensely helpful
clarifications and insights. I thank the Center for Women’s Resources, including Mary Joan
Guan, Osang Langara, and Cham Perez, for helping me access its archives. From the bottom of
my heart, I thank Gert Libang, Obeth Montes, Emmi de Jesus, Rina Anastacio, Brenda Yasay,
Maristel Garcia, Nay Elai, as well as many others for all of your generous time and support.
Most of all, I thank each and every one of the women, tibos, baklas, queers, men and
folks in GABRIELA who shared your time, passion, struggles, and stories with me. These
acknowledgements cannot contain my debt of gratitude to your inspiration. I hope that the
following pages capture a little of your courage, vitality, and vision. Maraming maraming
salamat sa lahat.

viii
ABSTRACT

“The Revolution Will Come Home” explores how urban poor women in Metro Manila
are challenging interpersonal gendered violence – such as domestic abuse or sexual assault –
within the communities they organize, while building a broader movement against neoliberal
capitalism and U.S. empire. GABRIELA, the largest women’s federation in the Philippines,
fights for ‘home’ on multiple scales – offering a case study of a ‘social movements approach’ to
gendered violence that draws on and adapts grassroots traditions, local and transnational
feminisms, as well as Third World nationalist and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organizing legacies.
As U.S. empire and neoliberal restructuring enact gendered violence, often under the guise of
‘humanitarian aid’ and ‘gender-responsive’ development, GABRIELA challenges a ‘neoliberal
imperial’ feminist order, reconfiguring its logics.
Using oral history, survey, and archival methods, this dissertation considers how
addressing interpersonal gendered violence can support, rather than hinder, movement-building,
grassroots leadership, and the transformation of participants. Instead of writing off trauma as
drama, local organizers treat processes of interpersonal and societal change as interdependent.
Collectives offer spaces of healing and constrained accountability for intimate partner and sexual
violence, while organizers adapt an ethic of ‘serving the people’ to provide survivor-centered
support that tides over cycles of violence. A ‘social movements approach’ towards interpersonal
gendered violence and trauma not only can provide more accessible and transformative
assistance to those affected – but moreover, has societal transformation as its goal, treating
survivors as potential organizers in a movement for collective change, rather than as passive
service recipients. I place strategies of this Third World women’s organization in conversation
with U.S. women of color feminist critiques of carceral responses to gendered violence – and
ix
with their calls for ‘transformative organizing,’ ‘community accountability’ tactics that do not
rely on state structures, and decolonization, as alternatives.

x
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements iii

Abstract viii

List of Figures xi

INTRODUCTION: To Bring Home a Revolution, in Neoliberal Imperial Times 1

PART 1

CHAPTER 1 55
‘What Kind of Life is This?’
A Political-Economic History of Urban Poor Women in Metro Manila

CHAPTER 2 95
‘Squatters’ in Our Own Homes:
Precarious Lives, Interpersonal Gendered Violence, and Reaches of U.S. Empire

PART 2

CHAPTER 3 148
‘Abante, Babae! Palaban, Militante!’
GABRIELA, a Third World Women’s Organization, Confronts ‘Violence Against Women’

CHAPTER 4 207
Gabriela Women’s Party: Legislative Reform and Neoliberal Imperial Feminisms

PART 3

CHAPTER 5 242
‘Serving the People:’ A Social Movements Approach to Gendered Violence

CHAPTER 6 298
‘Together at the Same Time:’ Tactics and Community Impacts

CHAPTER 7 365
From ‘Victim-Survivor’ to Organizer: The Interpersonal is Political

CONCLUSION: Will the Revolution Come Home? 426

Bibliography 469

Appendix A: ‘GABRIELA’s Principles’ 494

Appendix B: Survey Results 496

Appendix C: Survey Instrument 505
xi
LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. A: Metro Manila 41
Table 1.1: Average Wage and Gender Wage Gap in the Philippines, 2011 73
Table 1.2: Who Earned More Cash, by Wealth Quintile 73
Table 1.3: Ongoing Metro Manila Developments Involving Public-Private Partnerships 84
Fig. 2.1: Shanties along the Mangangate River in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila 95
Fig. 2.2: Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence Rates 102
Fig. 2.3: VAWC Survivors Lack Healthcare Access 103
Table 2.1: Women Reporting Physical & Sexual Violence by Wealth Quintile, 2013 113
Fig. 4.1: A 2013 campaign flyer for Gabriela Women’s Party 214
Fig. 7.1: Role in GABRIELA 369
Fig. 7.2: Role in GABRIELA by Site 369
Fig. 7.3: Participation Rate in GABRIELA Activities Responding to VAW, by Site 371
Fig. 7.4: Activities in Response to VAW Which Respondents Participated In 372
Fig. 7.5: How GABRIELA Responds to VAW in Community 372
Fig. 7.6: Sources of Support, Before and After GABRIELA Membership 375
Fig. 7.7: Sources of Support 377
Fig. 7.8: Reported Violence, VAW Workshop Attendees v.s. Non-Attendees 381
Fig. 7.9: Differences in Reported Violence, By Role 382
Fig. 7.10: Awareness of Abuse, VAW Workshop Attendees v.s. Non-Attendees 384
Fig. 7.11: Perceived Impact of GABRIELA’s Organizing Against VAW 389

1

INTRODUCTION

To Bring Home a Revolution, in Neoliberal Imperial Times

In [the government shelter for abused women], they’re like prisoners…
It drives the victims there crazy…
They should go out into the community…
Whatever their capacity, if they can organize… they can liberate themselves.
1

– Lisa, a community organizer in GABRIELA Muntinlupa, Metro Manila
1. Opening
How can social movements respond to interpersonal gendered violence in the ‘private’
realm, even as they work for much broader change – and how can they do so in a way that
facilitates movement-building? What can we learn from a Global South poor women’s
movement engaged in such processes of transformation, from the personal to the societal level
and beyond? How might these organizers’ ‘freedom dreams’
2
challenge or synergize with other
responses to gendered violence today, and what is at stake?
“The Revolution Will Come Home” enriches our understandings of why and how it
matters for poor people’s movements to address domestic and sexual abuse – within the
movements and communities they organize. Using interviews, surveys, and archival research, I
explore the experiences and strategies of urban poor organizers in GABRIELA, the largest
women’s federation in the Philippines, as they challenge abuse in their Metro Manila
neighborhoods. Many of these grassroots organizers are themselves survivors of domestic
violence. However, I do not simply consider how support they have received through
GABRIELA has altered their own lives and relationships. Rather than writing off trauma as

1
“Sa [government shelter for abused women]… nakakulong sila dun e… Lalong mapapraning ang mga biktima
dun… Dapat dun lumabas sila sa komunidad… Kung ano yung kakayanan nila, kung kaya nilang mag-organize…
Yung sila mismo sa sarili nila napalaya” (2013).
2
Borrowing Robin D.G. Kelley’s term (2003).

2

drama, organizers treat processes of interpersonal and societal transformation as interlinked.
They collectively intervene against domestic abuse, while simultaneously organizing their
communities against capitalism and U.S. empire. Many assert that addressing abuse has helped,
not hindered, this movement-building. Taking a ground-up lens that centers GABRIELA’s
community-based strategies, this dissertation closely examines concrete tactics against abuse,
how they relate to movement-building, and larger political stakes involved.
I focus on GABRIELA organizers both because of the politics and form of their
interventions against domestic and sexual violence. GABRIELA is a federation of over 200
women’s organizations throughout the Philippines as well as several overseas branches, totaling
nearly 200,000 members. In contrast to large-scale women’s groups in the U.S. and other Global
North countries, its core membership is largely low-income women – paralleling Philippine
economic conditions where over 40 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and two
thirds of families rate themselves as poor (Schelzig 2005, xiii–iv). From its founding in 1984,
GABRIELA’s backbone has historically consisted of mass-based organizations in the peasant,
urban poor, and working-class women’s sectors. Additionally, the coalition includes research,
advocacy, and service groups; professional women’s groups; base-building organizations
representing youth, indigenous, Muslim, and migrant women; as well as LGBT and children’s
rights groups.
Crucial to its movement-building on-the-ground, GABRIELA does not treat gendered
violence in isolation from other political concerns. By ‘gendered violence,’ I mean any violence
that reinforces gendered inequalities and distinctions, or that operates along gendered categories
of difference, whether or not the deployment of gender is conscious or intentional.
3
GABRIELA

3
Gendered violences may draw upon gendered markers of difference to motivate perpetrators and target gendered or
sexualized bodies; operate through distinctions of gender and sexuality, at times helping produce these distinctions;

3

sees what it terms ‘violence against women,’ or VAW for short, as inseparably imbricated with
structural violences more broadly. It not only highlights forms of gendered violence that
particularly affect low-income women and LGBTQ people. It offers a gendered analysis of state
violence, ‘development’ and trade policies, militarization, and U.S. imperialism, drawing
attention to how these reinforce gender inequalities, or disproportionately impact women (and
children). Its political demands include land reform for women farmers; good jobs as well as an
end to sexual harassment and workplace discrimination; opposition to U.S. militarization and
VAW perpetrated by armed forces. Such a scope reflects an analysis of poor women’s stakes in
economic justice and anti-imperialist resistance. As I will explain, GABRIELA is in turn part of
a coalition
4
of mass-based organizations, and even larger movement, for a new government
based on ‘national democracy;’ I deliberately examine a group that combines addressing
domestic abuse with a larger holistic vision and integrated organizing practice regarding social
inequalities. GABRIELA has sought to integrate the fight against interpersonal gendered
violence with that against militarized state violence.
I characterize GABRIELA organizers’ concrete tactics towards interpersonal gendered
violence as a social movements approach. By this term, I refer to how organizers apply
collective, community-organizing strategies to the problem of domestic abuse, and seek to
challenge such violence in a manner that furthers movement-building. GABRIELA organizers’
interventions transcend many limitations of responses to abuse focused on service provision.
Grassroots volunteers collectivize support and seek to make it more accessible; they aim to foster
connections between survivors and social networks, rather than to seclude or isolate.

contribute to creating gender inequalities by shaping gendered subjectivities; or make use of gendered meanings and
inequalities to justify or perpetuate other forms of inequality (whether racialized, economic, etc.).
4
Named BAYAN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan). See also Chapter 3.

4

Throughout, GABRIELA conscientiously treats survivors as potential organizers in a movement
for collective change, rather than as passive service recipients. Organizers adapt an ethic of
‘serving the people’ to take guidance from survivors’ decisions and maintain long-term support,
despite the frustrations of repetitive cycles of abuse; I explore strengths and implications of this
‘survivor-centered’ ethos, even as overall movement goals help guide the sustainability of
support efforts, and organizers engage in contestation over how abuse should be politicized.
Finally, GABRIELA organizers push for the transformation of power dynamics – both within
relations and larger society – as well as of all parties involved. They seek to broaden community
engagement and to redefine the role of the state regarding domestic abuse through direct action;
ultimately, societal transformation is their goal.
I feature GABRIELA’s community-based organizing model partly in light of debates
over civil society and the limits of ‘NGOization,’ including for domestic violence services.
Local GABRIELA organizers reject a non-profit organization model of professionalized staff,
and strive to resist donor-driven political agendas. Rather, the mass-based formations they are
part of depend on low-income organizers who live in – and often grew up in – the communities
they engage with. These volunteer organizers often carry out their political activities without
monetary compensation; some receive a minimal stipend covering food and transportation, if at
all. I consider how GABRIELA’s social movements approach towards gendered violence allows
heightened community participation, strategic scale, and political scope. Likewise, how
organizers address abuse intertwines organically with, and is shaped by, GABRIELA’s
orientation towards base-building organizing, and more holistic political aims.
“The Revolution Will Come Home” is about the possibilities and relevance of
GABRIELA’s specific strategies towards interpersonal abuse – given the larger scope of its

5

political vision and mass movement orientation. How do local organizers implement this social
movements approach to domestic and sexual violence? What histories, traditions, and ideas have
informed their strategies? How do they treat survivors, those perpetrating harm, and the larger
community? How do they balance priorities, when combining such intense work with
movement-building? What do survivors who become organizers make of it all? Finally, what is
powerful and transformative; what are lessons and political implications?
While the core of this study focuses on organizing nuts and bolts, the question of how to
address gendered violence in the domestic sphere is a flash point that illuminates conflicts
around state priorities, structural violence, and the direction of social movements, here in the
context of U.S. empire. GABRIELA’s social movements approach to interpersonal gendered
violence – its strengths and challenges – must be understood in the context of its overall politics
and historical embeddedness in a larger social movement field. Furthermore, even as this study
is rooted in the localized labors and struggles of urban poor women against domestic abuse, I
weigh in on what centering such a perspective brings to bear on how to change the broader
structural conditions fueling interpersonal gendered violence. This dissertation helps trace how
Philippine state violence and neglect, particularly under neocolonial relations of U.S.
domination, exacerbate domestic abuse; how states co-opt gender justice agendas in ways that
have often perpetuated structural violence, including through increasing law enforcement
violence rather than preventive measures; and resulting contradictions of state-making and state-
taking for oppositional social movements.
A premise of this dissertation is that to grapple with gendered violence, we must consider
its political economic contexts. I use the term ‘neoliberal imperialism’ to name a nexus of
neoliberal economic policies and imperialist political relations that shape Philippine society, and

6

that as I will explain further in this Introduction, help ensure the Philippines’ neocolonial
domination by the U.S. In the opening chapters of this dissertation, I elaborate further how
political economic conditions – and specifically neoliberal imperial structural violence – have
reinforced interpersonal gendered violence in urban poor women’s lives. I explore how
GABRIELA’s gender politics both are embedded within, and crucially challenge, what I call
‘neoliberal imperial’ feminist discourses – a hegemonic approach to gendered violence promoted
by some advocates for gender equity, and adopted by state policies, which tends to leave
neoliberal imperial structural violence unquestioned.
Since the 1970s, Global South organizations have offered vibrant examples of social
movements responses to interpersonal gendered violence, as they struggle for decolonization and
an end to neoliberal globalization. While social movements for economic and racial justice, as
well as for national liberation, have long politicized gendered violence, the 1970s and after saw
the development of radical movements – including for Third World liberation and indigenous
autonomy – which sought to address intimate partner and sexual violence amongst their own
ranks, as well. In the context of women of color, Third World, and indigenous feminisms – as
well as global liberal feminism – these movements framed their attempts to do so as a matter of
gender justice.
At the same time, states have increasingly institutionalized gender justice agendas
globally. Yet ‘gender-mainstreaming’ reforms, or measures to redress gender inequality,
promulgated through international bodies and nation-states have promoted responses to gendered
violence that emphasize criminalization – rather than preventive measures to transform structural
inequalities that fuel violence. In recent decades, ‘gender-mainstreaming’ policies pushed by the
UN and enacted by governments have usually approached interpersonal gendered violence as a

7

law enforcement or criminal legal problem, and perhaps secondarily, as a public health issue.
This dominant framework tends to leave key aspects of political economy – e.g., around
neocolonial development policy, racial capitalism, and imperialism – largely unquestioned with
regards to how they help perpetrate violence against women to begin with.
GABRIELA provides a complicated case study because it operates at various scales,
encompassing local, community-based organizing as well as national, legislative advocacy.
From the early 1990s, Philippine feminists have engaged in intense debates over the impacts of
both ‘gender mainstreaming’ and ‘NGOization;’ following a restoration of ‘democracy’ in 1986,
the Philippine left suffered militarized repression and U.S.-backed counterinsurgency, paired
with the opening of a space for state-sanctioned civil society. For GABRIELA, contestations on
how to organize in this terrain led to a recommitment to its alliance with left revolutionary
politics, and to base-building organizing among poor women. At the same time, GABRIELA’s
strategies evolved to include not only grassroots organizing, but electoral politics; in 2000, it
established its own political party, the Gabriela Women’s Party (GWP),
5
which subsequently
won seats in Congress and over one million votes in the 2010 elections.
6
In the early 2000s,
GWP co-sponsored legislation that criminalized trafficking and domestic violence for the first
time, while mandating government services to address survivors’ needs. Even as GABRIELA
reframes hegemonic understandings of ‘violence against women,’ its policy agendas also
interface with ‘gender-mainstreaming’ reforms.
GABRIELA’s story – told in this dissertation through a focus on its community-based
interventions against interpersonal gendered violence – maps out contradictions of
decolonization and nation-building under conditions of both state and imperial violence.

5
Then one of a few political parties for women worldwide.
6
See Chapter 4.

8

Ultimately, this interdisciplinary study intervenes in two main ways: in how we think about
approaching domestic violence, given neoliberal imperialism; and in how we look at community-
based organizing in relation to the state, at a Third World location. In the process, I bridge
Philippine studies; transnational American studies and critical scholarship on U.S. empire;
feminist studies; and social movements scholarship, which each contribute to my analysis of
these issues.
Regarding this study’s first key intervention, I explore how GABRIELA’s strategies,
together with its gender politics, contest and potentially disrupt dominant approaches for
addressing domestic and sexual abuse that often end up reifying state, economic, and structural
violence. I foreground its social movements approach to abuse and its gender politics, in
contrast to neoliberal imperial feminist responses. Yet at the same time, I attend to
contradictions of operating within a political terrain where the latter policies dominate. How do
the dialectics of ‘working with what we have’ while pursuing radical transformation play out?
Secondly, I build on scholarship on Global South poor women’s movements in neoliberal
imperial times, to highlight generative organizing practices. I hold a ground-up lens to
GABRIELA’s activities to complicate our understandings of social movement organizing in
relation to the state, while considering the confluences, distinctions, and contradictions between
neoliberal imperial feminist policies, and urban poor women’s grassroots activities. I turn an eye
towards how on-the-ground collective practices are influenced, but not completely determined,
by neoliberal feminist agendas, legal frameworks, and political leadership ‘from the top.’
This dissertation is heavily indebted to feminist of color analyses. GABRIELA does not
call itself a feminist organization; but I identify political synergies between its gender politics
and women of color feminist critiques of capitalism, empire, and state violence. Both

9

GABRIELA and U.S. feminists of color encounter racialized U.S. state violence, but from
different locations. While GABRIELA’s political vision brings U.S. empire into sharp relief,
U.S. feminists of color have challenged racist state violence perpetrated through policing and the
prison-industrial complex. Both have been concerned with transforming violence in the
‘personal’ or private sphere, hand-in-hand with challenging structural violence. My dissertation
is one of the few to approach Philippine women’s organizing through a feminist of color ‘lens’ in
the sense of being inspired by certain investments: feminist of color critiques of NGOization and
state violence have especially influenced which aspects of GABRIELA’s grassroots organizing
against abuse this study lifts up, as well as my analysis of strategies’ potentials.
While GABRIELA organizers’ responses to interpersonal gendered violence include
providing services and facilitating law enforcement, I have particularly sought to highlight their
on-the-ground practices of collectivizing mutual support and community engagement that exceed
these. I argue GABRIELA organizers’ latter strategies have fostered long-term transformations
that surpass possibilities offered by neoliberal imperial feminist frameworks for punitive state
action – offering vehicles for creating change on a deeper and larger scale, guided by urban poor
women’s leadership and needs. I foreground how it is that these streams in GABRIELA’s
community-based organizing are not simply reducible to neoliberal imperial feminist policies. I
attend to how community-based interventions, including but exceeding legal recourses, try to
meet urban poor women’s needs for justice and support, as they engage in contestations over
how to remake the state from the ground up.
Rather than avoiding state-building altogether, GABRIELA re-centers and raises
important questions around taking and making state power, from an anti-imperialist perspective.
Instead of merely measuring GABRIELA by a U.S. feminist of color standard, I ultimately wish

10

to consider how its grassroots strategies and political project are relevant to U.S. feminism of
color, in hopes of gesturing at possibilities for radical solidarities. GABRIELA’s gender politics,
linked to its particular context and social movements field, animate tensions of how to advance a
different kind of state-building, challenge neoliberal imperial state violence – and provide safety
from domestic and sexual abuse.

2. ‘The Revolution Will Come Home’ and Scales of Violence
My title, ‘The Revolution Will Come Home,’ purposefully refers to ‘home’ on multiple
levels, literally and metaphorically. First and foremost, this dissertation unpacks GABRIELA’s
social movement strategies for countering intimate partner and sexual abuse in the ‘domestic’ or
‘private’ sphere. But on a second level of ‘home,’ GABRIELA’s organizing in Metro Manila is
inseparably bound up with struggles for land and housing. The life trajectories of many of my
interviewees involved racialized and gendered migrations to the city, followed by resistance
against urban displacement inflicted in the name of ‘development’ and climate change. At yet
another scale, GABRIELA demands ‘national sovereignty’ of the homeland as requisite for the
liberation of Filipino peoples. My title reflects the many scales at which GABRIELA organizers
seek to remake and transform relations of ‘home’ – and the many levels of aspiration in their
political cosmology. For GABRIELA, these various scales of organizing – relational, regional,
national – and realms of struggle for transformations in human relationships, livelihood, and
political power, are interconnected and ideally, mutually reinforcing. Likewise, I begin from the
premise that these multiple scales of violence inseparably reinforce the interpersonal gendered
violence in urban poor GABRIELA members’ lives. On a final level, ‘The Revolution Will
Come Home’ serves as a metaphor for radical, transnational political exchange between the

11

imperial periphery of the Philippines, and imperial center, or ‘belly of the beast’ so to speak –
where ‘home’ connotes the U.S. In my Conclusion, I place GABRIELA in dialog with U.S.
feminist of color approaches to ‘community accountability’ for domestic and sexual abuse.
Oppositional social movements seeking to challenge hegemonic understandings – and
moreover, to change the power relations intertwined with these ideologies that have material
consequences
7
– can be vital repositories of alternative visions and practices. Lisa’s provocative
comment opening this Introduction, on the limitations of domestic violence shelters, suggests
how transformative (even, dare we say, revolutionary) social movement strategies for addressing
interpersonal gendered violence in poor women’s grassroots organizing can offer fresh
possibilities. Such organizing can also contain critiques of the violences embedded in taken-for-
granted approaches to domestic violence in the U.S., that are nevertheless being replicated by
Global South states in wake of colonization.
In the remainder of this Introduction, I first describe GABRIELA and the urban poor
organizers who were the primary interview subjects of this study. Then, I define ‘neoliberal
imperialism’ and ‘neoliberal imperial’ feminisms, explaining the theoretical lenses and
investments this project is built upon and engages with. Next, I discuss where and how this
dissertation intervenes in scholarship on social movements. Finally, I present my research
methods, and summarize the chapters to follow.

3. Meet GABRIELA
The Federation
GABRIELA – an acronym which stands for the ‘General Assembly Binding Women for

7
This comment in conversation with the work of Treva Ellison.

12

Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action’ – is named after the historical figure of
Gabriela Silang, a woman general who led a revolt against Spanish colonizers in northern Luzon
during the late 18
th
century. Founded in 1984 during the movement to oust dictator Ferdinand
Marcos, the federation’s political agenda has closely intertwined with Philippine struggles for
both national liberation and economic justice (Angeles 1989; Lacsamana 2011; A. Santos 2010).
In particular, it has allied with a left formation known as the ‘national democratic’ (ND)
movement, that burst into Philippine politics during the late 1960s, strongly influenced by Third
World nationalism and the work of Mao Zedong. Today its programs reflect a combination of
nationalist, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, as well as feminist influences.
8
GABRIELA is not only
one of the most vibrant and active federations in the ND movement; but a vital player in
Philippine leftist coalition politics, that has helped shift its larger social movement field.
9

Remaining strongly aligned with the ND movement, GABRIELA considers itself an
alliance struggling “for the liberation of women and the rest of the Filipino people” (GABRIELA
2001c). Its publicity materials explain:
We are a movement dealing distinctly with the problems of women as women, working
to free women from all forms of economic and political oppression and discrimination,
sexual violence and abuse, neglect and denial of their health and reproductive rights; a
movement integral to the national liberation struggle for sovereignty, a democratic and
representative government and equality between women and men in all aspects of life; a
vital movement to harness the power of half of the country’s population towards
liberation. (GABRIELA 2001b)

GABRIELA affirms long-standing ND goals of opposing imperialism, feudal domination, and an
unaccountable state; but it also commits to challenging “patriarchal value systems and

8
Allthough, as I will explain, the federation no longer labels itself ‘feminist.’
9
Including national democratic groups, women’s groups, and international allies; see Chapter 3 for further
discussion. GABRIELA and the women’s organizations that emerged since the 1970s helped effect a change in
Philippine left politics, where dominant organizations went from resisting any references to gendered violence as
‘divisive,’ to incorporating agendas around the latter and women’s status as legitimate areas of political concern.

13

structures,” and to politicizing women’s distinct conditions and experiences of violence
(GABRIELA 2001a).
10

From its inception GABRIELA has taken on interpersonal gendered violence, whether
perpetrated in the home, workplace, or by state agents. It has launched national campaigns
around policy change and high-profile cases, but on the local level, neighborhood organizing
challenges incidents of domestic and sexual abuse even when the perpetrator is not someone
famous, rich, or extremely powerful. In the GABRIELA chapters where I conducted fieldwork,
women have become politically active through receiving support in situations of intimate partner
abuse. GABRIELA’s organizing has also impacted the consciousness of persons perpetrating
violence, pushing them to become political allies. A strategy of what it terms ‘comprehensive’
organizing means that while GABRIELA’s formal constituency is women, at the grassroots
level, its organizers also help set up allied groups of youth, men, LGBT people, and more.
GABRIELA has affected attitudes towards abuse, and prompted direct action against such
violence, in neighborhoods where it operates.
I purposefully apply a ground-up lens focusing on GABRIELA’s grassroots activity in
local chapters. I center the community-based aspects of organizers’ interventions against abuse
to foreground elements of a social movements approach that distinguish its particular strengths –
such as transforming local economies of affect, support networks, and extralegal power relations
through collective direct action and organizing – from advocacy or policy methods. However, a
‘ground-up’ lens can run the risk of ignoring a larger picture of how GABRIELA’s policy-work,
including ‘top-down’ or broad programmatic initiatives, influence local strategies. Thus, in
Chapters 3 and 4, I also consider GABRIELA’s initiatives regarding ‘violence against women’ in

10
See Appendix A for GABRIELA’s statement of principles.

14

realms of legislative advocacy and ‘gender-mainstreaming’ policy implementation.
As a whole, GABRIELA’s tactics range from oppositional protest, to the creation of
alternative institutions to meet people’s needs, to electoral politics and legal reform.
‘Prefigurative politics’ is a term from Latin American social movements referring to
tranformative practices and institutions reflecting principles and values of liberation, that are put
into place in the current moment rather than waiting until ‘after the revolution.’ I argue
GABRIELA combines prefigurative, reformist, and revolutionary politics, aiming to both
ultimately take state power, and ‘make’ power from the ground up; how it does so complicates
political frameworks that polemicize these processes. Throughout this dissertation, I trace how
GABRIELA’s various and layered engagements with the state, influenced by the larger ND
movement’s politics, relate to its strategies towards domestic and sexual abuse.

Local Organizers and Members in Metro Manila
Although GABRIELA is a federation that cuts across class and brings together various
sectors, its bulk consists of low-income women’s organizations. The urban poor organizers I
focus on for this study were members of direct
11
GABRIELA chapters in Metro Manila which
coordinate regionally with one another. The neighborhoods they operated in were historically
informal settlements, public housing projects, or government relocation sites.
12
Several
communities originally had chapters of SAMAKANA
13
– a member organization of GABRIELA
for urban poor women – during the 1980s, that laid the basis for future GABRIELA organizing.
Similar to other ND mass organizations, GABRIELA’s grassroots organizers are almost
all volunteer. Local organizers, chapter officers, and members whom I interviewed and surveyed

11
As opposed to chapters of GABRIELA member organizations that go by a different name.
12
See Chapter 5 for more detailed profiles of my research sites.
13
Samahan ng Maralitang Kababaihang Nagkakaisa

15

for this study were low-income residents of the areas where they organized – reflecting how
GABRIELA’s operations in Metro Manila largely rely on urban poor women themselves. Most
grew up in peasant and working-class households, although a small minority had come from
lower ‘middle-class’
14
backgrounds and experienced downward mobility. More than half of my
interviewees from local chapters had originally migrated to Metro Manila from the provinces,
especially poor regions of the Visayas and secondarily Mindanao; roughly a third had parents
who were farmers.
15
Meanwhile, nearly a fourth were born in Metro Manila. Most interviewees
had joined GABRIELA in the 2000s or later, reflecting renewed grassroots campaigns
coordinated through GABRIELA’s National Office in Quezon City.
Nearly half of urban poor interviewees, as well as surveyed GABRIELA members,
reported that they had suffered some form of domestic or sexual violence. In Chapters 1 and 2, I
elaborate further on the political economic conditions shaping my interviewees’ life trajectories
and experiences of gendered violence. Many
16
had experienced forced displacement through the
demolition of their informal housing, or impending demolition. Nearly all urban poor women
organizers had earned a living in the informal economy, for instance as vendors, domestic
workers, or scavengers; they had almost never been employed at minimum wage.
17
The majority
of local organizers and members interviewed had children, and a live-in partner. Male partners
earned income in vending, scavenging, transportation, construction, and sometimes services.

14
‘Middle-class’ is a contested term in the Philippine context. Some scholars argue that the so-called Philippine
‘middle class’ is not comparable to that in the U.S. or First World, because those able to afford ‘middle-class’
lifestyles or professional status in the Philippines are an extremely elite economic minority, rather than a broader
strata. In Metro Manila, those in professional jobs, such as teachers or nurses, may live in informal settlements and
be subject to working-class pressures. My interviewees from lower ‘middle-class’ backgrounds included someone
whose parents had finished college but held blue-collar jobs; and a woman adopted by a relative who had served as a
judge and public school teacher in the provinces.
15
At least a third of these migrants came to Metro Manila in the 1980s, although a few settled earlier, and some
arrived as recently as the 2000s. See Chapters 1 and 5 for more background on study participants.
16
Nearly a third of my local interviewees and one in five GABRIELA members surveyed; see Chapter 1.
17
See Chapters 1 and 2 for a more detailed discussion.

16

While schooled in life and adept facilitators of political education workshops, the bulk of
local officers and organizers I interviewed had attained high school educations or less; several
had only attended primary school.
18
Interestingly, compared to GABRIELA members in
general, those with some college education appeared to be overrepresented among local officers
and organizers I spoke with, even as they remained in the minority.
19
Some college-educated
interviewees were women who had earned degrees in the provinces, but were at best still only
able to achieve temporary employment, at working-class positions paying under legal minimum
wage. Other college-educated organizers included a handful of younger, Manila-born folks from
poor and peasant families; their parents were farmers, vendors, or working-class. After
schooling they decided to devote themselves to organizing, a few in the very informal
settlements or housing projects where they had grown up.

4. Stakes: Ideology and Form
4.1 On Political Economy and Gendered Violence
Neoliberal Imperialism
In this dissertation, I apply the term ‘neoliberal imperialism’ to describe a system of both
neoliberal economic policies and imperialist militarization that shapes the political economic
context of the Philippines today, reinforcing its neocolonial domination by the U.S. I do so not
only to critically examine how neoliberal imperialism has thoroughly impacted urban poor
women’s experiences of interpersonal gendered violence. Moreover, this study considers how
GABRIELA’s organizing around VAW disrupts, contests, and engages ‘neoliberal imperial’

18
Reflecting overall demographics of GABRIELA members surveyed; see Chapter 1.
19
In my broader survey of GABRIELA members, officers were more likely that members to have attended some
college, and organizers more likely than members to have had some high school (but less likely to have attended
college); see Chapter 1.

17

feminist politics complicit in furthering neoliberal imperialism, under the guise of advancing
‘gender equality.’
Why ‘Neoliberal Imperialism’?
Because of the U.S.’s historical conquest and continued domination of the Philippines,
the latter is a crucially important site from which to revision and reframe our understandings of
neoliberalism, globalization, militarization, and U.S. empire – as well as of how gendered
violence operates in relation to these. U.S. conquest extended into the Asia-Pacific and
Philippines during the Philippine-American War, resulting in over four decades of occupation
and colonization until formal independence in 1946. As Robyn Rodriguez has argued,
“Neoliberal orthodoxy… takes different shapes in different states… Neoliberalism in the
Philippines and other formerly colonized areas needs to be understood within the context of
legacies of imperialism” (2010, xvi–xvii).
David Harvey coined the term ‘neoliberal imperialism’ to distinguish one mode of post-
1970s U.S. imperialism, enacted through neoliberal economic restructuring, from another kind of
‘neoconservative imperialism,’ which he saw as much more reliant on belligerent military
aggression (as in the case of George W. Bush’s pre-emptive wars).
20
However, scholars of
neocolonialism have disputed a clear separation between these economic and military tools of
coercion, particularly when considering ‘empire’ from Third World perspectives (e.g., Hahn
2007; Brenner 2006; Prashad 2012; van Apeldoorn and de Graaff 2012; Godfrey et al. 2014).

20
‘U.S. empire’ is a controversial specter in much academic scholarship where, in the fields of international
development, urban studies, or political science, literature disagrees on both how to define empire, as well as
whether a U.S. form even currently exists. For some, neoliberal globalization and dispersed power have rendered
spatial concepts of dependent development, core and periphery, antiquated; and even the role of the nation-state in
imperial projects relatively irrelevant (e.g., Hardt and Negri 2000). Nevertheless, the breakup of the USSR, leaving
the U.S. as the only superpower, as well as the ‘post-9/11’ era, have both helped spur a surge of global scholarly
interest in U.S. imperialism (e.g., Kaplan and Pease 1993; Parenti 1995; Johnson 2000; San Juan 2007; C. Lutz
2009). After all, U.S. hegemony is lauded by neoconservative think tanks, military spending and global operations
continue to climb to new heights, and Obama pledges another ‘American Century.’

18

Meanwhile, critical race studies scholars raise important reminders regarding the long history of
the U.S. state’s investments in conquest, settler-colonialism, and imperial ventures both from its
inception and since 9/11 (e.g., Stannard 1992; Lowe 1996; Isaac 2006; Puar 2007; D. Rodriguez
2009; J. Kim 2010; Maira 2009; Gilmore 2002).
I use the term ‘neoliberal imperialism’ to remind that neoliberal restructuring is only the
latest phase in a longer history of U.S. imperialism. Rather than speaking of the current political
economic order in terms of ‘globalization,’ I join scholars who recognize how neoliberalism is
embedded in legacies of colonization, and furthermore, undergirded by coercive violence
through militarization and state repression. I acknowledge ongoing struggles of territoriality that
are very much about control over places, resources, and extraction – not simply the international
dispersal of production and consumption. Additionally, I draw attention to the continued
relevance of nation-states and unequal relations between them. Building on critical race
scholarship, I emphasize continuities of imperialist dispossession and violence perpetrated by the
U.S. state, rather than seeing these as aberrations.
The Philippines is a location that lends to a long history of both U.S. imperialism, and
neoliberal restructuring. Historians have traditionally periodized the age of ‘imperialism’ as
ending with WWII, in order to demarcate an era of ‘decolonization’ and nation-state formation
after. However, recent scholarship on U.S. empire observes continuities between these periods,
in spite of the political ‘sovereignty’ granted former colonies (e.g., Grandin 2006; W. Anderson
2006; San Juan 2007). Likewise, following the Philippines’ formal independence, the U.S.
ensured its neocolonial position through amendments
21
to the Philippine Constitution and

21
For instance, the Philippine Constitution originally reserved the development of public utilities and exploitation of
natural resources to Filipinos or corporations at least 60 percent Filipino-owned; but under the ‘parity ‘ amendment,
U.S. citizens were allowed up to 100 percent ownership (Schirmer and Shalom 1987, 87).

19

unequal economic agreements like the 1946 Bell Trade Act and 1955 Laural-Langley
Agreement, which drastically favored U.S. capital; as well as by establishing U.S. military bases
in the Philippines, and propping up elitist regimes with military and economic aid (Schirmer and
Shalom 1987, 87–8; Lindio-McGovern 1997, 34–40; Simbulan 1983; Tuazon 2011c, 9–10).
The case of the Philippines expands and reperiodizes the timeframe we typically
understand to be marked by neoliberalism’s ascendancy, as well, allowing us to see its earlier
roots in colonization. By ‘neoliberalism,’ I refer to policies of social service austerity,
privatization, deregulation, and liberalization;
22
often hand-in-hand with increased state
investments in militarization and policing. Neoliberalism revolves around a ‘free market’
economic ideology of minimal state intervention to check corporate power, alongside active state
involvement to expand use of the profit motive for distributing resources in society. While
neoliberal policies ascended to orthodoxy after global economic restructuring in the 1970s, they
trace back to at least the post-WWII era. For instance, U.S.- and World Bank-brokered trade
liberalization hit the Philippines as early as the late 1950s, reversing its nascent success with
import-substitution industrialization; I briefly recapitulate the subsequent course of neoliberal
restructuring in Chapter 1. I use the term ‘neoliberal imperialism’ to refer to this longer history,
noting continuities since ‘independence’ that elucidate why neoliberalism in the Philippines
takes on peculiarly neocolonial forms, even as its political economy has been neither stagnant
nor unchanging. Due to my focus on recent GABRIELA organizing, though, I concentrate on
the gendered effects of intensified neoliberal imperial economic restructuring since 1986, the fall
of the Marcos dictatorship.
Some globalization literature has stressed the inefficacy of nation-states when it comes to

22
I.e., the lowering of barriers to trade, capital flows, and speculative investment.

20

regulating financial flows or providing supports to the dispossessed. Instead, I emphasize such
trends are a product of corporate and oligarchal elites seizing upon state structures to advance
their interests. Nation-states are not necessarily irrelevant, but captured by these private actors;
and as Rodriguez writes, “Rather than being hollowed out, the state has created new apparatuses
by which to actually facilitate neoliberalism” (2010, xvi). States are essential vehicles for
militarization and the maintenance of territorial borders, both those that literally mark their
edges, as well as borders of access and power, within and without them. Along such lines, U.S.
empire
23
produces territorial spatializations, through a host of direct and outsourced military and
economic mechanisms.
24
In Chapters 1 and 2, I explore how this neocolonial territoriality, and
its attendant processes of repeated displacement, reify gendered violence.
Neoliberal Imperialism and State ‘Capacity-Building’
The Philippine state itself must be historicized as a product of U.S. colonization.
Drawing on scholarship by Paul Kramer (2006), Benedict Anderson (1988) and Bobby Tuazon
(2011c), I emphasize that even if, at times, the U.S. has pursued tactics of regime destabilization,
U.S. neocolonialism also operates and maintains itself through processes of proxy-state capacity-
building. Rather than only ruling through appointed colonial governors, since WWII, U.S.
imperialism has exerted influence through the very business of setting up ‘democracies’ that are
not truly democratically representative. In the Philippines, U.S. colonial rule established a
federated and highly elitist election system, facilitating the domination of the future Philippine

23
While hegemonic, the U.S. state is not the only one seized upon by elites to implement imperial aspirations,
whether along the lines of primitive accumulation, militarization, or market expansion. We see a form of ‘neoliberal
imperialism’ when the Korean military swoops in to rebuild Philippine schools after Super Typhoon Yolanda, or
when the Philippine state militarizes indigenous lands for natural resource extraction. But rather than simply
framing these trends as ‘militarization,’ I ask how they also relate to a U.S. imperial hegemon – as well as to
neoliberal rules of governmentality.
24
Despite military invasions and its global network of bases, the U.S. has kept several of its forays into direct rule
temporary. Yet critical race geographers understand territoriality in terms of not only acquisition; but how processes
of spatial differentiation regenerate inequalities, and vice versa (e.g., Woods 1998; Gilmore 2002; Pulido 2000).

21

government by oligarchs and local warlords (B. Anderson 1988; Tuazon 2011c). Imperialism
operates through collusion with local elites; the division of labor offered through formal political
independence can serve as a convenient buffer, insulating the U.S. state from accountability.
25

This kind of ‘deformed state’ and its ‘deformed nationalism’
26
poses a certain quandary
for Philippine social movements against U.S. imperialism. By ‘deformed state,’ I refer to how
the capacity of the neocolonial state is structurally intertwined with U.S. interests (e.g., see Bello
et al. 1982; Tuazon 2011b; Bello et al. 2005).
27
At the same time, the weak Philippine state is in
crisis. Besides relying directly on state coercion, ruling elites in the Philippines exercise
‘extralegal’ and ‘paramilitary’ methods to advance their interests. (Such ‘extralegal’ methods
are often nevertheless effectively ‘state-sanctioned,’ as for instance, when paramilitaries operate
in partnership with the Philippine state’s official armed forces.) On the one hand, the ND
movement struggles for a different kind of state to represent the interests of the Philippine poor,
including against U.S. imperialist extraction. But on the other hand, as this dissertation will
explore, working to reform the existing state’s capacity to address gendered violence creates
certain contradictions, when in effect its repressive apparatuses are shored up.
28

Gendered Violence and Neoliberal Imperialism in the Philippines
I build on the work of feminist scholars who urge attention to the connections between
gendered violence and political economic context; and specifically, Filipina feminists who have

25
E.g., in conducting ‘joint military operations,’ the U.S. minimizes its own casualties under the guise of partnership
with the Philippine government, but pursues its interests in counterinsurgency operations.
26
To borrow from Dylan Rodriguez’s (2009) and Paul Kramer’s (2006) conceptualizations of how Philippine
‘nationalist’ claims have been subsumed under and co-opted by U.S. colonial, imperialist, and assimilationist
projects.
27
The U.S. then has perfected constraining these regimes with military and economic strings, pulled through
disciplinary bestowal or withdrawal of U.S. executive favor. Neocolonized realms like the Philippines depend on
such favor to enhance their state capacity, relying on U.S. machineries to help squelch uprisings, and economic
packages in the form of aid, loans, and ‘preferential’ trade agreements that maintain status quos of extraction.
28
I am influenced by Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s analysis of prisons as not just the result of ‘state failure,’ but very
much a project of state-building, as the neoliberal state is both more neglectful and more coercive (2002; 2007b).

22

asked us to center U.S. imperialism (e.g., Aguilar 1998; Lacsamana 2009; Lindio-McGovern and
Wallimann 2009).
29
Scholarship on women in the Philippines has analyzed how facets of
neoliberal imperialism have reinforced gendered violence in a variety of forms. Elizabeth
Eviota’s (1992) seminal work on the Philippine political economy of gender explored gendered
impacts of colonization and extractive development historically. An extensive literature on
gendered effects of World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs since WWII emphasizes
how these have contributed to the immiseration of Global South women and the feminization of
poverty (e.g., Sparr 1994; Angeles 2002; A. Santos and Lee 1989; Taguiwalo 1993b; R. P.
Ofreneo 1998).
30
Regarding interpersonal gendered violence, a vibrant Philippine feminist
literature connects economic restructuring and militarization to the sexual commodification of
women, critiquing how the latter is deployed as part of state development strategies (e.g.,
Angeles 2002; A. Santos 1992).
31

Such critiques of neoliberal globalization and militarization resonate with the work of
feminist scholars Cynthia Enloe (1990) and Catherine Lutz (2002) to gender international
relations, and analyze gendered impacts of U.S. bases, tourism, and export-oriented
development. Yet U.S. feminist scholarship on globalization and militarization has not
necessarily centered ongoing imperialism (or neocolonialism) as an analytical category. Rather

29
For instance, Delia Aguilar has argued that the narrative of Filipina migrants fleeing domestic violence must also
be understood in the context of political economic factors; she urges scholars to specifically unpack imperialism,
and not just globalization (Panuela 2002). Aguilar has intervened in Western feminist scholarship that would
marginalize imperialism’s continuing impact, reclaiming nationalism as necessarily part of a Philippine feminist
agenda and explicating why. Along similar lines, Lacsamana’s book (2011) on GABRIELA’s politics recovers
materialism as essential to feminism, arguing for how GABRIELA engages with and provides a gendered analysis
of imperialism in ways that defy the scope of postmodern theory.
30
I detail these conditions and how they reinforce urban poor women’s experiences of gendered violence in
Chapters 1 and 2. Philippine feminist scholars have explored gendered impacts of the debt crisis, the 1997 financial
crisis, as well as state interest in EPZ and tourism development (e.g., see Angeles 2002; A. Santos and Lee 1989;
Taguiwalo 1993b; R. P. Ofreneo 1998; Kwiatkowski 1998; Lim 2000).
31
Other work discusses how militarization reinforces gendered exploitation (e.g., Lindio-McGovern 1997).

23

than more deeply problematizing unequal neocolonial relations, such analyses risk reducing the
problem of militarism to ‘violent masculinities’ – and individual male choice to desist – without
fully holding responsible the larger structures producing and mobilizing such masculinities.
Meanwhile, some feminist critiques of ‘globalization’ have continued to let premises of
neoliberal restructuring off the hook; too often they fall short of taking on aspects of U.S.
imperialism applicable to low-income women in the Philippines.
32

As I discuss in Chapter 2, much work needs to be done to unpack the connections
between domestic abuse and political economy in the Philippines.
33
I foreground neoliberal
imperialism as a factor shaping Filipina urban poor women’s experiences of VAW. As I explain
below, to do so questions premises of hegemonic ‘gender-mainstreaming’ approaches to
interpersonal gendered violence, which have abetted neoliberal imperial development paradigms.

‘Neoliberal Imperial’ Feminisms and Contestations
How I analyze the political stakes of GABRIELA’s gender politics is very much
informed by U.S. women of color, transnational, and Third World feminisms. This body of
feminist of color theory developed since the 1970s partly in critical response to impacts of
neoliberal imperial restructuring. Furthermore, feminists of color and others have decried
dimensions of feminist complicity with neoliberal governmentality, globalization, empire,
capitalist exploitation, militarization, and the ‘workfare-warfare’
34
state – coining a variety of

32
See Chapter 2 for fuller discussion.
33
As noted, with regard to sexual abuse the existing literature focuses on the impact of militarization, particularly
regarding the sex industry. Meanwhile, studies on the prevalence of intimate partner violence explore correlations
with economic factors, such as employment – but have not explicitly analyzed the role of restructuring and other
neoliberal imperial policies in exacerbating this violence (e.g., Hindin and Adair 2002; Guerrero and Sobritchea
1997; Antai et al. 2014). Internationally, scholarship has documented how economic crises contribute to increased
intimate partner violence, but analyses of domestic violence and neoliberalism have tended to focus on Global North
locations (e.g., True 2012, 105; Harney 2011); an exception is Barbara Sutton’s work on Argentina (2010, 145).
34
Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s phrase describing neoliberalism in the U.S. (2007b).

24

terms to describe the mainstream feminisms they contest.
35
For the purposes of this dissertation,
I use the overarching term ‘neoliberal imperial feminisms’ as an umbrella catch-phrase for such
gender politics that feminists of color challenge, recognizing their critiques index structural
violence in neoliberal imperial times.
Although feminisms of color grapple with gender – as well as how gender oppression
interacts in conjunction with inequalities of class, race, nation, and other forms of structural
violence – much of this theory contests that gender should consistently be posed as the primary
category of analysis. Likewise, feminists of color contest that gender inequality should be
construed as the foremost or originary oppression facing women across the globe (e.g., see Amos
and Parmar 1984; Alexander and Mohanty 1997; Cohen 1997; Mohanty 1988; Trask 2004).
Instead, they have insisted the ‘universal’ woman of ‘global sisterhood’ does not represent an
agenda for all women, but a particularized positionality; mere ‘inclusion’ within a ‘global
sisterhood,’ or a white liberal feminist agenda, is not the same as addressing the needs of non-
white, indigenous, poor, etc., women. We must prioritize the totality of structural violences
affecting people’s lives, rather than subordinating these to an agenda that defines gendered
violence narrowly. Such a redefinition of feminist politics has implications regarding how we
trace feminist genealogies; Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Mohanty argue that Third World
feminist genealogies should be situated in “complicated overlapping historical matrices of left
liberation struggles, contemporary nationalisms (in spite of feminism’s contestatory relationship
to nationalism), and the very presence and intervention of the state itself” (1997, xxii).
GABRIELA’s shifting gender politics have been influenced, but not defined by global

35
For instance, they have labeled various facets of neoliberal imperial feminist politics as ‘white liberal,’ ‘free-
market,’ ‘imperial,’ ‘global,’ and ‘carceral’ feminisms (Alexander and Mohanty 1997, xv; Sangtin Writers and
Nagar 2006; Herr 2014; Amos and Parmar 1984; Sudbury 2005).

25

feminist discourses. In fact, as dominant strains in feminism persistently disengaged with anti-
imperialist politics, in the late 1990s, GABRIELA as an organization came to disavow the
‘feminist’ label.
36
My investment is not so much in claiming GABRIELA as ‘feminist,’ as in
exploring how its approaches to interpersonal gendered violence relate to neoliberal imperial
feminisms – thus with relevance to feminist of color debates on alternatives to the latter. Both
GABRIELA and women of color feminisms have engaged in challenging neoliberal imperialism,
as well as dominant feminist approaches that collude with the latter.
Below I focus on ‘imperial feminism,’ global feminist ‘gender mainstreaming,’ and
‘carceral feminism,’ as three areas of neoliberal imperial feminist politics my dissertation
intervenes against. Imperial feminists have justified neocolonial state violence; ‘gender-
mainstreaming’ agendas tend to define VAW narrowly; and carceral feminists pose
militarization and incarceration as chief solutions. By adopting GABRIELA as a case study, I
explore a gender politics that helps expose neoliberal imperialism, widens our conceptualizations
of VAW, and addresses domestic abuse through a social movements approach.
‘Imperial Feminism’
Feminists of color first coined the term ‘imperial feminism’ to name feminist agendas
that perpetuate racist logics by sanitizing imperial histories (Amos and Parmar 1984). Black
feminist Julia Sudbury extended this critique, using ‘imperial feminism’ to describe a politics of
support for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan under the guise of ‘liberating’ women (2000).
37

Similarly, queer of color theorists have explored the mobilization of a narrow, racialized
conception of LGBT rights as a justification for U.S. imperialist aggression abroad, as well as

36
GABRIELA considers itself a movement for the liberation of Filipino women, allied with the ND struggle. Some
individual leaders and founders continue to identify as ‘feminist,’ while others do not.
37
Imperial feminist politics have dovetailed with justifications for state violence – whether war or policing –
reinforcing tropes such as the need to protect women from non-white men.

26

policing and gentrification at home (e.g., see Puar 2007; Manalansan 2005; Hanhardt 2008). I
build on these critiques, which underscore the urgency of an alternative politics around gender
oppression and empire, by highlighting a Global South women’s organization with an anti-
imperialist gender politics – and how the latter conjoin with its organizing against interpersonal
gendered violence.
Neoliberal Governmentality and ‘Gender Mainstreaming’
At the international level since the 1980s, increased attention to ‘women's empowerment’
and ‘gender mainstreaming’ by international governing bodies, states, and burgeoning NGO
sectors helped establish what Richa Nagar has termed a global ‘gender hegemony’ (Sangtin
Writers and Nagar 2006). Nagar described this gender politics, which dominates international
development policy, as an approach to combating gender inequality that typically serves global
capital and empire. For instance, she argued that global feminism usually frames ‘poor women’s
empowerment’ around a focus on issues like VAW (narrowly defined) and HIV/AIDS – rather
than rising commodity prices or health cuts (caused by privatization). Funding agencies
prioritize initiatives for microfinance and perhaps women’s cooperatives, but shy away from
promoting unionization or land reform.
38
This kind of ‘gender mainstreaming’ in the neoliberal
era directs our attention to certain facets of gendered violence to the exclusion of others, with a
tendency not to take on structural violence caused by neoliberal globalization and imperialism.
Scholars have hotly debated the impacts of ‘gender mainstreaming,’ as well as associated
NGOization, on Third World women’s organizing, including in the Philippines (e.g., Taguiwalo
1998; Sobritchea 2004a; Santos-Maranan et al. 2007).
39
GABRIELA’s politics around VAW

38
Yet microfinance often subjects poor women to rigorous surveillance and a kind of debt bondage for subsistence
loans – in many cases preserving gender and class hierarchies (e.g., R. P. Ofreneo 2005; Rahman 1999).
39
See Chapter 3.

27

evolved in reaction to this terrain. ‘Gender-mainstreaming’ agendas often define VAW in terms
of interpersonal gender-based violence such as intimate partner violence, sexual abuse, as well as
trafficking. Instead, GABRIELA organizers purposefully defined VAW more broadly; and came
to critique UN women’s conference agendas as compartmentalizing individual issues, and
deflecting organizing efforts from a more systemic analysis.
‘Carceral feminism’ and Interpersonal Gendered Violence
‘Carceral feminism’ refers to feminist politics that privilege criminalization, policing, and
incarceration as solutions to domestic and other forms of interpersonal gendered violence (e.g.,
Law 2014; Bernstein 2010). Rather than redistributive models of justice aimed at preventing
violence, neoliberal imperial states have favored punitive sanctions, after violence has already
occurred. Carceral feminist advocacy has played a role legitimizing this prioritization.
For instance, political scientist Kristin Bumiller’s work on the ‘abusive state’ tracked
how the neoliberal U.S. state appropriated feminist organizing against sexual and domestic
violence (2008). U.S. anti-domestic violence organizers went from defining themselves as anti-
state, to becoming “a partner in the unforeseen growth of a criminalized society” (2008, xii). As
feminist activists called for mandatory arrest policies and aggressive prosecution, their agendas
narrowed during the 1990s to focus on criminalization, rather than women’s social and economic
empowerment more broadly. In the U.S., the 1994 Violence Against Women Act deployed more
police and punitive sentencing (Law 2014; Bumiller 2008, 140–6).
40
Moreover, Bumiller
critiques how these carceral politics have been exported as part of U.S. foreign policy, and
globalized through international institutions promoting ‘gender mainstreaming.’

40
Its civil rights provisions were struck down as unconstitutional in 2000, leaving behind its focus on expanding
police capacity, even as underfunded shelters closed (Bumiller 2008, 140–6).

28

Yet as feminists of color and others point out, carceral feminist approaches have often
served to exacerbate violence against poor women of color and their communities (e.g.,
Bhattacharjee and Silliman 2002; Incite! 2006; Incite! 2007; Bumiller 2008; Bierria et al. 2011).
Such reforms ignore how increasing the state’s punitive and militarized infrastructures feeds its
capacity to ramp up anti-poor, racist, and neocolonial violence. Parallel to Black feminist
critiques of carceral feminism, in Mexico, indigenous women have likewise not necessarily
benefited from domestic violence legislation that urban feminists fought for. In 1998, such
reforms in Chiapas modified the penal code to impose harsher penalties for physical abuse. But
R. Aida Hernández Castillo argues that for indigenous women dependent on male financial
support, harsher penalties mean considerable hardship; while legislated remedies of alimony and
child support do not help indigenous women when their husbands lack land and steady work
(2006, 70). Filipina urban poor women whom I interviewed often expressed a similar
positionality: many discussed a dominant sentiment of reluctance to incarcerate abusive partners,
because of economic repercussions. In this study, I consider how, particularly given urban poor
women’s strained relations to incarceration, organizers have responded to their needs.
Julia Sudbury argues that neoliberal globalization has fueled prison growth globally,
effectively in order to manage and punish survival strategies of the dispossessed (2005). She
notes that throughout Global North and South, oppressed racialized groups are disproportionately
targeted. Yet, as Lisa Vetten and Kailash Bhana write about women in South African prisons,
incarceration functions like an abusive relationship (2005); most women prisoners are survivors
of intimate partner and sexual violence, so that the state revictimizes them. Although this study
does not focus on prisoners, in tracing urban poor survivors’ experiences of state violence, I
theorize the Philippine state as an abusive neoliberal imperial state, which operates in partnership

29

with individual abusers.
Feminists of color have argued that instead of unicausal, gender-based approaches to
domestic violence, we must consider how race, sexuality, immigration, culture, and class also
shape such experiences – exploring a broader view of societal structures facilitating this abuse
(e.g., Natalie J. Sokoloff and Pratt 2005; Incite! 2006). Rather than mainstream criminal justice
approaches that frame domestic violence as a ‘law-and-order’ problem, we need prevention and
intervention that understands such violence “structurally as an economic, public health, labor,
housing, human rights, and educational issue” (Websdale and Johnson 2005, 413). For instance,
women must have the material means to live independently from their abusers; one study found
access to housing a primary factor, followed by jobs, allowing women to successfully leave
abusive relationships (Websdale and Johnson 2005).
In the U.S., the INCITE! anthology Color of Violence, combining activist and scholarly
feminist of color essays, sought to redirect political attention from criminal legal and services
responses to domestic violence, to prioritize the problem of state violence (2006).
41

Furthermore, the editors argued women of color facing both interpersonal and state violence
need strategies for ending violence that “do assure safety for survivors of sexual/domestic
violence and do not strengthen our oppressive criminal justice apparatus” (2006, 2). Similarly,
Victoria Law has argued, “casting policing and prisons as the solution to domestic violence both
justifies increases to police and prison budgets and diverts attention from… cuts to programs that
enable survivors to escape, such as shelters, public housing, and welfare;” it also discourages
creating responses through community intervention and organizing (2014).

41
The anthology reframed the question of how to make domestic violence services more ‘multiculturally
competent,’ to how to end VAW that women of color suffer, broadly defined (including state and economic
violence).

30

U.S. feminists of color have called for alternative means of addressing domestic and
sexual abuse through ‘community accountability’ methods that do not rely on police or state
agencies (Bierria et al. 2011; Incite! 2006). At the same time, they urge anti-racist social
movements (including organizing against the prison-industrial complex and police brutality) to
respond to the immediate needs of people of color suffering interpersonal abuse (e.g., Chen et al.
2011; Kershnar et al. 2007).
42
However, U.S. examples of implementing ‘community
accountability’ interventions tend to be small scale, and not yet taken up by larger base-building
movement organizations.

4.2 A Social Movements Approach
Social Movement Approaches to Interpersonal Gendered Violence
In the neoliberal era, examples of leftist political formations in the Global South are
offering alternative approaches to movement-building, that attempt to grapple with participants’
varied subjectivities and distinct experiences – whether taking into account gender oppression,
race, indigenous rights, or conditions of flexible labor. Social movements scholarship also notes
divergences from the industrial model of workplace-based organizing, arguing sites such as
urban neighborhood-based or rural movements are rising in prominence (e.g., Fernandes 2010;
Prashad 2012).
43
In Metro Manila, community-based organizing tracks uneven development and
cycles of displacement that are structurally connected to the persistence of landed oligarchy and
lack of land reform, combined with real estate booms under neoliberal imperial restructuring.

42
Works such as the anthology The Revolution Starts at Homes: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist
Communities (2011) have highlighted the problem of gendered, intimate partner, and sexual violence within activist
communities striving for economic and racial justice, while exploring possibilities for ‘community accountability.’
43
While acknowledgement of non-industrial organizing sites may reflect a correction to previous Eurocentric and
masculinist biases in the literature, the shift from workplace-based to community organizing – particularly for
groups facing high unemployment and labor exploitation – also tracks and responds to neoliberal imperial
restructuring. Indeed, after facing lay-offs and contractualization through the 1990s and 2000s, leftist labor
organizers in Metro Manila were deployed to communities from worksites, to assist GABRIELA.

31

Scholarship has noted how these community-based struggles around housing and place are
gendered; poor women’s relationships often serve as foundations for such organizing, because
gendered divisions of labor disproportionately locate their work and social networks in the
neighborhoods where they live (e.g., see Muller and Plantenga 1990; Williams 2004; Feldman
and Stall 2004). Scholars are keen to explore how poor women’s community-based social
movements open possibilities for nontraditional leadership.
At the same time, since the 1980s, Global South women’s movements have operated in a
context of heightened feminist activism, and increasing attention to ‘gender mainstreaming’ from
international governing bodies. In dialectical relation to these trends, poor people’s movements
are self-consciously adopting platforms regarding gender equity and VAW. Globally, these
gender politics of addressing domestic and sexual abuse as a matter of gender justice, in
conjunction with struggles for indigenous or national sovereignty, are a distinct historical
development. GABRIELA’s explicit politics regarding domestic abuse were not possible in the
1970s Philippine social movement sphere; and R. Aida Hernández Castillo argues similarly
regarding indigenous feminism in Mexico (2002).
44
Yet as this dissertation will trace regarding
GABRIELA, Global South poor women’s movements have made discourses around gendered
violence their own, combining them with nationalist, indigenous, and other organizing traditions.
Their gender politics take different forms from hegemonic global, neoliberal imperial feminisms;
although influenced by feminist NGOs, their genealogy also arises from prior struggles, is often
distinct from NGOs’ ‘civil feminisms,’
45
and cannot merely be taken as a spin-off of global

44
This is not to say the pre-1970s women’s organizing in the Philippines did not address instances of domestic
violence. What is different is the scope of behaviors recognized as intimate partner violence; and that organizing to
challenge these is explicitly articulated in terms of gender justice, as well as approached more systematically as part
of overall movement-building strategy, in the women’s movement and beyond. Furthermore, Filipino women have
carved out ‘separate’ or distinct organizing spaces to tackle this collectively.
45
See Hernández Castillo (2006, 61).

32

feminism.
A burgeoning body of scholarship on the approaches of Global South poor people’s
movements towards interpersonal gendered violence centers on the experience of the Zapatistas,
who provide a powerful example of prefigurative politics aimed at changing social relations
while building new institutions. In contrast to other revolutionary movements in El Salvador and
Nicaragua which unfolded in the 1970s and 1980s, predating the power of local and transnational
feminist organizing (Kampwirth 2004), the Zapatistas incorporated a platform for gender
equality from their public emergence in 1994.
46
In Zapatista areas, indigenous women organize
for autonomy and assist the community in the ‘public sphere,’ backed by the implementation of
the Women’s Revolutionary Law. Scholarship reports mixed impacts of Zapatista organizing on
gender dynamics in interpersonal relationships, from changed power relations and attitudes
towards women’s participation, to continued domestic violence in spite of punishments (Forbis
2003, 248–9). Reflecting common patterns in struggles against intimate partner violence, men
with political power or standing as ‘good organizers’ were sometimes not held accountable for
perpetrating domestic violence. For Mercedes Olivera, the most significant impact of Zapatista
organizing might be on indigenous women’s political involvement and changed consciousness to
challenge oppression (2005).
In the Philippines, GABRIELA is not the only women’s group to organize community-
based, collective interventions against domestic violence.
47
Various NGOs, including women’s
groups not affiliated with the ND movement, have engaged in grassroots leadership development
and organizing towards such ends. Maria Garcia explores the experience of HASIK, an NGO in

46
The Zapatista rebellion opened political space for unprecedented activity and coordination amongst mestiza and
indigenous women’s organizations; as well as for synergy between them and indigenous rights groups.
47
See Chapter 3.

33

a Quezon City urban poor community, that organized a community watch against domestic
abuse, along with campaigns for water and electricity, in the 1990s (1999). Unfortunately,
HASIK later faced a crisis of legitimacy connected to publicizing its work against domestic
violence, as well as power struggles within the local Homeowners Association; after NGO
organizers who had initiated activity around domestic abuse left the community, this work was
not carried on by grassroots women leaders. In Cebu, Lihok Pilipina is acclaimed for
establishing neighborhood watch projects against domestic violence, while supporting organizing
around other issues; however, beyond tracing the infrastructure of its community watch and
service programs, studies of Lihok Pilipina tend not to focus on its community-based organizing
tactics (Banaynal-Fernandez 1994; Masilang-Bucoy 2002; Francia 2004).
Few works on GABRIELA have featured its community-based strategies against
domestic abuse in detail, although scholars have documented its other contributions to Philippine
women’s organizing (e.g., Aguilar-San Juan 1982; Lindio-McGovern 1997; Lacsamana 2009;
Roces 2012).
48
One study exploring GABRIELA’s politics towards domestic violence is
Dorothea Hilhorst’s work on Cordillera Women’s NGO (CWNGO), a member organization of
GABRIELA for indigenous women in northern Luzon (2003, 51–79). Hilhorst argues that in the
early 1990s, GABRIELA’s ND affiliation increasingly hampered its ability to publicly challenge
domestic abuse, as a ‘rectification’ campaign within the ND movement pressured CWNGO to
pivot away from socialist feminist politics.
49

48
Roces discusses GABRIELA’s Circle of Friends, a support group for survivors (2012, 112); see also Chapter 3.
49
During her period of study, Hilhorst found CWNGO’s educational activities around a nationalist feminist
framework were increasingly called ‘divisive,’ perhaps for implying class and gender oppression were equally
important; and its handling of domestic violence became politically contentious. However, Hilhorst’s inquiry did
not explore possible distinctions between publicly addressing domestic violence in formal reports and forums,
compared to less visible responses (whereas in contrast, an intersectional politics might privilege strategic fluidity
regarding varying registers of addressing interpersonal and structural violences; see Conclusion). Hilhorst also did
not evaluate GABRIELA’s influence in advancing VAW in general, not only regarding domestic violence, as a
nationalist issue.

34

This dissertation charts new ground by departing from scholarship on Philippine
women’s organizing which has tended to overlook GABRIELA’s contributions regarding VAW
after the 1980s, including because of its splits from other explicitly ‘feminist’ groups. In
foregrounding GABRIELA’s community-based organizing since the 2000s, I pick up where
other studies have left off. I argue that despite GABRIELA’s organizational disavowal of
feminism, in recent years this has nonetheless not meant a retreat from addressing gender
oppression – or interpersonal gendered violence. Rather, in Metro Manila, renewed attention
towards base-building organizing among low-income women, and politicizing domestic abuse,
has resulted in multi-faceted responses to the latter.
Much work remains in documenting how collective interventions unfold on-the-ground in
detail, and their consequences. My focus on GABRIELA, including in communities where it has
an established political history, allows me to explore the potentials of interventions against abuse
connected to vibrant organizing which purports to also represent the interests of poor people in a
locality, as a whole. In many neighborhoods where I conducted research, GABRIELA’s
organizing agenda has positioned it to be a community force around issues such as housing,
healthcare, and price hikes.
50
In several areas, GABRIELA has cultivated the grassroots
leadership of organizers who are from those communities, to take primary collective
responsibility for addressing interpersonal gendered violence on the day-to-day. While some
scholars have written off GABRIELA’s alignment within the ND movement as a liability, this
study considers potentialities which its decades of building mass organizations of poor women,
and ‘comprehensive’ orientation, have brought to how it takes on domestic abuse. Recognizing
the synergy between tactics against abuse and GABRIELA’s movement-building in general, I

50
As noted, local organizers seek to organize the entire community, not only women, into allied political groups.

35

highlight what makes its organizers’ approaches distinct, including compared to other
community-based strategies.

Navigating the Neoliberal Imperial State: Contestations on NGOization and Nationalism
In recent decades, states have wielded ‘the carrot and the stick’ towards oppositional
social movements according to characteristically neoliberal imperial logics. States have
implemented neoliberal imperial cutbacks in social services, allowing ‘civil society’ to partially
fill in gaps in providing for human needs;
51
while continuing to invest in militarization. On one
hand, are policies to contain and ‘partner’ with ‘civil society’ or a state-sanctioned NGO sphere;
and to narrowly but not fundamentally address social inequality, such as through ‘poverty-
alleviation’ measures arbitrarily limited to the ‘poorest of the poor.’ Such incentives have
doubled as the soft side of counterinsurgency, as when favors are granted in return for political
demobilization.
52
On the other hand, states beef up militarization and law enforcement, treating
dissent as terrorism or criminality.
The transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 1980s proved to be a
conjunctural moment for Philippine state, society, and social movements – one in which gender
politics have featured prominently, in both state reforms and an unprecedented NGO sector. The
proliferation of state- and foundation-funded NGOs has distinctly impacted the course of
Philippine social movements, including women’s organizing (e.g., Sobritchea 2004b; Silliman
and Noble 1998; A. Santos 2010; Santos-Maranan et al. 2007; Boudreau 1996).
53
At the same

51
The expansion of this sector to fill a service void under economic restructuring has been dubbed a ‘shadow state’
by Jennifer Wolch (1990). Meanwhile, as a global phenomenon, burgeoning NGO sectors cannot be divorced from
record levels of wealth inequality under neoliberal globalization (e.g., Gilmore 2007a; Ahn 2007).
52
See Chapter 1.
53
Political scientist Vincent G. Boudreau argued that in the early 1990s, state- and foundation-funded NGOization
in the Philippines encouraged organizing in issue-based or sectoral-specific coalitions rather than broader left
formations across multiple issues (1996). See Chapter 3 regarding impacts on women’s organizing.

36

time, the state continues to target the ND movement that GABRIELA has aligned with for
assassinations and brutal repression.
54
My study traces how GABRIELA has grappled with
addressing gendered violence in this shifting political terrain.
Oppositional left movements seeking to displace neoliberal imperial state power take a
range of approaches towards the state. The indigenous movement of the Zapatistas has sought a
space for ‘autonomy,’ through prefigurative politics that attempt to replace state functions from
the ground up. Yet Shannon Speed (2006) has suggested that, in a permutation of neoliberal
multiculturalism, the Mexican state has granted ‘autonomy’ in place of more substantive rights to
indigenous peoples. Still, Zapatista organizing seeks to defy logics of governance offered by the
Mexican state, pushing for autonomy on other terms.
Meanwhile, oppositional organizing in the U.S. is often directed towards reform,
incorporation, and recognition by the state, rather than directly toppling it. A discourse around
‘transformation’ of society, on simultaneous levels from the personal to systemic, predominates
in community-organizing circles oriented by left, anti-racist, and feminist ideologies. At the
same time, U.S. feminists of color have historically been critical of both oppositional
nationalisms and U.S. state-building; such a stance influences visions for ‘community
accountability’ responses to domestic violence, based on divestment and independence from
state functions.
In contrast, left nationalist influences in GABRIELA’s social movement sphere do not
necessarily seek incorporation into the nation-state as it is, or autonomy, but a radical,
‘revolutionary’ reconfiguring of the state. GABRIELA and other ND organizations hold
political goals that ultimately include insurrectionary visions of a different regime – of taking

54
See Chapters 1 and 3.

37

state power. Yet in the process of working towards this end, ND movement groups have entered
not only electoral politics, but also negotiation and engagement with the existing state. Even as
GABRIELA organizers build alternate power from below, they seek reforms to influence
existing state policy, at a variety of scales.
Despite their overlaps, GABRIELA’s gender politics, Zapatista organizing, and U.S.
feminist of color calls for ‘community accountability’ diverge in their orientations towards
insurgent nationalisms, and towards top-down state capacity-building. These various political
formations differently address a set of conundrums related to neoliberal imperial governance,
and their responses are contextually specific. GABRIELA’s ‘nationalist’ stance should be
understood as a struggle over the direction and nature of state-building, in the context of an
existing governing regime that is an appendage of U.S. neoliberal imperial interests. I argue for
a more complex view of ‘nationalism’ that includes its left heritages, and in GABRIELA’s case,
its on-the-ground alliances with struggles against gendered violence.
55

GABRIELA’s tactics operationalize, enrich, and complicate previously discussed visions
for addressing interpersonal violence through community-based organizing. GABRIELA’s
responses to abuse include both invoking police and state intervention, as well as creating
alternative institutions and support systems to meet people’s needs – modifying U.S. women of
color feminist proposals to avoid state involvement. Its interventions against abuse may operate
in conjunction with NGOs and services provided by the state, but also include organizing beyond
this. In this dissertation, I reflect on local impacts, highlighting prefigurative components to
GABRIELA’s organizing that shift power. As Mexican feminists have distinguished between

55
Scholarship on Philippine women’s organizing has been deeply concerned with historical tensions and
compatibilities between feminist and nationalist agendas. These scholars’ writings have engaged with a
transnational feminist literature on whether and when feminism and nationalism are reconcilable (e.g., Lacsamana
2011; Aguilar 1998; Kwiatkowski and West 1997; Angeles 1989; A. Santos 2010; Sobritchea 2004b).

38

‘popular’ and ‘civil’ feminism, and Philippine organizers distinguish ‘people’s organizations’
(POs) and NGOs, my focus is on social movement approaches to gendered violence in the
popular, PO-realm.
56
I consider how as GABRIELA helps expand state license to criminalize
VAW, these reforms pose potential contradictions for urban poor women; but I explore how
organizers’ on-the-ground state-making from the bottom up, is not completely reducible to
neoliberal imperial feminist legislation.
Relatedly, my dissertation’s framing of a ‘social movements’ approach to abuse is
informed by feminist of color debates on the limitations of service provision.
57
U.S. women of
color feminist scholars have noted how non-profit structures to meet VAW survivors needs have
contributed to carceral feminism’s rise. For instance, as domestic violence shelters and rape
crisis services have become “increasingly professionalized” and relied on state funding, they
“focus on working with the state rather than working against state violence” (Incite! 2006, 1).
Furthermore, some U.S. feminists of color point out how carceral logics permeate models for
providing abuse survivors services. Resonating with Lisa’s quote at the beginning of this
Introduction, Emi Koyama has critiqued shelters’ failure to practice survivor-centered support –
i.e., support that revolves around survivors’ perspectives and asks – noting constant punitive
measures and neoliberal pressures to disqualify people from aid (2006). Instead, Koyama
advocates for survivor-centered ‘harm reduction’ strategies that meet survivors where they are at
and take guidance from them; as well as for strengthening social networks to preemptively

56
A comparative study of 70 countries argued that the largest influence on states’ adoption of policies responding to
VAW has been strong and autonomous feminist movements – more than left-wing political parties, the number of
women politicians, or the wealth of these countries (Htun and Weldon 2012). However, further scholarship is
needed to explore the interplay between hegemonic global, civil, and popular feminisms at work, and the impact of
these policies on poor women of color.
57
Women’s organizing and advocacy helped to establish domestic violence services throughout the Global South
since the 1970s. But while institutionalizing such programs remains connected to GABRIELA’s activity, these
efforts are not the focus of my dissertation.

39

respond. I borrow the concept of ‘harm reduction’
58
to describe GABRIELA organizers’ tactics.
I consider how GABRIELA’s social movements approach to abuse defies the bounds of NGO
service-provision, helping suggest alternatives that overlap with the above critiques.

Survivors as Organizers: Addressing Abuse and Promoting Grassroots Leadership
How does addressing interpersonal gendered violence change political participation, and
ultimately, the vision of movements? Does it make for a different kind of movement, or political
impulse? Some scholars trace connections between the role of women of color in the political
leadership of movement institutions, and organizations’ external politics of gender, race, and
class (e.g., Nadasen 2002; Nelson 2003; Sangtin 2006; Ransby 2003; Frank 2005). This
scholarship suggests that transformations at the personal and relational level, to promote the
grassroots political leadership of women of color, might have bearing in how movements refine
and articulate a more radically democratic oppositional politics that centers women of color
perspectives. Yet transformations at multiple scales do not necessarily facilitate such leadership,
or any particular ideology. That is, organizations can politicize sexual or domestic abuse;
organize women of color; or build upon the premise of survivors’ and ‘victims’ rights,’ towards
drastically different ends and effects. Still, some strategies for organizing, politicization, and
decision-making, might support poor women’s grassroots leadership more than others.
Nevertheless, little research focuses on how organizing practices regarding gendered personal
trauma can further, and in turn be reinforced by, the politicization and leadership of low-income
women of color.

58
‘Harm reduction’ was initially used to describe the rationale behind needle exchange programs for drug users.
Some have applied a similar ethic towards the problem of domestic violence: rather than demanding a survivor
immediately leave or end an abusive relationship, ‘harm reduction’ focuses on intermediate steps to provide
supports that place the survivor in a better position. I invoke the term ‘harm reduction’ to also remind that crisis
intervention does not address larger structural conditions that exacerbate violence. See Chapters 5 and 6.

40

This dissertation features GABRIELA’s approach to survivors as potential organizers,
from the perspective of survivor-organizers themselves. I shed light on what particular kinds of
organization may be necessary or helpful for promoting the leadership of low-income women of
color, and poor Global South women, in oppositional social movements. I explore how
addressing interpersonal gendered violence can matter for rank-and-file members’ political
leadership – and for organizational sustainability. I trace the evolution of organizing strategies
towards abuse, as they have passed between formally trained counselors, staff, and leaders at the
GABRIELA’s National Office, and local urban poor women organizers. Applying a ground-up
lens, I emphasize how local organizers have melded the politicization of abuse with community
organizing tactics; how they think about their work; and how this in turn influences coordination
at the regional scale and GABRIELA’s political analyses. I consider how GABRIELA’s
responses to interpersonal gendered violence influence the politicization of participants, and their
collective visions of liberation.
However, I do not mean to suggest that just because they are mutually constitutive, the
configuration of larger movement impacts is already determined simply because GABRIELA
responds to trauma and gendered violence in members’ lives. Rather, such strategies are always
mediated by ideologies, and the nature of power configurations and decision-making within
movement organizations. I consider some political stakes of how tactics, ideology, and
organizational form come together. Furthermore, given the variety of ways politics towards
gendered violence at different scales can combine and interlock, this dissertation’s examination
of GABRIELA as a Global South movement with a critique of neoliberal empire, that contests
hegemonic understandings of gendered violence in our times, is all the more urgent.

41

5. Methodology
My research used interdisciplinary methods to approach a living and changing subject for
which there is little formal or written documentation. I have leaned especially on interviews and
surveys, supplemented by participant observation, with local GABRIELA members and
organizers at three sites throughout Metro Manila. To situate my fieldwork, I also conducted
oral histories with longtime GABRIELA leaders, founders, former organizers, and National
Office staff in Quezon City; as well as archival research.
My relationships with GABRIELA members
and organizers at the sites of this study began in 2007,
when I visited Metro Manila urban poor communities as
a delegate at an international conference organized by
GABRIELA. In 2012, I conducted preliminary research
to see if a project focused on local responses to
interpersonal gendered violence would be feasible. At
the GABRIELA National Office’s suggestion, I chose
field sites located in Quezon City, Tondo, and
Muntinlupa
59
which would become the focus of this
dissertation (see Fig. A). The National Office
recommended these chapters as ones they were aware
had more developed infrastructure for responding to domestic and sexual abuse. Additionally,
since 2003, the National Office’s staff have been directly involved in helping coordinate and
support the organizing at these particular sites. Therefore, the sites were ideal locations to trace

59
See Chapter 5 for more description of the sites.
Tondo
Manila
Bay
Laguna
de Bay
Fig. A: Metro Manila

42

the impact of the National Office’s activities in relation to chapters’ organizing.
GABRIELA’s activities vary regionally, and my study does not claim to be
representative of the federation as a whole. In Metro Manila, the historical influence of
GABRIELA’s National Office on local chapters’ organizing can be felt more deeply. Moreover,
perhaps in contrast to GABRIELA chapters throughout the Philippines, those in Metro Manila
have been more engaged, day-to-day, in mobilizations and advocacy regarding ‘national’ issues,
held at the sites of Congress, Malacañang, and national government offices. My sites allowed
me to consider VAW organizing that has involved GABRIELA’s range of tactics – legislative
and grassroots – at various scales; but perhaps in the capital, these relied more on state structures
than GABRIELA’s organizing might in rural areas.
In 2013, I spent a year in Metro Manila immersed in fieldwork. This entailed visiting the
sites nearly daily to conduct interviews and surveys, but most often, to follow local organizers on
their rounds. After I met with chapters at each site and secured their support, local organizers
aided the project by both participating in interviews and helping introduce me to other potential
interviewees and survey respondents, through a kind of snowball sampling. We prioritized
interviewees directly impacted by, or involved in, grassroots interventions against domestic
abuse. While not necessarily representative of Metro Manila chapters as a whole, my
interviewees provided vivid descriptions of these activities and the effects on their own lives.
In total, I conducted 71 semi-structured interviews, with 59 individuals. These included
21 GABRIELA local organizers, 16 local officers, and 6 urban poor women members; 6
regional-level organizers or officers; 2 national-level officers and 2 VAWC (‘violence against
women and children’) services staff from the National Office. All respondents in GABRIELA
were women or female-bodied, with the exception of two organizers who were men.

43

Additionally, I held a focus group interview with 5 male allies in DIEGO, an organization for
men which local GABRIELA organizers in Quezon City helped start. Finally, I interviewed a
peasant organizer who had coordinated with Metro Manila GABRIELA chapters to house and
support domestic abuse survivors who wished to leave the city. Of GABRIELA members,
organizers, and officers I interviewed, 21 spoke to me about personally experiencing
interpersonal gendered violence in some form; most had received support through GABRIELA
regarding this trauma.
My lack of Tagalog fluency,
60
and positionality as a researcher from the U.S.,
fundamentally shaped the terms of my research. Most interviews were held in Tagalog, each
with the help of a translator. Interviews were recorded; afterwards, all Tagalog interviews were
transcribed in full, and then the transcripts were translated again into English. My interpreters
during interviews were local organizers and activists,
61
familiar with conditions and issues facing
urban poor residents. I believe this contributed to helping interviewees feel more at ease, when
otherwise barriers of class, had I employed professionalized translators, might have caused more
tension or dynamics of stigmatization. Interviews were usually conducted in interviewees’
homes or modest GABRIELA centers in the urban poor neighborhoods themselves. I worked
closely with interpreters to strategize how to navigate interview dynamics, and go over any parts
of the interview I did not understand.
Often, translators who were organizers already had personal relationships with
interviewees. Organizer-translators were able to offer follow-up and support, when otherwise
holding research interviews can resurface trauma but then reinforce isolation. Sometimes, if the
organizer wished to guide the interviewee or provide advice, particularly as we were discussing

60
I had some previous Tagalog language instruction; my conversation skills improved over the course of fieldwork.
61
Not necessarily in GABRIELA.

44

an ongoing VAW situation the interviewee faced, this complicated a more traditional interview
process. Talking such dynamics through and acknowledging the multiple hats organizer-
translators wore, our team tried to make time for both interview questions and conversations
around support, in our discussions overall. Recorders might be turned off and then on again. I
worked with organizer-translators to hold space for my information gathering, even as their role
might shift during conversations with interviewees.
Before commencing each interview, I planned the subject-matter with interviewees,
letting them choose topics of focus. Generally, I sought to explore how GABRIELA chapters
had provided abuse survivors support, what this had meant to those involved, and how such
efforts were perceived. Because of the often emotional subject matter, I did not wish to rush
interviews, and often scheduled follow-up conversations rather than trying to cover sensitive
questions at the first meeting. Interviews ranged from 30 minutes to nearly six hours, with most
at least two hours long. Earlier interviews and fieldwork informed later conversations.
Occasionally, I had personal relationships with local organizers before commencing fieldwork;
this familiarity directly enabled richer discussion, sharing, and feedback. Niel is one urban poor
organizer I had met previously, who took great pride in sharing her political views and
experiences with me; between her conversational English skills and my broken Tagalog, I
resumed many conversations to clarify outstanding questions I had, whether about attitudes in
the community or GABRIELA’s politics in her perspective. Meanwhile, interviews with former
organizers, regional- and national-level officers, and National Office staff helped provide insight
on the histories of organizing at each site; these were mostly in English, or Taglish. After
transcription and retranslation, I coded interviews for themes and analyzed them.
I surveyed 142 local GABRIELA members, organizers, and officers, about evenly

45

distributed in the three sites.
62
All respondents were women or female-bodied (one identified
their gender as ‘other’); and they ranged in age from 18 to 66 (with a median age of 38). I used
the Tagalog-language survey to gain a better overall picture about the prevalence and forms of
VAW in respondents’ lives; the reach of GABRIELA’s organizing activities; and their perceived
impact on respondents and their larger community. My survey sample was not statistically
representative of local members, which number in the hundreds to thousands per chapter, and
was likely biased towards more active members; but still offers a snapshot of GABRIELA’s
impact on respondents and communities over time. I supplemented my fieldwork with archival
research on women’s, ND movement, and GABRIELA organizing, from materials at the Center
for Women’s Resources and GABRIELA’s National Office.
May 2013 marked Presidential elections, so much of my time in Quezon City involved
accompanying the local organizers on foot, as they campaigned for Gabriela Women’s Party and
then monitored election irregularities. In Tondo and Muntinlupa, I followed organizers on their
more regular outreach, as they responded to local concerns, prepared for events, and offered
health services. Occasionally, I observed local organizers’ check-ins with VAW survivors and
strategizing around ‘personal’ crises. At all three sites, I attended local organizers’ and officers’
planning meetings, chapter and membership meetings, political education workshops, organizing
trainings, as well as actions and events of all types.
63
I attended workshops on VAWC at both
local and regional levels – held in the privacy of urban poor women’s homes, in community
forums, and at the National Office. I also sat in on regional coordination and strategy meetings

62
See Appendices B and C for survey instrument and detailed results. Local organizers provided preliminary
feedback on the survey instrument.
63
I followed organizers as they conducted outreach about the impending demolition of informal settlements,
attended solidarity events around the community struggles of other neighborhoods, took part in candidate forums,
and mobilized for rallies against government corruption as the ‘pork-barrel scandal’ involving revelations of large-
scale embezzlement unfolded that year.

46

involving local officers and organizers from these sites and other Metro Manila chapters at the
National Office. (The schedules of the organizers I followed around tended to be packed.)
Some of my time with local organizers was leisurely: sharing meals, meeting their
families, informally asking their opinions on current events, as well as GABRIELA’s role and
strategies. Occasionally, I spent the night in local organizers’ modest dwellings, observing the
rhythm of their activities and bustling neighborhoods, amidst difficult conditions that included
lack of food, utilities, and infrastructure. For context beyond the sites I had selected, I visited
other GABRIELA-organized communities engaged in local struggles against demolition; and
chapters of Kadamay, an ally organization of GABRIELA that focuses on housing issues in
informal settlements.
The interviews and survey data form the core of my dissertation, rather than the
participant observation, strategically due to my limited Tagalog skills. I mainly engaged in
participant observation to build longer-term relationships with interviewees and gain as much
context as I could. Many cultural practices from Catholicism to self-abasing jokes to relentlessly
teasing insider-outsiders, were unfamiliar to me as a Chinese-Malaysian American. Socializing
with Filipina friends activist and not, particularly across class, helped me better understand social
dynamics, and appreciate how much I did not know. As my language skills improved, I
continued to relearn how superficial cultural similarities can carry very different meanings.
I was keenly aware that my background and presentation often caused local residents to
treat me with deference. Class-consciousness was omnipresent throughout my fieldwork,
whether in interviewees’ self-deprecating jokes that they were ‘beggars,’ or the doorbell ringing
pranks youth pulled in neighborhoods we walked through that they deemed ‘rich.’ I would
constantly be offered food and hosted as a distinguish guest, in a manner and with generosity not

47

granted to others who were more local, or more low-income; I tried to reciprocate by treating my
hosts to meals or cooking. Even though I consciously dressed unobtrusively in flip-flops and a
sleeveless shirt, I knew urban poor women would notice my straight teeth, less weathered skin,
or the durable material of my backpack. Even as interviewees were ever attentive to class
markers, I noted that the more these stuck out like a sore thumb, the more they would be cause
for side comments as well as interviewees’ self-effacement.
Ethical questions came up constantly, both during fieldwork and in the course of analysis.
One set of these involved representational politics and how to responsibly work with an
oppositional social movement and its participants, in the context of fatally repressive state and
vigilante violence. I continually weighed that with ongoing repression, those who have
contributed to this study may risk harm as a result of my knowledge production. My choice to
work in partnership with GABRIELA and aspiration towards solidarity with my interviewees is
only an incomplete response to these conditions; as well as more generally, to the problem of
knowledge extraction as an outsider without mechanisms in place for accountability. While
feminist researchers have advocated countering dominant narratives of stigmatization and
highlighting subjects’ ‘agency,’ as part of ethical and counter-hegemonic research practices (e.g.,
Bhavnani 1993), this cannot fully erase problems of unequal power between researchers and
respondents.
Ethical issues arose around material and other inequalities. My first interview, I was left
speechless when the interviewee, whom I had just met, explained her child had passed away
from illness a few months before, because the family could not afford treatment. She added
GABRIELA had helped with some of their expenses. As her grief filled the silence, I refrained
from asking more questions, but was overpowered by a sense of self-consciousness; words like

48

‘I’m so sorry,’ felt glib as I knew I could not pair them with action or practical solidarity. I later
learned to avoid getting paralyzed by my own feelings of shame, and more actively respond with
verbal affirmation and support during interviews. Of course, however, giving interviewees
active recognition their feelings mattered, still could not really address the unequal positionalities
we occupied.
Although I compensated my translators for their time, I did not provide significant
remuneration to individual interviewees, or even to local organizers for their volunteer
assistance
64
to this project. Instead, I chose to provide chapters as a whole with material support,
so that they could decide collectively how to distribute resources according to need. I did so in
part to honor GABRIELA’s ethic of cultivating collective decision-making. In keeping with
their efforts to promote community self-reliance rather than transactional fundraising, organizers
also did not request such support from me as a condition of chapters’ participation in the project.
At the time I sought to avoid how many NGOs and development projects are noted to have
intensified tensions and competition over access to resources within urban poor communities,
rather than cooperation; but admittedly, my approach relied on the strength of GABRIELA’s
organizing and collective structures of input.
65

Many of my interviewees did not wish to be anonymous. They were proud of their
stories and contributions to organizing. For some survivors, ‘going public’ seemed to represent
an act of refusing shame about their experiences. For those who strongly wanted their real
names in the historical record, interviewees donated their interviews to a separate documentary
project that is cited in this study. Unfortunately, I was not able to accommodate everyone who

64
E.g., in helping recruit participants, or arranging my participant observation.
65
When I personally received small emergency requests for support apart from this research project, I also sought to
contribute a larger amount to the organizing collective as a whole rather than to individuals, or to involve structures
of collective input, to facilitate greater transparency and participatory decision-making.

49

wanted their name known, because many interviewees’ stories were interwoven, so one person’s
identity might give away that of others. Erring on the ‘safe’ side, I have used pseudonyms
chosen by the interviewees for most, while changing identifying details.
I conducted fieldwork in a highly divided social movement field; furthermore, these
divisions were intertwined with questions of knowledge production and power. Rifts between
ND and non-ND organizations mark one major political split, which has also impacted women’s
organizations. Among the left spectrum, the ND movement has historically been singled out for
red-baiting and attack whether in mainstream media or by outright assassination by state agents.
Although GABRIELA is sometimes a notable exception, even in international progressive and
left forums, ND organizations have had relative difficulty getting their perspectives included.
One reason for this is the ND movement’s comparatively further left politics, including its
consistently oppositional stance towards current regimes, anti-capitalist positions that often reject
‘inclusive development,’ and relative sympathy with the armed Communist insurgency. In
contrast, non-ND progressive organizations have often taken less antagonistic stances towards a
variety of government policies affecting the poor; instead, for instance, adopting the approach of
working collaboratively to influence their implementation instead of opposing them outright.
The latter positionality has arguably allowed a different level of institutionalization and access to
international funders. Non-ND NGOs have articulated political discourses that are often more
likely to circulate favorably in spaces reaching international media platforms – and academics.
This dissertation is one a handful of academic studies of GABRIELA. Scholarship on
contemporary Philippine women’s organizations has tended to feature non-ND groups and
NGOs. At the same time, aware of the wider spectrum of women’s organizing and how
positionality shapes knowledge, I attempted to increase my familiarity with non-ND women’s

50

groups and their contributions, as well, including through informal conversations, seminars, and
public forums.
Although one contribution of this dissertation is to approach GABRIELA’s organizing
from the lens of placing it in dialog with U.S. women of color feminism, as my research and
analysis unfolded, I was forced to reflect more deeply on ways these political positionalities have
come from distinctive genealogies. Furthermore, they speak in different terms, using contrasting
political vocabularies and analytical frameworks. I argue these sets of conversations are
mutually relevant; they respond to distinct but also overlapping questions and conditions.
However, while focusing my inquiry according to my own political stakes, I have sought to
understand GABRIELA’s political frameworks on its own terms, and to distinguish when I try to
describe GABRIELA using my rubrics. Most of my study revolves around discussing
GABRIELA rather than U.S. feminism of color, despite the latter’s influence on my thinking.
When my interviewees asked me for something in return, it was usually in terms of
political solidarity. What would I do with this knowledge and project? What would it lead to
after? Wouldn’t it be more helpful for local women’s relationship-building if they could take
charge of administering and discussing the survey with other residents, rather than relying on me
to do so (as my study had been designed and approved by the ‘human subjects’ review board)?
Due to a combination of my skill set, positionality, and time constraints, my research methods
remained traditional (rather than in the vein of ‘participatory action research’). I have tried to
follow-up and ask for clarification when possible.
66
But despite collaboration, in the end, my
decisions and analyses have guided this study’s framework. I hope my practices of solidarity
and accountability towards those who have walked with me through this project do not end here.

66
During 2015, I was fortunate to reside in the Philippines while writing up this study, which allowed me to
continue deepening relationships with interviewees and solicit feedback.

51

6. Chapter Summary
This dissertation is organized into three parts, and a total of seven chapters. Part 1
(Chapters 1 and 2) offers historical and political economic context to Metro Manila GABRIELA
members’ experiences of interpersonal gendered violence; I hope to make clear the limits of
trying to counter domestic abuse without addressing this larger political economy. Part 2
(Chapters 3 and 4) provides an organizational history of GABRIELA’s politics towards VAW;
and explores its legislative strategies regarding the latter, which form a legal backdrop for its on-
the-ground organizing. Part 3 (Chapters 5, 6, and 7) – the heart of this dissertation – focuses on
local organizers’ community-based strategies at my three research sites in detail.
In Chapter 1, I argue neoliberal imperial restructuring has heightened the gendered
precarity of urban poor women in Metro Manila. I counter portrayals of globalization that
assume women’s economic participation means their upward mobility. Rather, poor women
continue to be trapped in conditions of gendered economic and spatial marginalization. I
complement existing literature with data from my interviews and surveys with urban poor
members of GABRIELA, to illustrate class-differentiated gender dynamics. I explore
contradictions between ‘gender mainstreaming,’ as women’s advocates have achieved advisory
positions in state agencies since the fall of Marcos, and intensified structural adjustment through
the 2000s. I situate informal settlers as racialized bodies within neocolonial logics, noting
gendered implications.
Chapter 2 builds on the political economy of gendered material inequality that I have laid
out, to consider how neoliberal imperialism has exacerbated interpersonal gendered violence –
such as domestic and sexual abuse – in GABRIELA members’ lives. I explore how their
trajectories complicate narratives of abuse as ‘male backlash’ against new opportunities and

52

shifting gender roles purportedly offered women by globalization. Instead, I foreground
heightened ‘precarity:’ neoliberal imperial restructurings have serially pushed interviewees into
one situation of abuse after another; and such interpersonal violence continues to index
patriarchal inequalities, even as restructuring has further immiserated poor women. Considering
shortcomings of state responses, I argue the abusive neoliberal imperial state operates in public-
private partnership with individual domestic abusers, through both coercion and neglect.
In Chapter 3, I explore historical influences on GABRIELA’s ideology and strategies
towards interpersonal gendered violence, as well as how it defines VAW. How have the ND
movement and Marxist-Leninist-Maoism, local and transnational feminisms, as well as its own
evolving practices influenced GABRIELA’s approaches to VAW? I outline GABRIELA’s
structure, and introduce social movement principles that help promote its survivor-centered,
collective responses to abuse. I end with an account of the National Office’s efforts to support
Metro Manila chapters’ community-based interventions against domestic and sexual violence.
Chapter 4 examines GABRIELA’s changing involvement in legislative reform, flagging
some consequences for on-the-ground organizing against abuse. How is Gabriela Women’s
Party’s advocacy both embedded in and divergent from neoliberal imperial feminist discourses?
I explore symbioses between the passage of the 2004 Anti-VAWC Act and community-based
organizing. I also draw on interviews to reflect on urban poor GABRIELA members’ strained
relations to criminalization.
Chapter 5 begins to delve into concrete practices local GABRIELA organizers have used
to respond to intimate partner and sexual violence in Metro Manila. I begin with three case
studies that introduce local chapters’ range of on-the-ground tactics, and practices for engaging
survivors of VAW as potential organizers. I suggest that variations in how organizers have

53

involved the state partly index the strength of community-based organizing. Local organizers’
adaptations of Marxist-Leninism-Maoist traditions, including the call to ‘serve the people,’
contribute to what I term ‘survivor-centered’ strategies that maintain relationships with survivors
over the long haul despite cycles of violence. Collectives form the infrastructure to mobilize the
social and material support necessary for survivors to successfully leave abusive relationships.
In Chapter 6, I continue to unpack local organizers’ ‘social movements’ strategies for
addressing interpersonal gendered violence. While highlighting the synergy between VAW
interventions and movement-building, I tease out how organizers grapple with tensions that may
arise from addressing violence at both interpersonal and structural scales, including the problem
of how to balance priorities. I detail ‘harm reduction’ methods for supporting VAW survivors,
interventions with perpetrators, and finally, wider community impacts.
Engaging with ‘victim-survivors’ as potential organizers, rather than as clients, is a
cornerstone of GABRIELA’s social movements approach to VAW. Chapter 7 explores impacts
on survivors’ lives from their points of view. My survey data corroborates how GABRIELA
involvement is correlated with reconfigured social networks, and heightened capacity of
survivors to intervene against VAW. Both quantitative data and organizer-survivors’ reflections
show how receiving support can reinforce the capacity to give it, and feed movement-building.
Survivors recounted gaining a ‘voice’ in both their interpersonal relationships and
communities, as well as wider spheres of concern. I present their reflections on the personal,
interpersonal, and political transformations they experienced as they became organizers and
political leaders. Some shared why they found movement-building a form of ‘medicine’ for their
own trauma. At the same time, organizers have implemented practices to protect survivors from
retriggering and retraumatization. I end with organizers’ perspectives on why GABRIELA

54

addressing VAW furthers broader movement-building, and what sets GABRIELA’s social
movements approach apart from other models.
In the Conclusion of this dissertation, I put GABRIELA organizers’ strategies in Metro
Manila back in conversation with U.S. feminist of color debates on ‘community accountability’
responses to domestic and sexual abuse. In the process, I explore how this dialog enriches and
complicates a politics of decolonization, and envision possible radical solidarities between anti-
imperialist and anti-racist projects. I reflect on aspects of urban poor GABRIELA organizers’
ethics and political visions that demand further attention.

55
CHAPTER 1

‘What Kind of Life is This?’

A Political Economic History of Urban Poor Women in Metro Manila

I can’t explain to you how very difficult our situation is... We mothers… have no money
at home because our husbands don’t earn enough… Fathers, no matter what their
work… don’t get minimum wage… People here borrow money, they really lack.
On top of that you get sick… People die. Because you have no money. It’s used up.
1

– Vengia, urban poor resident and GABRIELA organizer

I told [myself], ‘What kind of life is this? Why is it like this?’
2

– Clear, single mother of five and GABRIELA organizer

1. Overview
Considering the political economic conditions faced by GABRIELA’s members in Metro
Manila urban poor communities is vital for understanding the politics of their organizing. In the
Introduction of this dissertation, I explained why I use the term ‘neoliberal imperialism’ to
characterize neoliberalism in the Philippines – given its conquest by the U.S. and ongoing
neocolonial status. In this chapter, I show how neoliberal imperial restructuring has reinforced
the gendered precarity of urban poor women in Metro Manila. Contrary to portrayals of
neoliberalism as promoting women’s economic importance and mobility, poor women continue
to be trapped in conditions of gendered economic and spatial marginalization.
‘Globalization’ is commonly depicted as furthering women’s economic ascendance, by
pushing women into the labor market. However, I build on critiques which argue changes in

1
“Hindi ko siya ma-explain sa iyo anong hirap talaga sa iyo ang nararanasan natin… katulad sa amin na mga
nanay… kami walang pera sa bahay dahil kulang ang kinikita ng asawa naming… sa mga tatay naman kahit anong
trabaho… wala sa minimum ang sinusuweldo… nautangan na ng mga tao dito talagang kulang. Madagdagan pa
magkasakit ka, patay kang mga tao. Kasi wala kang pera. Naubos na” (Vengia 2013).
2
“Sabi ko, ‘Ano ba namang buhay ito? Bakit ganito?’” (Clear 2013b).

56
gender roles have not necessarily subverted gendered (or neocolonial or capitalist) power
relations (Chant 1996; Eviota 1992; R. P. Ofreneo 1998; Parreñas 2008; Parreñas 2007;
Taguiwalo 1993b). Moreover, how women are affected varies with class, among other factors.
Despite GDP growth, post-1986 restructuring has intensified impoverishment and displacement
for urban poor communities, even as wealth inequality increases. Impacts of restructuring ripple
throughout the economy, increasing precarity for many beyond the few able to attain higher-end
jobs. Particularly for urban poor women in Metro Manila, I contest the assumption that, due to
structural adjustment, their economic status has improved at the expense of poor men who face
increased unemployment. I complement existing literature with data from my interviews and
surveys with urban poor GABRIELA members, to illustrate how amongst the poor, gendered
inequality persists alongside widespread immiseration.
Ruling elites have harnessed the development of Metro Manila’s land, public assets, and
infrastructure to further their private interests, through the strategy of configuring a globally
competitive city attractive to tourists and foreign investment. I show how landless urban poor
women have been serially displaced: the land they have worked on and spaces they have
inhabited have been repeatedly stolen from them, or never granted to begin with. Despite
‘democratization,’ neoliberal imperial governance continues to favor outright dispossession –
paired with compelling the poor to pay for their own evictions, via privatized amortization
schemes at relocation sites. Local politicians now use ‘gender sensitivity,’ such as the argument
that development will bring women jobs, to justify new rounds of violent demolitions of
informal settlements. However, partly because of gendered divisions of labor and relocation’s
gendered impacts, displacement fuels urban poor women’s resistance.

57
Below, I first explore contradictions between ‘gender-mainstreaming’ policy since 1986,
and ‘what the other hand is doing,’
3
so to speak. By the latter, I refer to how the state has
concurrently promoted neoliberal imperial restructuring and militarized repression. In
summarizing how the government has incorporated gender mainstreaming, I note the latter’s
limitations in shifting the state’s neoliberal imperial development course.
The rest of the chapter offers an explanation for the political economic circumstances of
urban poor GABRIELA members; I trace a history linking these to neocolonialism. My
discussion is divided into two sections: one on livelihood and economic restructuring; the other
on land and spatial restructuring. I intersperse this discussion with my survey data profiling
GABRIELA members in the Metro Manila neighborhoods where I conducted research. I end
with reflections on the racialized positionality that urban poor women inhabit.

2. ‘Gender mainstreaming’ Post-1986

The re-establishment of ‘democracy’ in 1986 heralded both ruptures and continuities with
past configurations of Philippine state power. Cory Aquino unleashed ‘Total War’ against those
challenging a neoliberal development order, under the guise of counterinsurgency; the military
massacred peasants protesting for land reform and workers striking at export processing zones.
In fact, extrajudicial killings of activists, union organizers, and social workers under Cory
surpassed those during the Marcos dictatorship (Amnesty International 1992). Elections
continued to be as bloody and fraud-ridden as ever. Yet, at the same time that the state escalated
repression against leftists, ‘democratization’ opened space in civil society for NGOs, including

3
To borrow a phrase from Marylou Malig; Malig examined how neoliberal restructuring counteracted the Philippine
state’s policies to foster environmentally ‘sustainable development’ (Bello et al. 2005, 220); the same could be said
of restructuring and attempts to promote gender equity. Scholars have noted economic and military policies have
far-reaching impacts on ‘social issues,’ even though the latter are framed in a manner to disavow this relationship.

58
women’s groups which seized the opportunity to press for gender mainstreaming.
Cory Aquino resuscitated the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women
(NCRFW)
4
in 1986, as an advisory agency to the President. Early fruits of the NCRFW’s labors
included the 1989 Philippine Development Plan for Women; and 1995 Philippine Plan for
Gender-Responsive Development (PPGD), which Fidel Ramos approved by executive order
5

(Honculada and Pineda Ofreneo 2003; A. Santos 2010, 134). Many of the PPGD’s gender-
mainstreaming proposals complemented Ramos’ programs for drastic structural adjustment; it
did not seek to unseat neoliberal imperial restructuring, though anticipating and perhaps
attempting to mitigate some of its effects (PCW 1996).
6

The Philippine state ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1981 (Sobritchea 2006). Building on this,
women’s organizations successfully pressed for a slew of legal reforms since 1986: laws against
gender discrimination in employment, to establish day care centers, and to extend microcredit;
paid paternity leave for married men with formal employment; paid maternity leave for formally
employed women making social security contributions (Sobritchea 2006, 5). However,
enforcement has been lacking; local implementation has often depended on grassroots pressure.
In 1997, in response to campaigns by women’s groups, Ramos instituted a 5% budget allocation
for ‘gender and development’ (GAD) to facilitate gender mainstreaming. Yet, to date, GAD
funds are usually not fully dispersed. Furthermore, they have gone towards projects loosely
defined as involving women – such as associations formed to support reelection campaigns of

4
Now the Philippine Commission for Women (PCW).
5
During the UN Beijing World Conference on Women.
6
The PPGD’s broad provisions included training government agencies in ‘gender-sensitive’ planning; establishing
services for intimate partner violence; increasing women’s representation in decision-making bodies; encouraging
women’s labor force participation through training and credit (Sobritchea 2006, 5; PCW 1996). But implementation
– devolved among state, corporate, and NGO actors – proved inconsistent as well as difficult to enforce.

59
traditional politicians and various right-wing causes – rather than towards addressing inequality
(Sobritchea 2004b, 114–5).
Post-1986 reforms established acts of gendered violence and discrimination as criminal
offenses, serving as a springboard for campaigns to raise awareness about these forms of
violence. Legislation established family courts and women’s desks in police stations. In 1995,
the Anti-Sexual Harassment Act recognized sexual harassment by superiors in workplaces and
schools as a crime for the first time (but not peer-to-peer harassment). In 1997, the Anti-Rape
Law redefined rape as a crime against ‘personhood’ rather than ‘chastity.’ In 2003, Gabriela
Women’s Party co-sponsored the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act which provides penalties for
sex, organ, and labor trafficking; and in 2004 it co-authored the Anti-Violence Against Women
and Children (VAWC) Act, which recognized intimate partner violence as a crime.
7
Still,
recourses for victims remain difficult in practice, including because of biases held by law
enforcement, state officials, and the judiciary. In 2009, the Magna Carta of Women mandated
VAW desks in every barangay, but as of early 2014, only 75 percent of these local government
units had one as required (CWR 2015, 23). By 2007, the state had established only 68 service
and shelter institutions for women and children victims of violence nationwide, able to
accommodate roughly 369 persons each (CWR 2009, 44). Moreover, reforms have had limited
scope regarding prevention.
Philippine law retains blatant sexist double standards. The Magna Carta mandated that
gender-discriminatory laws be repealed or revised, but this has yet to be carried through.
8
In the
penal code, only females and not males may be charged with adultery (Tan 2014). Divorce is

7
See Chapter 4 for a fuller discussion.
8
Despite a three-year time limit. See Chapter 4.

60
illegal, a holdover from Spanish colonization and the influence of the Catholic church.
9
While
many urban poor couples do not legally marry due to cost, and others informally separate
regardless of legal status, the law firmly establishes the patriarchal family and reifies prevailing
sexual double standards for female but not male monogamy. The man’s decision prevails if
there are any spousal disagreements over family property (Tan 2014).
Feminist legal scholars point out discriminatory laws that deprive poor women of
livelihood, criminalize their economic activities, and otherwise subject them to abuse at the
hands of the state (Women’s Legal Bureau et al. 2008). For instance, laws criminalizing street
vendors and sex workers disproportionately impact poor women. Those arrested under anti-
vagrancy law, under the pretext of prostitution, are routinely physically and sexually abused by
police in Metro Manila (Amnesty International 2001). Although women comprise a majority of
the landless rural poor, agrarian reform programs instituted since 1988 have resulted in women
constituting a minority of beneficiaries (Women’s Legal Bureau et al. 2008, 66).
The World Economic Forum has consistently ranked the Philippines in the top 10
countries with the least ‘gender disparity,’ since launching its Global Gender Gap reports in 2006
(WEF 2014). Yet the Philippines’ exceptional rank is influenced by its having two women
Presidents since 1987, as well as Filipino women’s attainment of higher education and
participation in the professions; it does not necessarily reflect conditions for poor or non-elite
women. Although gender mainstreaming has sometimes sought to influence economic policy,
efforts have not fundamentally shifted a development course rooted in intensifying neoliberal
restructuring since the 1960s. I now examine how this restructuring has been disastrous for the

9
For a brief period during U.S. colonization, divorce was allowed but only in cases of ‘adultery’ by the wife or
‘concubinage’ by the husband. Divorce was banned again in the 1949 civil code. Annulment is a lengthy and costly
process (e.g., over ₱100,000); otherwise, once married, one may not legally remarry when your spouse is still alive.

61
living conditions of poor women.

3. Political Economic Geographies of Gendered Access to Livelihood and Land
3.1 Livelihood
Long Roots of Neoliberal Imperial Restructuring
On its ‘independence’ in 1946, the Philippines shared a nation-building predicament
common to many postcolonial Third World states after WWII. How would the former colonies
develop sovereign, modernized economies? Capital would not be redistributed except as loans,
with strings attached; nor would tools and technologies, except as goods for sale on the
international market. After centuries of colonial plunder, most Third World states would fall into
a debt trap.
10
By the 1980s, neoliberals who came to power in the U.S. and First World were
poised to take advantage of the debt crisis and impose comprehensive structural adjustment
programs (SAPs), in the period known as neoliberalism’s global stranglehold, from that decade
until the present. Yet these post-1980s SAPs have continuities with earlier waves of
restructuring.
For the Philippines, the long roots of neoliberal imperial restructuring trace back to U.S.
colonization. Under U.S. rule, export agriculture dramatically expanded, heightening class,
gender, and other disparities. Colonization left most Filipinas more dependent on male
breadwinners: economic shifts prior to ‘independence’ eroded women’s household-based
manufacturing, while increasing their unpaid agricultural and reproductive labor. By the end of
colonial rule, more women were occupied primarily with housework than production, while paid

10
Their cheap exports were continually valued lower than the price of their imports, so First World creditors forced
them to devalue their currencies – a ‘free trade’ mechanism to encourage a higher volume of exports – as a condition
of ‘development’ loans. But devaluation destabilized economies, and drove poor countries towards even deeper
trade crises as the worth of their exports plummeted.

62
domestic labor was increasingly feminized (Eviota 1992, 76).
With formal independence, trade agreements subsumed the Philippine economy to the
needs of U.S. industry, but Philippine economic elites amassed wealth from this neocolonial
arrangement. The U.S. effectively transferred governance to a ‘mestizo’ hacienda oligarchy
whose fortunes were tied to agricultural export, such as of sugar, coconut products, and tobacco.
The Philippines continued to play the role of guaranteeing cheap exports of raw materials to the
U.S., while importing finished products.
Still, like many other postcolonial nations, the Philippines first embarked on a path of
import-substitution industrialization (ISI) during the 1950s. Initially ahead of the rest of
Southeast Asia, Philippine ISI ran aground due to a lack of domestic purchasing power
11
to fuel
consumption, and continued reliance on expensive imports
12
(e.g., see Bello et al. 1982).
Furthermore, by the late 1950s, the World Bank/IMF took an active role dismantling ISI
throughout the Third World (Broad 1988, 27). The U.S. Kennedy administration and WB/IMF
midwifed the Philippines’ reprioritization of an export-based economy, providing so-called
‘stabilization’ loans on the conditions of currency devaluation and removing trade barriers.
13

Through the 1970s, many Third World states pursued ‘modernization’ under
authoritarian regimes backed by the U.S., given Cold War politics, that heavily borrowed for
neoliberal, export-oriented development. At the height of the Vietnam War, the U.S. helped

11
Due both to poverty and high levels of inequality.
12
As well as U.S. branding and control of ‘higher level’ industry functions. These factors produced a ‘balance of
payments’ crisis – a trade imbalance where the value of imports exceeds exports – draining Filipino bank reserves of
foreign currency, and causing a crisis of financial solvency.
13
The balance of payments crisis was thus ‘resolved’ after 1960 through these neoliberal, export-oriented reforms,
which killed ISI and increased poverty – rather than through redistributive measures to increase domestic purchasing
power, or nationalization and protection of nascent domestic industry (Bello et al. 1982). Landed interests supported
re-entrenching the economy in export agriculture (Emery 1963, 278–80; Haggard 1990, 222). Over the next decade,
living conditions for the majority the population declined; for instance, real wages of both skilled workers in Manila
and sugarcane workers fell (Schirmer and Shalom 1987, 125).

63
prop up dictatorships throughout Latin America, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. When Marcos
cracked down on rising unrest
14
by declaring martial law in 1972, the U.S. increased military aid;
while the WB/IMF sanctioned this turn of events, seizing the opportunity to liberalize
15
and
restructure the economy further (Schirmer and Shalom 1987, 226; Bello et al. 1982, 127). Under
the Marcos dictatorship, the Philippines racked up massive development loans it could not repay.
The regime also misspent much of these funds on arms purchases and cronyist self-enrichment.
16

Marcos promoted export agribusiness, as well as experiments in light manufacturing
through export processing zones (EPZs). The ‘Green Revolution,’ which favored large-scale
plantations while increasing dependency on expensive imported inputs, proved disastrous for
rural women. Restructuring fueled rising rural poverty, landlessness, and waves of migration in
search of domestic work and seasonal labor (e.g., R. P. Ofreneo 1998). Meanwhile, though EPZs
have been celebrated for hiring women, Philippine feminists charge that negative impacts of
neoliberal reforms have outweighed the limited number of EPZ jobs created. As I will explore,
export-oriented restructuring has reverberated throughout the organization of production, far
beyond EPZs.
17

U.S. foreign policy has sought to secure the Philippines as a geostrategic outpost – a
“bulwark of U.S. security,” to use State Department head George Kennan’s terms – in East Asia
(Tuazon 2011c, 9; Schirmer and Shalom 1987). Like its predecessors, the Marcos regime relied
heavily on U.S. military aid to quell opposition. In return, during the Vietnam War, U.S. bases

14
The ND movement, which coalesced around a different development vision that called for agrarian reform and
national industrialization rather than foreign control, was born in this period.
15
Even if cronyism prevented full-fledged liberalization (Haggard 1990).
16
Large portions of aid were siphoned off by Marcos cronies: at least 40% of hard currency loans never reached the
domestic economy, presumably landing in their foreign bank accounts (Hooley 1991, 680).
17
Subcontracted home-based work, especially in garment production, expanded through the 1980s, even in rural
areas; women were paid as little as ten cents for a dress selling in a U.S. department store for $15 (R. P. Ofreneo
1998, 33–4; 1990).

64
in the Philippines became the largest off U.S. soil – and a thriving sex industry developed around
these. By the 1990s, the Philippines reportedly had half a million sex workers, the highest
number in Southeast Asia. Philippine feminists point out the number of prostitutes was nearly
double total direct employment in the country’s 23 EPZs and private industrial zones (e.g.,
Angeles 2009, 18).
18

In the early 1980s, another wave of structural adjustment – drastic attempts to repair the
Philippines’ lack of foreign exchange through further peso devaluation and trade liberalization –
depressed real wages and left the Philippine economy in shambles. Women earners were hit
especially hard. By 1983, over half of newly unemployed workers were women, and in 1984,
the unemployment rate for women was double that for men (Chant 1996, 313).
A 1986 direct action protest of over 2 million people, known as the ‘People Power’
revolution, took over the streets of Metro Manila and helped oust Marcos. Yet by his final
months, the U.S. government had already calculated his regime was more of a liability than an
asset to its interests. When Marcos himself publicly announced the Philippines could no longer
meet its debt obligations and declared a moratorium on repayments, the U.S. pressed the dictator
to hold elections, and began to court Cory Aquino behind the scenes, as his successor (e.g., see
Tuazon 2011c, 15–16). After she swept into power, Aquino’s new Constitution guaranteed the
public would pay for all international debt accrued, in full.

Post-1986 Restructuring
In spite of ‘democratization’ since 1986, neoliberal structural adjustment has continued
unabated and even intensified. Between 1987 and 1991, 40-50% of the national budget
hemorrhaged out in debt servicing; even in the early 2000s, the government continued to spend

18
Today, the estimated the number of sex workers rivals all those employed in manufacturing (PCW 2013).

65
as much as 46% of its budget on debt (Bello et al. 2005, 22, 24–5). International debt crippled
state support of public services and job creation. Additionally, debt led to more borrowing, and
more WB/IMF-imposed SAPs. In the 1990s, Fidel Ramos carried out intense deregulation,
privatization of public assets and utilities, and tariff reductions; policies continued by his
successors. By the 2000s, the Philippine economy experienced deindustrialization despite never
having fully industrialized, flagging agriculture, informalization in an expanding service sector,
and dependency on foreign remittances from the export of migrant labor.
Remittances – which surpassed $20 billion in 2011
19
– from overseas migrant labor prop
up the Philippine GDP and domestic spending, in lieu of public services and local jobs. Labor
export, encouraged under Marcos in response to rising unemployment and political unrest, has
been so closely linked to restructuring that scholars enumerate it as a characteristic of Philippine
neoliberalism;
20
11 percent of Filipinos are now migrant workers abroad, the majority women,
typically in the service sector (Bello et al. 2014; ADB 2013b, 23).
21
Meanwhile, since the late
1990s, call center jobs have been hailed as the engine of a new up-and-coming ‘middle class’
with disposable income; but these employed only 1.7% of all Filipino workers in 2011 (EILER
2012).
22
Like other export-oriented development, the export of services (and service workers)
remains subject to the whims of global capital – and has not led to a trickle down of widespread
domestic livelihood creation.
Post-1986 GDP growth is tied to foreign-dominated, export-oriented sectors, as well as
the real estate industry (IBON 2010; IBON 2015; Bello et al. 2014). But jobless GDP growth

19
Remittances were a larger share of the GDP than official development assistance, foreign direct investment, or
gross domestic savings (ADB 2013b, 23).
20
The export in persons is a key source of foreign exchange for the Philippine state (R. M. Rodriguez 2010).
21
Yet remittances are mostly consumed instead of invested in job creation efforts.
22
Nearly half of call center workers earned less than ₱15,000 per month in 2008 (EILER 2012). Workers might
need to earn ₱30,000 to ₱40,000 per month, before contemplating buying a car or renting a subdivision.

66
has exacerbated entrenched inequality. It has overwhelmingly accrued to the top echelons of the
population – at the highest rate of wealth increase disparity in Asia. By the late 1990s, just 15
families controlled 55 percent of all corporations in the Philippines (World Bank 2000, 43).
23

Moreover, in 2012, the wealth of the richest 40 families accounted for a staggering 77 percent of
the country’s overall GDP growth that year (Habito 2012).
Despite the above growth, through the 2000s the Philippines experienced the worst
unemployment rate in its history: unemployment hovered at an average of 11.3% from 2001 to
2007 (IBON 2009). With trade liberalization under Ramos, what was left of Philippine industry
declined and manufacturing firms shut down en masse (e.g., see Bello et al. 2014).
24
In spite of
the continued relevance of landed oligarchs, export agriculture also decreased as a share of jobs
and GDP. Liberalization transformed the Philippines from a net food exporting country to a net
food importing country by the mid-1990s (Bello et al. 2014).
25

With the demise of agriculture and manufacturing post-1986, the domestic economy has
both restructured towards services, and become overwhelmingly informalized. The service
sector expanded to account for over 50% of the workforce in 2010 compared to just 25% in 1960
(e.g., R. E. Ofreneo 2013, 423; Dolan 1993). Precarity has only increased in the shrinking
formal sector, where subcontracting, flexibilization, and other kinds of ‘informalization’ prevail,
while numbers of unionized workers dwindle (R. E. Ofreneo 2013).
Furthermore, in 2008, an estimated 75% of those earning a living were informally
employed – without contracts, job security, or protections like social and health insurance

23
Similarly, in 2014, the combined wealth of the 50 richest families was over 26 percent of GDP (Taruc 2015).
24
In 2013, manufacturing accounted for only 8% of jobs, while its share of the GDP shrank to 23%, as small as in
the late 1950s (Africa 2013; IBON 2009).
25
The Philippines became the world’s largest importer of rice, its staple grain, between 2008 and 2010. Critics
continue to charge that genuine land reform must serve as the basis for sustainable agricultural development and
alleviating rural poverty (e.g., Bello et al. 2014; Olea 2015).

67
(World Bank 2014, 48; R. E. Ofreneo 2013). Minimum wage effectively does not apply to
informal employees; and a 2011 National Statistics Office labor force survey found at least 46%
of workers were paid less than the legal minimum (KMU 2014).
26
The poor struggle for their
daily survival through ‘self-employment’ and petty income-generating schemes. Residents of
urban poor neighborhoods where I conducted research were usually relegated to the informal
economy: subcontracted construction or transportation work for men; laundry, manicuring, and
domestic labor for women; street vending and trash scavenging for women, men, and children.
As informal sector labor supports the formal economy,
27
poor women’s informal earning
reflects trends in outsourcing. In Manila, GABRIELA members I interviewed peeled garlic
28
for
middlemen who sold it to fast-food chains like Kentucky Fried Chicken or Jollibee’s. During the
1980s, interviewees in Quezon City had worked from home assembling plastic flowers or
stringing capiz shells for decorative exports; they received just ₱32 per three hundred strings,
though the shells contained hazardous chemicals. For these urban poor women, outsourced
piecework shifted from light manufacturing to food service, reflecting deindustrialization.
Women’s informal sector activity is often an extension of their unpaid reproductive labor,
and gendered domestic work is central to the service economy. ‘Household help’ emerged as the
leading sector of job creation in 2007 – surpassing EPZs and the vaunted call center industry,
29

but also accounting for more new jobs than transportation and communication, and the wholesale
and retail trade (SWP 2007, 18; ADB 2013b, 18–9, 22; Abara and Heo 2013, 166; Milberg and

26
See also (NSO 2009; PSA 2016). In addition to illegal noncompliance, more and more formally employed
workers are legally excluded from receiving minimum wage: loopholes exclude domestic, ‘personal service,’ and
micro-enterprise employees; while ‘trainees’ can be paid 25% below minimum wage (R. E. Ofreneo 2013, 436).
27
For instance, scavengers collect, sort, and process garbage for recycling. Aroma, a government relocation site in
Tondo where I conducted research, revolves completely around trash recycling: grandmothers wash and dry plastic
bags, children clean bottles, and men tie the bottles into neatly stacked cubes.
28
They made just ₱70 (about $1.60) per day, compared to the legal daily minimum wage of ₱466 in 2013.
29
In both new jobs and total number of women employed.

68
Amengual 2008, 10). Along such lines, domestic work contributes more to the economy than
mining (IBON 2012). But domestic workers, many of whom are migrants, typically earn less
than half the average wage for women workers (ADB 2013b, 22).
Right alongside record GDP growth since 2003, poverty has increased, both in absolute
numbers and as a proportion of the population (Schelzig 2005; ADB 2013a).
30
In Metro Manila,
families suffered a 20% drop in real average family incomes from 2000 to 2003 (World Bank
2014, 50; Schelzig 2005, xii). Self-reported poverty reached 62% according to a Social Weather
Stations nationwide survey in 2003 (Schelzig 2005, iv). Eighty percent of Filipinos struggle to
survive on less than ₱110 (roughly $2.15
31
) or less per day (IBON 2009). In Metro Manila, this
amount in 2013 could pay for three budget meals but little more; housing and all other needs
would be rendered trade-offs. Health indicators are appalling: maternal mortality rose between
2006 and 2011, from 162 to 221 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (NSO 2012).
32

Philippine neoliberalism’s neocolonial character and early ascendance has meant that robust
social safety nets never developed. Furthermore, both these rising poverty and death rates on
one hand, and the vaunted GDP growth they coincide with on the other, index drastic structural
adjustment that has disproportionately immiserated poor women.
Most GABRIELA members I surveyed in 2013 were low-income or extremely low-

30
The Asian Development Bank reports poverty incidence among Philippine households (using an extremely
conservative state threshold) increased from 24% to 27% between 2003 and 2006 (ADB 2013a, 1). The Philippine
state wildly underestimates poverty in its official figures; it set the 2012 poverty threshold at ₱52 per day (NSCB
2014), which would hardly cover two simple meals. Using such benchmarks, it reported the official 2009 poverty
rate in Metro Manila to be an unbelievable 2.6%, or 54,949 families (R. E. Ofreneo 2013, 426) – in a city of 12
million where perhaps 40% reside in slums. Furthermore, the government has redefined poverty indicators
repeatedly in recent years – claiming stable poverty rates, when levels had actually increased by old definitions (e.g.,
see Schelzig 2005, xii; Keenan 2013). Benigno Aquino III’s regime again reset its 2011 poverty measure to below
the previous rate (CWR 2014).
31
Based on 2006 peso to dollar exchange rates.
32
As of 2012, nearly a third of Filipino children under five suffer moderate to severe stunting due to malnutrition
(UNICEF 2013).

69
income women – their households making do on a partner’s earnings of usually less than the
daily minimum wage (₱466 or roughly $10.60
33
per day, in the National Capital Region). Yet
consistent with government statistics on Metro Manila families, their average household size was
just over 6 persons. Over two thirds had dependent children; and 80 percent had dependent
children, elderly, or other persons. Despite GDP growth as well as inflation, the vast majority
said their incomes had decreased (37 percent) or remained the same in the past two years.
34
As
one interviewee pointed out, urban poor women generally do not have a secure or sufficient
livelihood: “Before I thought doing laundry… is a ‘job’… because I earn from it…. selling
vegetables is a ‘job’… but that’s not… It’s a short-term way to obtain one’s needs in a daily
basis” (Niel 2013b).

Urban Poor Women and Gendered Economic Inequality
Neoliberal restructuring is commonly assumed to have improved economic prospects for
poor women at the expense of poor men. Yet I argue that a closer analysis of national data,
complemented with illustrations from my interviews of GABRIELA members, contests a
narrative of neoliberalism’s liberatory impact on gendered material disparities. Most urban poor
women continue to be dependent on male breadwinners.
35
They are marginalized by severe
gendered pay differentials and labor market segmentation, as well as the structure of the cash
economy: the gender gap operates differently across class, and especially rears its head for the
poor. Alongside the growing immiseration of all, poor women’s earning power has tended to be

33
Based on 2013 dollar to peso exchange rates.
34
Forty-one percent said it remained the same; only seven respondents (5 percent) reported an increase.
35
I complicate accounts that have asserted higher numbers of female breadwinners and male unemployed among
poor Filipino families (e.g., Eviota 2007, 103). Although there are communities where women are primary
breadwinners, as Chant (1997) documented regarding the tourist enclave of Boracay in the Visayas, I did not find
this to be the pattern among my interviewees. The Boracay residents were the exception in Chant’s study of
women-headed households, as well; in other cities throughout the Visayas, she found “the average earnings of
women workers are only around half of men’s” (30).

70
less than their male partners’. If women are ‘favored’ in the informal economy, they
disproportionately take up the least remunerated, most precarious ‘side-lines’
36
(Sobritchea
2006). This becomes crucial regarding dynamics of inequality within the household, and
intimate partner violence, as I will discuss in Chapter 2.
Poor Filipino women’s earning in the informal sector must be seen as just one facet of
their more difficult paid and unpaid labor burden overall, under restructuring and patriarchal
divisions of labor. Cultural tropes have cast Filipina women as ‘financial managers’ of the
household, but Leonora Angeles and others argue this role is no source of power when incomes
are low; rather, struggling to make do on shortages becomes yet another labor burden (2004, 42).
Restructuring has pushed poor women to take up more informal earning activities to make up for
declining real incomes. Meanwhile, their unpaid reproductive labor is stretched by neocolonial
austerity measures (e.g., Chant 1996). Perhaps more than women in some rural areas, urban
women suffer from inflation and unemployment, as they have no land to turn to for subsistence.
They feel the squeeze of price hikes, as well as privatization of health, utilities, and education.
Still, many more poor women depend on male breadwinners, than serve as the primary
breadwinners for their households. Government reports have stressed the growing labor force
participation rate of women; women’s lower unemployment rates compared to men, particularly
in urban areas, since the 1990s; and women’s dominance of professional occupations in the late
2000s (e.g., NCRFW 1995; Albert 2013). Such figures suggest the shift to an increasingly
informalized, service economy has overall favored women’s employment over men’s. Yet these
statistics are misleading when it comes to the situation of urban poor women. Unemployment

36
The Department of Labor and Employment reported that from 2000 to 2011, the proportion of women employees
with precarious work increased from 23.9 percent to 24.7 percent, whereas men with precarious work declined from
30.9 percent to 28.5 percent of employees (ADB 2013b, 16). They are frequently unpaid family workers,
nevertheless counted as ‘employed’ in government workforce statistics (PSA 2014, 28).

71
rates are calculated based upon people who consider themselves in the workforce and are
actively seeking jobs. However, Filipino women’s employment rate, and labor force
participation rate as a whole, remains far lower than men’s. Only 50 percent of Filipino women
were labor force participants in 2012, compared to 78 percent of Filipino men;
37
and the
employment rate for women was 47 percent in 2012, compared to 73 percent for men (ADB
2013b, 9). Moreover, employment is correlated with educational attainment; and women from
poorer households are even less likely to be employed than those from wealthier backgrounds
(e.g., see PSA 2014b, 25).
38

Among my surveyed GABRIELA members, employment prospects were extremely
bleak, while also underscoring gendered labor market segmentation.
39
The most common source
of livelihood for respondents was a partner’s support: 42 percent said they relied on a partner.
Roughly one in four were ‘self-employed’ in the informal economy, for instance, as street
vendors, scavengers, masseuses, or ironers. One in four received government assistance, usually
a ‘conditional cash transfer’ for qualifying poor mothers with children (I discuss this program in
the next section). Only 15 percent of all respondents said they had ‘work’ from an employer –
for instance, in domestic work, street sweeping, and the private or public sector.
40

Although most survey respondents had some high school education, about half of those

37
Labor force participation rates increased slightly for women in the late 1990s, from 49 percent in 1998 to 52
percent in 2002. During this same time, male labor force participation dipped from 83 percent to 81 percent. But
with high unemployment through the 2000s, labor force participation decreased for both women and men from 2001
to 2012 (Sobritchea 2006; ADB 2013b, 9–10).
38
Women’s increased access to professional occupations does not apply to most urban poor women. Meanwhile,
although women represent the majority of ‘professional’ workers, their share of earnings remains significantly less;
men continue to disproportionately occupy administrative and highly paid positions (see Table 1.1). In 2013,
women’s share of employment as public administrators was only 40 percent (ADB 2013b, 21).
39
While not statistically representative, my survey offers a snapshot of conditions faced by urban poor GABRIELA
members. See Appendix B for details on methodology.
40
This rate of regular employment corresponds with larger surveys of Metro Manila women (Serquina-Ramiro et al.
2004).

72
attending high school had dropped out. Only 37 percent of all respondents, a minority, had
completed high school. One in four had elementary education only. Of the few who had
attended college, most also had dropped out; and just ten percent had some form of vocational
training. (Among my interviewees, the most common reason for stopping school was financial
hardship: needing to work to help support their families, or being unable to afford school fees
and tuition.
41
) For survey respondents, higher educational attainment was correlated to greater
likelihood of women’s formal employment, with college especially making a difference;
42

indeed, some college is practically a requirement for formal employment in Metro Manila, even
for menial and low-wage jobs. Nevertheless, most urban poor women surveyed – including
those who had attended college – did not have formal employment.
When women do earn, gendered pay disparities are even more prevalent among poor
households. Nationally, women earned only 60% of men’s wages in 2012 (ADB 2013b, 9).
Furthermore, a comparison of women’s and men’s earnings by occupational category shows that
the gender wage gap is among the highest for service and unskilled workers – the occupations
where urban poor residents are most likely to attempt to earn a living (see Table 1.1).
43
Along
similar lines, data confirms that when both male and female household members earn income,
women’s earnings tend to be lower than men’s. Yet this is especially so for poorer households:
wives in low-income households are even more likely to earn less than husbands (see Table 1.2).
Urban poor GABRIELA members I interviewed reported stark gendered pay differentials
in both formal and informal sectors. Women vendors scraped by making ₱120 per day if lucky;

41
Pregnancy was also a reason for several.
42
Those who had attended a few years of college or completed college were at least twice as likely to have a job as
those with high school only, and those with vocational training were also significantly more likely than those with
high school to have a job. See Appendix B.
43
Even if overall the gender pay gap decreased slightly since the 1970s, for poor women, it remains especially large.
Thus, a 2013 Asian Development Bank report on the Philippines concluded that through the 2000s there were “no
reductions or limited reductions in... income inequality, and gender inequality in the labor market” (ADB 2013b).

73
Table 1.1: Average Wage and Gender Wage Gap in the Philippines, 2011
Occupation
Average Nominal Daily
Basic Pay, Employees Only
(pesos)
Gender
Wage Gap
(%)
Men Women
Officials of government and special interest organizations,
corporate executives, managers, supervisors
738.78 762.55 -3
Professionals 732.41 655.12 11
Technicians and associate professionals 489.29 431.05 12
Clerks 426.62 402.51 6
Service, shop, and market sales workers 314.45 206.44 34
Farmers, forestry workers, and fishers 197.39 171.06 13
Trades and related workers 302.37 223.66 26
Plant and machine operators and assemblers 320.88 324.49 -1
Laborers and unskilled workers 195.79 142.80 27
Special occupations 608.23 384.59 37

Source: Government of the Philippines, Department of Labor and Employment. Decent Work Statistics Online Database.

Table 1.2: Who Earned More Cash, by Wealth Quintile*
Wealth Quintile
Husband
Earned More
About the Same
Wife
Earned More
Husband Has No
Cash Earnings
Lowest 67% 17% 14% 1%
Second 58% 20% 18% 2%
Middle 56% 17% 24% 2%
Fourth 51% 24% 22% 3%
Highest 50% 20% 26% 3%

* For married women respondents who earned cash within the last 12 months.
Source: 2013 Philippines National Demographic and Health Survey (PSA 2014b, 172)

in comparison, they told me their husbands could bring in ₱250-300 per day in construction or
transportation. A small handful of urban poor women I spoke with had attended college, but
their prospects continued to be constrained in comparison to male partners. For instance, one
Muntinlupa resident had received her degree in fishery, while growing up in Mindanao. The
most she ever earned was packing diapers for a factory at a piece-rate, where she could take

74
home ₱300 per day.
44
Her husband, a security guard, now has a pay rate of ₱740 per day.
45

Some urban poor interviewees were employed in light manufacturing before the 2000s,
but their pay rates also bely assumptions that these jobs brought Third World women better
employment opportunities, compared to those for men. Reflecting deindustrialization, no
interviewee said she currently worked in a factory. But from the 1980s to early 2000s, several
had, producing exports like clothing, food, or prawns.
46
In almost all cases, these women’s
positions were ‘contractual’ (i.e., temporary and not regularized). Their wages were far below
legal minimum, even when producing for export. Thus, their pay was typically significantly
lower than that of low-income male counterparts in construction, transportation, or minimum
wage work. (Still, several interviewees reported that subsequent decades brought even greater
dependence on male breadwinners; in part, rapid deindustrialization and informalization in the
2000s depressed real wages further, while reinforcing gendered earning gaps.)
As labor force participation varies with life-stage and age, poor women’s trajectories
have reified their gendered economic marginalization. In the 1990s, women provided 84% of
total household time spent on childcare (ADB 2013b, 11). My interviewees had usually engaged
in paid labor when they were young and single. Upon pregnancy or marriage, their labor became
unpaid or earnings irregular, especially while children were young. Many resumed income-
generating activities as their children grew, but in more informal capacities; employers in retail
and services have historically favored single and younger women.
47

44
Below legal minimum wage at the time.
45
While women able to migrate as OFWs might represent an exception to the gender pay gap within households,
their families were not a dominant proportion of households in communities where I conducted interviews.
46
In the 2000s, food processing accounted for 44 percent of manufacturing revenues (Sobritchea 2006, 10).
47
But alarmingly, with expanding informalization, unemployment rates in 2012 were actually higher for female than
male youth aged 15-24: at 18 percent for female youth, compared to 15 percent for males (ADB 2013b, 8).

75
‘Conditional Cash Transfers:’ Targeting Poor Mothers to Demobilize Dissent
Along logics of neoliberal imperial governance, the Philippine state’s chief poverty
alleviation program targets poor mothers – capitalizing off of gendered disparities in care labor
and self-sacrifice – but fails to address structural causes of poverty and gender inequality.
Government support for poor families primarily consists of payments through the Conditional
Cash Transfer (CCT) program, also known as ‘4Ps’ (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program),
established in 2007. Essentially a limited welfare provision with ‘strings attached,’ 4Ps was
patterned after CCT programs in Brazil and Mexico that offer cash subsidies to the ‘poorest of
the poor’ – if mothers meet conditions such as their children’s school enrollment and medical
check-ups. Touted as the state’s “largest poverty and social development program” thus far, 4Ps
expanded to reach 4.3 million households in 2014 (Reyes and Tabuga 2013, 1; GovPh 2015).
Yet those designated ‘poorest’ are a small, somewhat arbitrary segment of nearly 14 million
Filipino families who suffer serious poverty (IBON 2009).
The Philippine 4Ps program is funded through loans from the WB/IMF and Asian
Development Bank. It instrumentally targets mothers because women are observed to be more
likely to spend funds on their families instead of on themselves. But 4Ps utilizes already over-
stretched poor women as a development resource and conduit for care, while avoiding more
substantive reforms. 4Ps requirements depend on and intensify women’s unpaid reproductive
labor, draw them away from other income-earning activities and responsibilities, and reify
traditional gendered divisions of household labor.
48
The program’s education subsidy amounts
to ₱10 a day for a household’s qualifying children only,
49
when critics point out massive shifts in

48
On CCTs in Mexico and gender roles, see (Molyneux 2006).
49
As of 2015, through 4Ps, mothers could receive a health grant of ₱500 per month (capped at ₱6,000 per year), and
an education grant of ₱300 per month (capped at ₱3,000 per year) for up to three children; if they met requirements
that include school attendance for children, health check-ups, and participation in regular program activities.

76
social service investment are needed. GABRIELA and other ND organizations contend that as a
political maneuver, 4Ps deflects attention from neoliberal restructuring, which continues full
throttle in worsening poverty; instead, a majority of recipients in a study by the Center for
Women’s Resources asked for a secure job or source of livelihood as solution to their poverty,
rather than 4Ps (CWR 2013, 18).
While cash assistance amounts are insufficient for eliminating severe economic hardship,
they have been deployed to demobilize dissent. Evidence suggests politicians use disbursements
to manipulate political favors. Additionally, the state has combined the program with
counterinsurgency maneuvers: for example, the military has supervised payouts and discouraged
recipients’ political activity (CWR 2013, 14; IBON 2010; Karapatan 2012, 60–1).
50
Recipients
complain of irregularities and unexplained deductions (CWR 2013). Throughout Metro Manila
communities I observed, organizers experienced difficulties arranging GABRIELA chapter
activities and meetings, because mandatory 4Ps activities were suddenly scheduled for the same
date.
51
Recipients would then have to attend the government programs instead, or risk losing
their subsidies.
52
GABRIELA members verified to me that local 4Ps disbursers had even
explicitly threatened them with disqualification from the rolls if they attended public protests or
were active in GABRIELA.
53

3.2 Land
Migrants to Metro Manila
Metro Manila has remained the Philippines’ dominant population and economic center

50
4Ps national advisory committee members have included armed forces and defense leaders (IBON 2010, 6).
51
One in four GABRIELA members I surveyed was a recipient of government support, most likely 4Ps.
52
Tondo organizers said attendance at these extra 4Ps meetings only became mandatory after 2011; the activities
seemed to be deliberately set on a rotating schedule to disrupt recipients’ other plans.
53
Their complaints corroborate other reports of 4Ps as a tool for political repression (Karapatan 2012, 60).

77
since colonial rule, when it became a main port. In the late 1980s, it accounted for half the
nation’s industrial jobs and 40 percent of its urban population (van Naerssen 1989, 200). With a
population of over 11.9 million in 2010, it remains a chief destination for those displaced by
neoliberal restructuring, from the provinces and countryside.
The expansion of export agriculture under U.S. rule caused Manila’s population to grow
as a trade hub (Karaos 1995, 30–1). Following WWII, a flood of rural migrants arrived, as early
relief efforts centered on the city.
54
In ensuing decades, migration continued: from the 1970s
through the 2000s, agribusiness development and trade liberalization eroded the livelihoods of
small farmers and landless peasants, rendering them seasonal workers while pushing women and
girls into domestic service (e.g., Pinches 1987). Militarization and land-grabbing has added to
rural displacement. By the late 1990s, roughly 100,000 migrants joined the Metro Manila urban
poor each year (van Naerssen 2001, 678).
Given monopolistic landownership
55
and high housing prices, most rural migrants to
Metro Manila have become informal settlers. The area’s larger and older ‘slum colonies’ are
usually on former haciendas of the landed oligarchy. Symptomizing concentrated ownership,
even in the late 1980s, nearly one third of Metro Manila’s land remained ‘undeveloped,’ and was
often inhabited by the urban poor (Karaos 1995, 41). By the late 1990s, an estimated 40% or
more of Metro Manila’s population resided in informal settlements (Berner 1997, 22).
56
Even
more live in neighborhoods dubbed ‘slums,’ densely populated urban poor areas lacking basic

54
The largest ‘squatter’ settlement, Tondo, on Foreshoreland reclaimed from the sea, dates from this period (van
Naerssen 1989, 199, 201).
55
The unequal structure of land ownership persists as a direct legacy of colonialism (see Constantino 1975, 61, 67–
8; B. Anderson 1988). Under U.S. rule, most friar lands were sold to a small circle of wealthy ‘mestizos,’ and the
rapid expansion of export agriculture further concentrated landholdings under this plantation oligarchy.
56
More conservatively, the Philippine government projected the number of informal settlers at 25% of Metro Manila
households, or roughly 2.7 million people in 2010 – an undercount since it only considered lands targeted for
redevelopment (Dalangin-Fernandez 2011; Pedrasa 2009; Cruz 2010). Through the 1980s, the number of informal
settlers rose by more than double Metro Manila’s natural population growth (Berner 1997, 22)

78
infrastructure.
57

Today, like most GABRIELA members and organizers I interviewed, many urban poor
residents continue to have rural origins. Rural-urban migration reflects a struggle for land and
livelihood in the countryside, run into the city. Despite highly unequal land ownership since
colonization, the Philippine state has failed to carry out meaningful land reform. Minimum wage
law reinforces feudal divides and migration patterns: legal minimums are lower outside Metro
Manila, and for agricultural workers, while domestic workers are exempt altogether.
Historically, female migrants from the provinces have been more likely to be informally
employed in services, especially domestic work, compared to both male migrants and women
born in the city (Koo and Smith 1983, 224–5). Their precarity has presaged the overall trend
towards increasing informalization.

Demolition and Displacement
As informal settlers in Metro Manila have steadily increased, the state has repeatedly
couched their removal in the rhetoric of national development. Clearing out ‘slum dwellers’ has
dovetailed with moral panics about the ‘degradation,’ ‘delinquency,’ and ‘chaos’ of poverty
(Kares 2014, 183; Pinches 1994, 25). Marcos had literally hundreds of thousands of families
forcibly removed, often to far-flung ‘relocation sites’ lacking livelihood, water, and utilities.
58

Successive regimes still emphasize slum clearance. Yet such attempts to eradicate these shanties
have failed, since the underlying contradictions of livelihood opportunities concentrated in the

57
Estimates vary widely. Mary Racelis argued as many as 13 million informal settlers and slum dwellers were
packed on just 5 percent of Metro Manila’s land in 1995 (1998, 2). The government numbered ‘slum dwellers’ at 4
million people or 37 percent of Metro Manila’s 2010 population (Ballesteros 2011, 2).
58
An estimated 400,000 informal settler families were evicted under martial law, particularly for international events
like the 1974 Miss Universe pageant, the 1975 visit of U.S. President Ford, and the 1976 WB/IMF Conference
(Pinches 1994, 31). Through a 1975 Presidential Decree, Marcos made ‘squatting’ a criminal offense punishable by
a fine or imprisonment (van Naerssen 2001, 683).

79
metropolis, together with monopolized land ownership and unaffordable real estate, remain
unresolved. Those relocatees who could, have often returned to the city to rebuild informal
settlements anew, where they can better earn a living.
Besides forcible removal of urban poor residents by demolition, housing policy has been
characterized by increasing privatization of state functions and reliance on marketization
schemes. In the 1970s, World Bank loans occasionally supported experiments in ‘slum-
upgrading’ rather than clearance, particularly in response to informal settlers’ growing
organizing and demands (Pinches 1994, 32).
59
Bound by the imperative of cost recovery,
however, ‘upgrading’ came to a halt by the mid-1980s: large numbers of beneficiaries fell behind
on mortgage payments and again became informal settlers (Pinches 1994, 33–4). Additionally,
powerful developer and business interests opposed this allocation of prime urban real estate to
urban poor residents.
Since 1986, the Philippine state has relied even more on the private sector to undertake
the direct production of housing (Yu and Karaos 2004, 108–9).
60
The government cut its
housing budget,
61
decentralized service provision,
62
and focused on trunk infrastructure not
necessarily for public convenience, but for attracting foreign investment (Shatkin 2004, 2479).
The Community Mortgage Program (CMP), instituted in 1988, replaced ‘slum-upgrading.’ It,
too, incorporates informal settlers into the legal housing market by requiring them to repay
mortgages over a period of decades; but unlike ‘upgrading,’ it doesn’t necessitate that the state

59
Upgrading’ legalized qualifying residents’ tenure by selling them plots as private mortgages; the state provided
drains, utilities, and pathways subsidized by development loans.
60
Regarding NHA housing policy under Marcos see (Pinches 1994, 31; Shatkin 2004, 2478).
61
While crippled by debt servicing, less than one percent of the national budget went to housing, through the 1990s;
and most funds were dedicated to credit for upper- and middle-income housing, since low-income lending was
deemed not cost-recoverable (Shatkin 2004, 2480).
62
Even as centralized Presidential decrees, Supreme Court rulings, and Metro-side development plans govern
demolition of informal settlements.

80
finance basic neighborhood infrastructure. The CMP simply offers informal settlers subsidized
credit to buy the land they inhabit, provided they first form a neighborhood association, and can
negotiate a price with the landowner. Titles are transferred to the association, which monitors
residents’ payments, rather than to individuals. Despite high demand for the CMP among
informal settlers and a huge backlog,
63
though, many landowners simply refuse to sell them land
– particularly in urban areas where land values are high. Moreover, the program has fueled
gentrification, including at my research sites in Muntinlupa. In neighborhoods granted CMP
loans, fierce conflicts have arisen as more well-off beneficiaries evict those who cannot keep up
with payments; NGOs have effectively sided against the poorest residents (Berner 2000).
Other post-1986 reforms purportedly geared at land access for the poor have likewise
instead facilitated their dispossession. Under pressure following the Mendiola massacre of
peasants from Hacienda Luisita,
64
Cory Aquino instituted the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program (CARP). Due to massive loopholes, rather than ensuring land transfers to
landless peasants, CARP set off widespread conversions of plots to non-agricultural usages,
considered retroactively exempt from redistribution. Often by force, real estate conglomerates
consolidated former plantations for development into gated subdivisions or technoparks,
benefiting the same oligarchal landowners; while the landless poor were evicted to less desirable
areas (e.g., Ortega 2011).
65
The 1992 Urban Development and Housing Act delineated rights of
urban poor people to consultation and notice regarding housing demolitions; as well as to
provision of a relocation site. Yet it offers no pathway for redistributing to informal settlers the
land they occupy; nor does it make security of tenure a right for long-term residents (Nicolas

63
As of 2000, less than 5% of informal settlers in the Philippines had availed of the program (Berner 2000, 562).
64
They were protesting for land reform; Hacienda Luisita is owned by the Aquino clan.
65
Landowners may retroactively reclaim ‘unproductive’ lands even after they have been awarded to peasant
farmers; thus, they often carried out militarized evictions, to maintain their land claims.

81
2011; Ortega 2011). The law facilitates displacement, and institutionalizes incorporating
informal settlers into mortgage payments schemes at relocation sites.
66

Territorialities of Inequality and Resistance
In the Philippines, ruling elites have operated through a nexus of land ownership and
political power: the state has little autonomy from landed capital (e.g., Reid 2006; B. Anderson
1988). A handful of family-based empires, who control extensive corporate assets and land,
have historically monopolized political power despite changes in ruling party. In 2004, over 60
percent of Congressional representatives had other relatives in elected office, a figure that has
actually increased since democratization in 1986 (Coronel et al. 2004).
Recent restructuring has facilitated a shift from the importance of plantation-based wealth
to real estate development,
67
but the Philippine oligarchy’s fortunes remain deeply vested in
land. In 2012, among the richest 20 Filipinos, 13 had major holdings in diversified real estate
investments (Bello et al. 2014). With intensified structural adjustment these past three decades,
Filipino capital has moved from agricultural and manufacturing – sectors unprotected from trade
liberalization – to areas of the economy that continue to be reserved for Filipinos, like real estate,
telecommunications, water, energy, and mining (Bello et al. 2014). Oligarchy has adapted to
neoliberal imperial restructuring by relocating its sources of accumulation, even if subordinate to
transnational capital. Meanwhile, remittances from OFWs play a key role buoying up the real
estate market; as well as consumer spending at developments like megamalls, that remain
dominated by foreign brands (e.g., see Ortega 2011). Yet as territoriality recurs as a strategy for

66
UDHA’s protections for informal settlers from eventual displacement are essentially non-existent: those on public
land may be subject to demolition, as long as they are in a ‘danger zone’ or area for ‘infrastructure projects;’ those
on private land can be demolished if there is a court order. UDHA adopted demolition as the main government
response “specifically for households living in danger zones” (Ballesteros 2009, 7).
67
See (Ortega 2011; Pinches 1999; Wurfel 1979).

82
elites to accumulate wealth, restructuring has fueled not only migration, but cycles of
dispossession for the landless poor – who are serially deprived land and the fruits of their labor.
The unprecedented privatization of urban and regional planning has been a defining
characteristic of development in Metro Manila since 1986 (Shatkin 2008). With government
retreat from planning and oversight, and resulting deterioration of the urban environment, a few
large private developers have assumed new powers. Since the 1980s, they have not only taken
on “geographically ‘diversified’ portfolios of integrated urban megaprojects,” but expanded into
the privatization of mass transit, utilities, and other infrastructure (Shatkin 2008, 384).
Megaprojects typically involve public assets and loans taken on by the state, so the public
subsidizes these big developers. A 2010 state census of informal settlers residing in the way of
development projects found that 41 percent occupied public, government-own land
68
(Cruz 2010,
3). But the state has played a central role in enforcing evictions and privatizing public spaces,
rather than granting tenure to the poor, to generate funds. In the neoliberal development game,
elite-driven development projects are a key source of government revenue. For instance, in
1995, the national government sold the development rights of Fort Bonifacio Global City to a
consortium for $1.2 billion (Shatkin 2008, 394).
69
Loans from the WB and foreign investors,
which the state secures and the public must repay, overwhelmingly go to endow the developers
and corporate infrastructure, rather than the poor who are displaced.
Neoliberal restructuring is reconfiguring cities as hubs of transnational finance capital,
tourism, and consumer spending – which compete against each other for business investments,
while divesting from the poor. Gentrified spaces serve as place-marketing tools that cities use to

68
In contrast to 34 percent on private lands and 18 percent in so-called ‘danger zones’ (now targeted for clearance in
the name of safety).
69
Evicting at least 10,000 families as of 2008 (Shatkin 2008, 395).

83
attract potential investors, tourists, and ‘ideal’ residents (Smith 2002; Harvey 1989).
Recognizing a consumer middle class that has emerged regionally throughout East Asia, Metro
Manila and other Philippine city governments hope to attract these spenders as tourists by
creating megamalls and leisure spaces (e.g., Pada 2013, 52–3). Megaprojects like Makati’s
business district, Eastwood, Fort Bonifacio, etc., are controlled environments where beggars and
street vendors, tricycles and jeepney drivers – i.e., the urban poor – are banned. Their absence is
euphemized as complying with ‘international’ aesthetic standards, i.e., those of wealthier locales.
What the urban poor facing demolition demand – livelihood and housing they can call their own
in spatial proximity, through on-site rehabilitation of ‘danger zones’ and infrastructure
development without displacement – is denied them, even as it is the prerogative of the rich.
In a biopolitical move, spatial restructuring in Metro Manila includes not just attracting
those who hold financial and investment resources, but also, getting rid of unwanted populations.
Neoliberal imperial citizenship operates on a calculus of deserving bodies that favors hoarding
and redistributing wealth and resources upwards, away from the poor (Ortega 2011).
70
With the
increasing importance of real estate developers and financialization, state forces mobilize to back
corporate visions by bearing responsibility for clearing the informal settlers in the way – whether
of road expansion projects, business districts, rail linkages, waterways and more (see Table 1.3).
In 2011, President Benigno Aquino III announced a ‘waterways clearing’ plan to rid
Metro Manila of over 500,000 informal settlers by 2016, as part of an effort to clean up and
promote water sports in Manila Bay. With climate change and worsening floods, the state
declared the areas slated for demolition ‘danger zones,’ justifying clearance as a safety measure.

70
Throughout the Philippines, politicians strive to develop their municipalities into ‘cities,’ so they can qualify for
more national public resources and increase their political clout (Ortega 2011, 99–100). Local governments attract
the affluent as a tax base, while curtailing those who would use public resources without bringing in wealth.

84
Table 1.3: Ongoing Developments in Metro Manila Involving Public-Private Partnerships
Public-Private Partnership
Development
Size of Land (hectares) /
Families to be Displaced
Contracted Company /
Foreign Investor
Quezon City Central Business District 341 has. / 24,500 families Ayala Land Inc. (Ayala-Zobel) /
World Bank
National Government Center 444 has. / 80,000 families
Welfareville (Mandaluyong) Privatization 108 has. / 25,000 families
Sucat Central Business District 60 has. Vista Land
National Bilibid Prison Privatization 300 has. Japanese investors
Manila North Harbor Development Plan

1,700 families Manila North Harbor Port Inc. (San
Miguel Corp., Reghis Romero)
C-5 Northern Link Road Project 40,000 families Metro Pacific Tollways Corp.
(Manny V. Pangilinan)
National Reclamation Plan
(102 projects nationwide, including):

1. Manila Bay Reclamation Plan
• Manila-Cavite Coastal Road
Reclamation Project / Boulevard
2000
• North Bay Boulevard Business Park

2. Laguna Lake 2000

26,234 has.
1,500 has. /
38,000 families

156 has. on shoreline /
75,000+ families

8,500 has. /
32,000 families

Manila Gold Coast Dev. Corp. (William
Tieng), SM Dev. Corp. (Henry Sy),
Asiaworld (Tan Yu), Metrobank Group
(George Ty), R-1 Consortium (Jan de
Nul NV, TOA Corporation of Japan,
D.M. Wenceslao & Associates, Inc.)
Manila Bay Dev. Corp. (Jacinto Ng),
Nautilus Shipyard Repair Inc.

DMCI Holdings Inc. atbp. real estate
developers
Flood Management in Metro Manila and
neighboring areas:
San Juan River, Manggahan Floodway, Estero
Tripa de Gallina, Maricaban Creek, Tullahan
River, Pasig River, Estero de Maypajo Estero
de Sunog Apog
60,000 families

(22,661 families targeted
for relocation in 2013)
World Bank, Japan International
Cooperation Agency, Australian Aid
Agency
MRT Line 7 Construction 6,000 families San Miguel Corp. (Danding
Cojuangco, Ramon Ang), Araneta
Properties, DMCI Holdings,
Marubeni Corp. (Japan)
Manila-Clark Rapid Railway System 42,580 families Korean, Japanese, Singaporean
investors

Source: Pinoy Media Center, compiled from Alyansa Kontra Demolisyon, Task Force on Urban Conscientization, various news reports (2013)

Several neighborhoods where I conducted fieldwork in Quezon City and Muntinlupa were
targeted. Dina, one urban poor resident, had joined GABRIELA to resist the demolition of her
community. She angrily recalled how local barangay officials reassured them there would be no

85
‘forced’ demolition, but did not notify them when the demolition crew would arrive; although
the neighborhood set up a picket line for several weeks, the crew waited to descend one morning
by surprise when they were caught unawares. Once their homes were already destroyed, the
barangay coerced desperate residents into accepting a tiny settlement. Some acquiesced to
relocate to Kasiglahan Village in Rodriguez, Rizal, a neighboring province 20 miles from the
Metro. That year, the 2012 habagat rains hit the relocation site hard, bringing mudslides and
rapid flooding; river dikes broke and 2,000 families had to be evacuated (Ellao and Olea 2012;
Ruiz 2013). As it turned out, the relocation was on a reclaimed riverbed prone to flooding and
earthquakes, worsened by nearby logging and quarrying (Ellao 2013b; Ellao 2013a; Ellao
2014c). Nevermind the initial justification for relocation had been that Dina’s neighborhood was
a ‘danger zone.’ (If dubbed ‘danger zones’ for now, waterways are prime real estate for
redevelopment into tourist attractions and commercial zones.)
The privatization of ‘socialized housing’ has rendered land-grabbing into a mechanism to
extract further payments from the poor. At relocation sites, former informal settlers are
converted into an opportunity for capital accumulation by real estate developers (Ortega 2011).
In Kasiglahan Village, as elsewhere, relocatees were required to pay monthly amortizations that
increased yearly and seemed to far exceed building costs (Condeza 2014; Ellao 2014a; Ellao
2014b). Because of such schemes, displaced families continue to abandon relocation housing; or
men return to the city to work, while women are stranded at the sites to hang on to the family’s
housing claim.
71
What’s more, according to the NHA officer in charge of projects in Rizal,
Elizabeth Matipo, relocatees’ amortization payments serve as the ‘compensation funds’ for the
next round of urban poor to be evicted from Metro Manila’s ‘danger zones’ (Condeza 2014).

71
Women are also stranded at relocation sites because of unaffordable transportation costs.

86
Apparently, relocatees have been incorporated into a reverse ponzi scheme of dispossession:
relocatees pay the ‘public-private partnership’ that dispossessed them, to dispossess others.
72

Throughout Metro Manila, spatial restructuring inscribes a landscape of class divisions,
including between informal settlements and more affluent gated communities or corporate
developments (Ortega 2011; Garrido 2013). Disputes regarding the closing of gates between
neighborhoods – which has implications for safety as well as everyday mobility – are common.
Despite the fire hazard, a Muntinlupa informal settlement I visited had only one small entrance to
its maze of narrow alleys where hundreds of families live; a back gate, which opens into a bus
terminal, was kept locked (supposedly, to deter pickpockets). Moreover, class follows people,
marking them in all spaces: Marco Garrido has argued there are no common ‘public spaces’
where these divides are erased (2013).
Land access for the poor in Metro Manila is gendered. Urban studies scholar Emma
Porio found that women-headed households and lower-income families are more likely to be
located in ‘environmentally degraded’ and flood-prone areas of Metro Manila (2014). Along
similar lines, scholars have documented that climate change and Metro Manila flooding
disproportionately hurt women (e.g., Porio 2011a; Porio 2011b; Zoleta-Nantes 2000). Yet, even
as climate change serves as a chief justification for the ‘waterways clearing’ plan, studies of the
gendered impacts of disaster rarely challenge how resettlement policies enact violence against
the poor and facilitate land-grabbing.
Urban poor women are at the forefront of community organizing to oppose evictions,
73

72
Meanwhile, government funds set aside for relocations appear to be pocketed by developers of show-case housing
(e.g., Quijano 2014). To date, various government agencies and Aquino himself have presented conflicting and
incomplete accountings.
73
Especially in GABRIELA and ND-affiliated organizations; see also Parnell (2000) on the non-aligned SAMA-
SAMA.

87
both due to the spatial geography of gendered divisions of labor, and to gendered impacts of
displacement. Scholarship on Metro Manila urban poor communities documents the central role
women play in neighborhood networks, as part of daily survival (Berner and Korff 1995, 215;
Muller and Plantenga 1990, 24). However, social cohesion requires time to build. Forced moves
can be more catastrophic for women, who lose their immediate neighborhood ties, as a result
(Muller and Plantenga 1990, 25). Demolition is not simply a matter of economic displacement.
In the course of my fieldwork, I observed it to have a political impact: as the 2013 elections
loomed, one neighborhood that was a stronghold of Gabriela Women’s Party had a sizable chunk
of GABRIELA members removed. Urban poor women’s struggles to organize political power
often center around place, and as this dissertation explores, so do local GABRIELA organizers’
collective capacities to intervene against interpersonal gendered violence.
However, local politicians have justified demolitions by claiming they will benefit
women. For example, since 2010, informal settlers in San Roque, Quezon City, have repeatedly
resisted forced removal. They sit on prime real estate: developers and the city government aspire
to create a Quezon City Central Business District here that rivals Makati. In a project financed
by WB/IMF loans, Ayala Land bought the public plot of San Roque from the state, to build a
giant parking lot and three hotels – requiring the eviction of nearly 10,000 families (e.g., Suarez
and Abella 2010). Opponents publicly challenged Quezon City mayor Herbert Bautista on how
his government could promote gender equality, while destroying homes of informal settler
families who were mostly women and children. In response, Bautista staged a press conference
where he asserted his full support for gender equality, and claimed the hotels would bring 9,000
jobs, including for women (Manila Bulletin 2013).
The state repeatedly downplays or denies the use of force and coercion in demolitions

88
and relocations (e.g., Clapano 2012). Yet coercion is implicit in informal settlers’ lack of
leverage to reverse unwanted demolitions, or to renegotiate unsatisfactory relocations one
removed. Moreover, demolition is frequently preceded by the militarization of targeted
communities using both police and private patrols; local organizers, including women, suffer
repression and harassment. In San Roque, Ayala stepped up armed guards; 25 security personnel
allegedly employed by Ayala raided a woman leader’s home and assaulted her (CTUHR 2012).
In 2013 alone, human rights organization Karapatan reported at least 13 extrajudicial killings
related to urban poor organizing (Karapatan 2014b). During evictions, police and demolition
crews have attacked protesters; residents and bystanders, including minors, are detained and
tortured. As confrontations developed between police and informal settlers in San Roque,
women, children, and elderly were teargassed and dozens seriously injured (Karapatan 2014b;
Kabataan 2014). One elderly man died of an asthma attack after inhaling teargas, while a
pregnant woman had a miscarriage trying to escape a gassed area.
Through the 2000s, NGOs such as Habitat for Humanity and Gawad Kalinga have
partnered with the state to provide building materials to create showcase ‘socialized’-but-
amortized relocation projects. But in the process, they have become willing enablers of
displacement and dispossession. Many anti-poverty think tanks and NGOs ignore any serious
consideration of non-market oriented strategies. A troubling silence on the violence of
demolition, including among advocates for ‘inclusive development,’ appears to fall along
coalitional lines.
74

74
Some NGOs and community groups focus on informal settlers having input about relocation, negotiating their
future conditions at these sites, without actively opposing demolition and displacement. Others, including ND
organizations, directly resist demolition itself as violent expropriation. Arguably, the unaccountable manner in
which demolitions are regularly carried out leaves informal settlers little leverage for negotiation – unless the violent
process of removal is itself also resisted.

89
Gendered struggles over place and housing figure prominently in the lives and concerns
of urban poor GABRIELA members. My research sites included communities that were
historically informal settlements; in-city government projects in Tondo where those displaced by
demolition had been warehoused and then abandoned by the state; urban poor neighborhoods in
Muntinlupa seeking regularization through the CMP program. On average, GABRIELA
members I surveyed had lived 18 years in their communities. Residence tended to be longer in
neighborhoods that were historically informal settlements (28 years on average in one, for
instance), and comparatively shorter in government housing projects and ‘temporary’ relocation
sites. Yet displacement was a common experience: one in five survey respondents had suffered
demolition, fire (sometimes a deliberate method of displacement), or impending demolition that
was only avoided by organizing. Some rebuilt and continued living in the same area after
demolition; whereas others had resettled into their current neighborhood due to forcible
displacement from elsewhere.
As I conducted fieldwork in 2013, the city roiled in urban poor struggles against
demolition. There were the communities in ‘danger zones’ along the waterways. Slum-dwellers
along Road 10 in Tondo protesting impending clearance for highway widening. San Roque.
Carmina, a Muntinlupa neighborhood sandwiched between factories, subject to a land claim still
being appealed in court. The would-be landowner preempted the court process by having a
demolition crew attack. Some residents organizing through GABRIELA fought back; others
decided it was futile or too late, and accepted small sums to abandon the area. Demolitions
continue, often using illegal and coercive tactics. The logics of informal settler removal have
been updated to the exigencies of climate crisis, but the net of displacement is wide.

90
3.3 ‘Body Capital,’ Racialization, and Metro Manila’s Urban Poor
Greta: Age, looks, and then education… Here in the Philippines, [as a woman] you can
have a job if you are –
Jon: 18 to 25 years old.
“With ‘pleasing personality,’” they chime together.
Ann: Oo, with height pa yun, ha [Yes, with good height, too].
Jon: 5’2”
“American height,” says Ann.
Having “American height.” That’s the requirement that Ann, at not quite 4’ 11”, failed to
meet – preventing her from getting hired at a Toshiba electronics assembly line. She recounted
applying in 2000: “I passed the exam… Of course I included all my educational attainment…
4
th
-year college… I was over-qualified. When they measured me… I failed at height. I wasn’t
hired.”
75
(Jon had tried her luck there too, “but they really only want single [people].”
76
)
I’m sitting with GABRIELA organizers and members in a neighborhood of Muntinlupa,
next to lake Laguna de Bay. Writing in 1992, sociologist Elizabeth Eviota documented the
preponderance of sexist double-standards and stereotypes constraining Filipino women’s
employment in service, sales, or clerical work; classifieds regularly advertised for females who
were single, “attractive with pleasing personality,” and under 25 years old (1992, 126). Many of
these expectations, even if less explicit, still persist.
Such standards are inflected with colonial legacies. Short height is not only considered
less attractive – but associated with poverty, backwardness, and the ‘ignorance’ of being

75
“Naka-pass ako ng exam… syempre nilagay ko lahat yung ano ko… education attainment... 4
th
-year college…
over-qualified naman yan. Noong sinukat naman ako… bagsak ako sa height. Hindi ako natanggap” (Ann 2013a).
76
“Kaya lang kailangan talaga singleness, eh.”

91
‘promdi’ (from the provinces). Good looks would include fair skin, ubiquitous in advertising,
and a European or mestizo nose with a high bridge. Roland Tolentino invokes the term ‘body
capital’ to discuss the importance of physical attributes in the Philippines’ service-based
economy under neoliberal restructuring (2009). For the underclass, cultivating body capital is an
embodiment of aspirations for social and upward mobility – whether through the entertainment
industry, sex work, marriage, or getting hired in general. Body capital is all the more essential
given lack of access to other social, economic, and political capital. Yet valuations of ‘body
capital’ are not only patriarchal, but thoroughly “colonial and elitist” (2009, 86).
Given a racialized hierarchy where indigenous and Moro peoples have been subordinated
in opposition to Hispanicized Filipinos and colonial masters, informal settlers could be seen as
racialized neocolonial subjects who index the liminal place of many poor ‘Filipinos,’ even as
they constitute the ‘racial’ majority. Spanish and U.S. colonization has shaped a racial hierarchy
in the Philippines where indigenous and Moro (Muslim) peoples have occupied subordinate
positions of institutionalized exclusion historically, and continue to suffer disproportionate state
violence (e.g., Kramer 2006). Global logics of anti-black racism circulate as well, devaluing
indigenous peoples and others with ‘black’ features (e.g., D. Rodriguez 2009). In contrast,
Caroline Hau has argued of the ruling oligarchy that “‘mestizo’ nowadays signifies mainly
‘white’” (2010, 180).
77
Foreigners and whiteness (especially whitened foreigners) embody
modernity and legitimate subjectivity, while often enjoying privileges and relative wealth.
Leftists, for instance, critique the perks of ‘super-citizenship’ granted U.S. military or foreign
investors in the Philippines.
‘Filipinos’ are racialized as neocolonial subjects whose value lies in degree of proximity

77
While much of the ruling ‘mestizo’ oligarchy includes Chinese ancestry, historically racialized as alien, Hau
argues that ‘mestizoness’ has been delinked from ‘Chinese.’

92
to aesthetic standards in line with whiteness and the capital of neocolonial masters. In neoliberal
imperial times, this includes aspiring to a ‘modern’ cosmopolitanism informed by ‘world-class’
tastes and consumption of U.S. branded goods – while distancing oneself from peasantry. Along
neocolonial logics, rural spaces and the darker, shorter, weathered (racialized) bodies they are
associated with, are hierarchized as backwards in contrast to urban modernity or globality.
While rivalries among the Philippines’ diverse ethno-linguistic groups vary by place, in Metro
Manila, to be ‘Bisaya’ (Tagalog for ‘from the Visayas’), can be deployed as an insult with the
double meaning of being country. To be a brown ‘squatter’ from the provinces is stereotypically
to be criminal, lazy, and unintelligent. Informal settlers are regularly demonized in mainstream
media as hustlers and even parasitic land-grabbers, who make their living from ‘professionally’
squatting land. Removal policies are laced with fears of their population growth. But while
scapegoated, as I have outlined, informal settlers are produced through ‘accumulation by
dispossession.’
That said, none of my urban poor interviewees identified as indigenous, and most were
Catholic. I do not wish to suggest equivalency between their positionalities and those of other
subordinate racialized groups. In later chapters, I continue to explore urban poor interviewees’
vexed relationship to state violence – racialization and this relation are mutually constitutive –
but note it has systematically differed from the positionality of even more militarized indigenous
and Moro communities.
Nor do I wish to downplay the centrality of class dynamics in perceptions of inequality,
or to delink cultural symbolics from material conditions. Mainstream Philippine discourses often
frame neocolonial stratification in terms of class and not racialized disparity; ascribed cultural
meanings track and reference wealth access, but also assign the latter visual and embodied

93
markers. I suggest that, particularly as informal settlers and migrants, the precarious urban poor
are racialized even as their inferiority is also overdetermined by class valuations, inseparable
from body politics. Racialization and economic restructuring operate in tandem to further
cement the cultural devaluation of poor people’s bodies and lives.
Building on the work of critical race scholars in Philippine studies, I invoke racialization
as an interrelated tool to index colonial legacies, and position these in relation to contemporary
global racial logics (e.g., Rafael 2000; D. Rodriguez 2009; Padios 2012; R. M. Rodriguez 2010;
Ortega 2011). The racialization of my interviewees indexes stratifying, material impacts of
colonial legacies, and the extent to which the latter permeate urban poor women’s lives.
Furthermore, ‘body capital’ has gendered effects; its standards shame urban poor mothers,
assigning hierarchies that devalue their bodies and affects.
Along similar lines, proficiency in English, or even Taglish (mixing Tagalog and
English), is a symbol of class status and authority in a “class-based linguistic hierarchy” that is
simultaneously racialized and neocolonial (Padios 2012, 175). ‘American English’ is the gold
standard of sophistication rather than Philippine English or vernacular expressions; gradations
between these are regularly a subject of ridicule and jokes of status differentiation, whether
during TV game shows, everyday socializing, or even job interviews. Although English is a
primary language of instruction in public schools, urban-rural and class divides ensure that those
lacking cultural and economic capital – most Filipinos – face high barriers in developing fluency.
Jon and Ann informed me that in their urban poor neighborhoods, using Taglish was perceived
as a sign of “snobbery,” that marked one as a class outsider.

94
4. Closing
When asked to identify the most important issues in their neighborhoods, the
overwhelming majority of urban poor GABRIELA members I surveyed, 94 percent, prioritized
lack of jobs and livelihood. Overall, the next most pressing problems were demolition and
housing security; health services; and education (in order of most votes).
78
Regarding top
problems for women, respondents again chose lack of jobs and livelihood; health services; and
demolition and housing security (also by number of votes). But intimate partner and domestic
violence ranked fourth, with 37 percent voting this a top issue for women in their neighborhood.
In Chapter 2, I next explore how interpersonal gendered violence has played out in urban poor
GABRIELA members’ lives.

78
Although individual neighborhoods ranked health services and education differently, they were unanimous about
livelihood and housing being the top two issues.

95
CHAPTER 2

‘Squatters’ in Our Own Homes:

Precarious Lives, Interpersonal Gendered Violence, and Reaches of U.S. Empire

Fig. 2.1: Shanties along the Mangangate River in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila. West Parc Condos of
Filinvest Corporate City rise overhead; a studio costs upwards of ₱2.5 million, and mortgages range from
over ₱100,000 per month.
1
In 2013, minimum wage, unobtainable to most informal settlers, was ₱466
(roughly $10.60) per day for the National Capital Region.

1. Opening
A concrete wall flanks the Mangangate River, as it curves below towering Filinvest
condominiums in Muntinlupa. Just upstream is the Haven for Women, a government shelter for
“abused, battered, exploited, trafficked women” managed by the Department of Social Welfare
and Development (DSWD 2015). Downstream are the Haven for Children, a DSWD temporary
shelter for street children, and the DSWD field office.

1
http://www.condominiumsmanila.com/Alabang/condo/14/West%20Parc.php;
http://www.filinvesthavila.com/2012/05/west-parc-alabang.html

96
Shanties hoover right over the water’s edge. They house the construction workers who
built the two Havens, and their families. The sheer wall spatially segregates these dwellings
from the condos: you can’t scale its blank concrete, and to reach the shanties, must wind along a
narrow ledge inside the embankment, walking 15 or so minutes. The entrance to this ledge is
unnoticeable to outsiders, a nondescript alley beneath the eaves of a roadside eatery. Yet access
used to be more open. A direct walkway connected the houses to the main road, before Filinvest
put up the wall cutting it off. Riverside residents asked their local government officials to
request a meter or two to retain a safer path, to no avail. As it is, schoolchildren nimbly skip by
on the man-made cliff, which seems two feet wide at times with a sharp drop, in their flip-flops.
The community pipes in tap water from the opposite side of the river, away from the condos.
On a sunny day, the stream is a shallow creek at the bottom of a large drain. But during
storms, it rises to deluge the row of small wood and scrap-metal homes perched on stilts within
its engineered banks. The water, the river, and these shanties, are all concealed from view to
those outside the towering wall. The wall protects the lands beyond from flooding; but directs
the rush of water amidst the hapless shelters clinging there.
The ‘informal settlers’ have lived here over 13 years. Mercedita, whose husband was a
DSWD construction worker, says the government gave their families permission to build
temporarily dwellings on this public land, conveniently close to the work sites. She says the
state promised them more permanent housing, which never materialized. Now, the riverside
communities have been declared inhabitants of a flood-prone ‘danger zone.’ The government
buildings duly completed, the workers and their families face demolition under a Presidential
‘waterways clearing’ plan to rid Metro Manila of all ‘informal settlers’ by 2016.

97
I visit the neighborhood with GABRIELA organizers, who meet with residents to discuss
the impending demolition. An NGO, Gawad Kalinga, has offered 37 families
2
building materials
on another plot of public land – if they contribute 3,600 labor hours for construction per
household; meet eligibility requirements like proof of marriage, residency at the riverside for
over 10 years, health, employment, and income of ₱3,000 per month; and commit to staying at
the relocation site. Others – over 100 families – have no offers of resettlement. They tell me
residents of the Filinvest condos complain of noise from their neighborhood.
* * *
Nationalist leftists commonly use the phrase ‘naging squatter tayo sa sariling bansa’
(“we’ve become squatters in our own country”), to critique the dispossession of the poor –
whether through forced demolitions of their shanties, or through neocolonial state policies more
generally, that are seen as immiserating Filipinos. The phrase frames struggles over land and
housing as interlinked with struggles for national liberation. Playing on these words, this chapter
adopts the concept of ‘squatters in our own homes’ as an overarching rubric: considering how
urban poor women are made ‘squatters’ dispossessed from ‘home,’ ‘housing,’ and ‘homeland,’ I
extend an analysis of precarity in the ‘home’ to include dynamics of intimate partner and sexual
violence in the domestic sphere. I argue intimate and structural scales of violence are
interconnected and inseparable when it comes to how interpersonal gendered violence manifests
in urban poor women’s lives.
For urban poor women, economic and spatial restructurings under neoliberal imperialism
have exacerbated interpersonal gendered violence – despite government boosterism to the
contrary. I contest generalizations regarding women’s upward economic ‘mobility’ under

2
Most but not all the original construction workers’ families.

98
restructuring, instead foregrounding heightened ‘precarity.’ Precarity – or to borrow Ninotchka
Rosca’s words, a ‘permanent state of impermanence’ – is enforced through dislocations, cycles
of dispossession and migration that are gendered. Scales of structural and interpersonal violence
collude to both trap and circulate urban poor women within spheres of unsafe living quarters,
where their claims are yet tenuous and disavowed. Rather than simply reading increased
domestic and sexual abuse as a ‘male backlash’ against female mobility, I consider how such
violence continues to index patriarchal inequalities, as neoliberal imperial restructuring has
further immiserated poor women.
This chapter explores long-term spectrums of abuse impacting GABRIELA members
over their lifespans. Avenues of ‘mobility’ and migration which interviewees have resorted to,
including to flee from abuse, are thoroughly produced by neoliberal imperial violence such that
often, home is discombobulated from livelihood from freedom. Furthermore, I suggest that like
an abusive partner, the abusive neoliberal imperial state wields selective disinvestment as a tool
for control and extraction. This state operates in public-private partnership with individual
domestic abusers. Its neoliberal imperial economic policies serve as a pressure cooker on
households, helping to spur gendered abuse that enforces subcontracted regimes of reproductive
and sexual labor. Simultaneously, its crisis responses to domestic violence – including through
law enforcement after abuse has occurred – fall short, effectively delivering urban poor women
back into the hands of privatized purveyors of violence.
I opened this chapter with a brief description of Mercedita’s neighborhood to foreground
contradictions between state responses to gendered violence, and multiple levels of structural
violence facing urban poor communities. Particularly since U.S. colonization, land ownership
has been highly concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchal clans, often ‘mestizo,’ who also

99
monopolize most corporate entities.
3
As Chapter 1 explained, a real estate boom directly
connected to ongoing colonial legacies, and dependent on overseas remittances – labor now
being the Philippines’ top export – has intensified the dispossession of farmers and urban poor
people. The formation of gated subdivisions throughout Metro Manila and Southern Tagalog has
helped concentrate the poor, and female-headed households disproportionately, in flood-prone
waterways. Meanwhile, storms have grown more unpredictable and intense. With climate
change already an irreversible reality for the archipelago, state policy promotes ‘adaptation.’
4
It
further justifies plans to remove informal settlers, now in the name of their ‘safety.’
For Mercedita’s community, such forces of structural violence have robbed even quasi-
legal settlers – initially granted government permission to inhabit a ‘danger zone’ – of dwellings
that were never fully theirs, regardless of their labor hours to build these and public works. An
NGO scheme of benevolent resettlement will extract further unpaid labor, so that the poor may
compensate for their own relocation. From the neoliberal state’s perspective, ‘free’ building
materials and the chance for qualifying workers to be resettled on public land are quite generous;
since ‘cost recovery’ from those too poor to buy market-rate housing is limited, why not have
them pay in labor power? Missing from this dominant framing – that the families should be
‘grateful’ for state concern over their safety, and even being offered a relocation plan – are
questions regarding the production and continuation of cycles of precarity and dispossession.
Who benefits from this land-grabbing? Who has contributed to the reproduction of ‘squatters,’
making their displacement appear inevitable? The Philippine state, private developers, upper-

3
See Chapter 1. Filinvest Land Incorporated is owned by the Gotinanun clan, relative newcomers to real estate who
are also involved in banking and finance.
4
Not only is the Philippine state unable to hold First World governments accountable for climate change; it is itself
entwined with mining and logging industries that have worsened environmental degradation and flooding.
Extractive industries, subdivision development, lack of public drainage works, and reclamation of Manila Bay for
Makati’s business and tourist district have all contributed to heightened flooding (e.g., Zoleta-Nantes 2000).

100
class elites, resettlement NGOs, and the long reaches of U.S. empire are all actors shaping the
conditions of Mercedita’s community.
Moreover, the state’s policies effectively separate addressing interpersonal gendered
violence from ensuring poor women access’s to stable housing, livelihood, and sustenance.
While the government provided temporary jobs for male construction workers to build the
emergency Havens, and even sent Mercedita, as a local politicians’ aid, to trainings on the new
domestic violence law, it has marginalized the poor community’s claims to adequate shelter and
land access. This chapter grapples with consequences of such a bifurcation for urban poor
women’s lives.
First, I present survey data on high rates of abuse experienced by GABRIELA members
in Metro Manila. I then review scholarship on the political economy of domestic violence in the
Philippines. The second part of this chapter delves into my interviews with urban poor
GABRIELA members. Through case studies and illustrative examples, I consider how
restructuring has shaped exposure to interpersonal gendered violence throughout interviewees’
lives, exploring childhood experiences as live-in domestics; marriage under duress; dynamics of
domestic abuse; and factors propelling return to violent relationships. I present a final case study
raising limitations of involving law enforcement as a response to domestic abuse, even as
gendered material inequalities remain unaddressed. I begin to consider how, caught in the
crosshairs of multiple scales of violence, GABRIELA members demand a different kind of state.

2. Violence Against Women: A Survey of GABRIELA Members
My survey used the term ‘violence against women’ (VAW)
5
to ask 142 urban poor

5
GABRIELA’s choice of term in activities and workshops; see Chapter 3 on how GABRIELA defines VAW.

101
GABRIELA members about a range of gendered violence in their lives and Metro Manila
communities, from domestic and sexual abuse, to lack of healthcare and ‘feeling unsafe’ more
generally.
6
Respondents’ reporting of VAW, and their awareness of interpersonal gendered
violence as a problem in their neighborhoods, corresponded greatly with the length and depth of
GABRIELA’s awareness-raising activities in their area.
7
Thus, the following aggregated survey
results likely underreport violence, due to deflated reporting in communities newer to
GABRIELA. Still, my survey data begins to suggest how state neglect, economic constraints,
and interpersonal gendered violence mutually reinforce each other.
Alarmingly, 44 percent of survey respondents – nearly half – had experienced some form
of intimate partner violence, whether emotional, physical, financial, or sexual, by the time of the
survey (see Fig. 2.2). Over one in three (35 percent) reported suffering emotional abuse from an
intimate partner, one in four (24 percent) within the last year. Nearly one in four (24 percent)
had suffered physical domestic violence, one in eight (13 percent) within the last year. One in
four reported what GABRIELA terms ‘financial abuse:’ financial control and/or neglect by a
partner. Over one in eight (13 percent) reported sexual abuse from an intimate partner.
My results are somewhat comparable to other local studies on the prevalence of intimate
partner violence (e.g., Castillo 1996; Serquina-Ramiro et al. 2004). For instance, a 1999 cross-
class survey of 1000 women ages 15 to 49 in the Paco district of Manila found that 23 percent
had experienced emotional abuse in the past year; while 22 percent reported ever suffering
physical domestic violence, eight percent in the last year (Serquina-Ramiro et al. 2004). Overall,
in this same study, 47 percent of respondents had experienced either physical or emotional

6
While not statistically representative, my sample offers a snapshot of GABRIELA’s active membership; see
Appendix B regarding sampling and methodology.
7
See Chapter 7. GABRIELA’s activities increased reporting of VAW, especially forms likely to be overlooked,
such as emotional abuse and acquaintance rape.

102
Fig. 2.2: Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence, Reported by GABRIELA Members

intimate partner violence. Interestingly, older studies administered by women’s NGOs have
found even higher rates of domestic violence, with 50 to 60 percent of urban poor women
reporting spousal abuse in Baguio City and Cebu (Santiago 1994, 6; CWERC 1990). In contrast,
government studies have tended to report much lower rates.
8

Nearly one in four (23 percent) of my respondents reported experiencing sexual assault or
being unsure whether what they had experienced counted as sexual assault.
9
The majority of

8
A 2013 Philippine Statistics Authority survey found one in four ever-married women had experienced emotional,
physical, or sexual violence from their spouse (2014, 185).
9
For a fuller discussion, see Appendix B.

Rates of Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence (n=142)
Respondents who experienced:

Emotional Abuse
Over 1 in 3 (35%)

Financial Abuse
1 in 4

Physical Abuse
Nearly 1 in 4 (24%)

Sexual Abuse

Over 1 in 8 (13%)

Emotional Abuse in the Past Year Nearly 1 in 4 (24%)
Financial Abuse in the Past Year Nearly 1 in 6 (16%)
Physical Abuse in the Past Year Over 1 in 8 (13%)

Any Form of Intimate Partner Violence

Nearly Half (44%)

103
Fig. 2.3: VAWC Survivors Lack Healthcare Access

those who reported sexual assault said their attacker was an acquaintance, friend, or date;
10

others reported strangers, family members, and in one case a school authority. Furthermore, my
survey and interviews counted several incidents of sexual violence perpetrated by employers,
military, and police
11
– which poor women are more vulnerable to, and which government
surveys have not measured for. Meanwhile, nearly one in five respondents reported childhood
emotional abuse, while at least 14 percent
12
had experienced childhood physical or sexual abuse.
Lack of healthcare access was overall the most common form of violence reported by
respondents (56 percent said they lacked healthcare in the last year). But survivors of domestic
or sexual violence, as well as childhood abuse survivors, lacked healthcare at rates (82 percent
and up) much higher than other respondents (see Fig. 2.3). Eighty-eight percent of respondents
sexually assaulted in the last year reported lacking healthcare access that year. Only

10
Likewise, previous studies have found acquaintance rape and incest to be the most common forms of sexual
assault, and husbands or boyfriends the most common perpetrators, in the Philippines (Candaliza 2001; de Dios
1999, 158–9; PSA 2014, 192). Regarding sexual harassment, a 2002 survey of 1,000 women in Metro Manila
conducted by GABRIELA’s Center for Women’s Resources found 28 percent had endured unwanted touching; 39
percent, malicious jokes and statements; and 53 percent, whistling and catcalls (CWR 2008, 34).
11
See Chapter 4 for further discussion on impacts of state violence on urban poor GABRIELA members.
12
An additional 7 percent said they were ‘unsure’ if they had experienced childhood physical or sexual abuse.

VAWC Survivors Lack Healthcare Access

Those sexually assaulted in the past year (n=8),
who also lacked healthcare access that year:

Those physically abused in the past year (n=18),
who also lacked healthcare access that year:

Those emotionally abused in the past year (n=34),
who also lacked healthcare access that year:

Childhood abuse survivors (n=25) who lacked healthcare access the past year:

Overall percentage of respondents (n=142) who lacked healthcare in the past year: 56%
88%
83%
82%
84%

104
39 percent of sexual assault survivors had ever received ‘counseling’
13
– often only because
GABRIELA organized peer-to-peer counseling in their urban poor community.
Only 16 percent of respondents who experienced violence said they received support
from a government agency at some point (not necessarily in connection to the violent incident).
Of these, only two individuals actually accessed services which may have been geared at
gendered violence, e.g., through a women’s desk or the DSWD. Only three percent said they
had received help from police at any point; and most survivors of sexual assault did not receive
help from police. In contrast, as I discuss in later chapters, one of GABRIELA’s strengths is its
accessibility to survivors.
14

Reports of gendered violence at work were high – and alarmingly, even higher for those
with an employer at the time of the survey, compared to the self-employed or respondents in
general. Such results underscore the dismal job prospects for urban poor women, even when
they can get hired. Nearly one in four respondents with a boss (24 percent) said they had
experienced sexual harassment at work, one in five (19 percent) in the last year; in comparison,
19 percent of all respondents had experienced workplace sexual harassment. (Almost one in
three respondents with a boss (29 percent) reported workplace discrimination, compared to 20
percent of respondents overall; moreover, these rates do not include hiring discrimination, and so
grossly underrepresent all employment-related discrimination.) Over half (52 percent) of
respondents with a boss said they had felt unsafe at work. Fourteen percent of respondents said
they had engaged in prostitution
15
or sex work against their wishes, or due to economic
indigence.

13
Counseling does not exclusively refer to therapy or professional services.
14
My survey results reveal GABRIELA instead emerged as a vital source of support for domestic and sexual abuse
survivors; see Chapter 7.
15
Choice of term reflects GABRIELA’s.

105
3. Interlocking Scales of Violence: Theorizing Neoliberal Imperialism and VAW
I now briefly discuss some gaps in how ‘gender-mainstreaming’ policy, as well as some
feminist scholarship, have typically conceived of the relation between political economy and
interpersonal gendered violence. I argue for an analysis of how neoliberal imperialism has
exacerbated domestic and sexual abuse. Rather than assuming women’s mobility is inherently
liberatory, I conceptualize dislocation as a facet of restructuring and take seriously urban poor
women’s increased indigence.

3.1 Complicating Narratives of ‘Globalization’ and ‘Male Backlash’
Scholarship has shown domestic violence helps to trap women and families in poverty.
For instance, evidence indicates it decreases women’s economic productivity, and their ability to
care for the health and wellbeing of their families and children (e.g., Mallorca-Bernabe 2005, 5;
WHO 2002, 102–3). Along such lines, advocates present domestic violence as a ‘development’
issue, calculating its cost to nations’ GDPs and social services. Such logics have dominated UN
and state rationales for including VAW and ‘gender mainstreaming’ in policymaking.
But while men’s violence against women certainly hampers women’s economic and
political access, the reverse is also true: structural factors collude to trap women in abusive
relationships. These dual processes form a mutually constitutive vicious cycle. Thus, studies of
domestic violence have also emphasized the importance of structural interventions that provide
survivors long-term housing, as well as employment, in order to successfully break cycles of
abuse (e.g., Websdale and Johnson 2005).
16
Instead, though, state policies have generally
focused on arresting and criminalizing male violence, without changing the larger political

16
An Indian NGO found using civil law to protect battered women’s access to matrimonial homes more helpful for
increasing their leverage, than relying on penal reforms that simply criminalized abuse (Bumiller 2008, 151–2).

106
economic opportunity structure (e.g., Bumiller 2008).
Furthermore, structural analyses of the impact of ‘globalization’ on VAW have often
refrained from fully indicting neoliberal imperial development policies. On one hand, much
scholarship indeed demonstrates how economic globalization has fueled VAW, producing
economic vulnerabilities and dislocations that are gendered (e.g., Sparr 1994; Eviota 1992; Floro
and Dymski 2000; Truong 2000; Mehta 2009; R. P. Ofreneo 1998; R. P. Ofreneo 2005; True
2012). For instance, studies document that economic crises are associated with increased
domestic violence.
17
Additionally, earlier research has found a persistent pattern of higher rates
of abuse for poorer households, worldwide (Krug et al. 2002, 15). At the same time, Jacqui True
stresses that the severity of a country’s gender inequality might be a more important predictor of
VAW rates than its poverty as a whole measured by GDP (2012, 18). I note such trends may
indicate the importance of relative poverty
18
(rather than GDP growth or stagnation itself), which
neoliberal globalization has worked to exacerbate.
Yet literature on neoliberal globalization and gendered violence tends to portray
globalization as a double-edged sword. In such narratives, globalization may lead to crises on
one hand, but has also provided women unprecedented economic mobility, opening jobs in the
paid workforce like those in EPZs that favor women. Scholars often pinpoint a ‘male backlash,’
in the form of increased intimate partner abuse and sexual violence, against rising female
‘mobility’ – whether in terms of employment opportunities, labor migration, late-night shifts, or
sex work (e.g., True 2012; Datta 2012, 147–72; Chant 1996, 316; Eviota 2007). According to
this framework, when rising male unemployment and precarity coincide with women

17
See Jacqui True’s work for a literature review of the impact of financial crisis on domestic violence, in mostly
Global North countries (2012, 101–9).
18
E.g., within and between households.

107
increasingly entering the labor market or assuming ‘nontraditional’ roles, men attempt to reassert
their ‘masculine identities’ and control through interpersonal gendered violence.
However, common framings of ‘backlash’ have often assumed or generalized the trope
that neoliberal restructuring has given poor women economic opportunity compared to poor
men. To do so dovetails with scripts that read ‘economic liberalization’ as symbolizing
‘women’s empowerment,’ and in some articulations, may too easily take the latter for granted.
Under this ‘liberalization as empowerment’ perspective, even if economic restructuring means
rising interpersonal gendered violence, the latter is exacted against women’s upward mobility
and subversion of ‘traditional’ roles.
I argue that focusing on the symbolics of female transgression misses a more complicated
picture of the multiple mechanisms through which restructuring has contributed to interpersonal
gendered violence in the lives of urban poor women. This is not to say that urban poor women in
the Philippines have not experienced ‘male backlash’ against gender relations in the process of
flux. Patriarchal control remains central to interpersonal gendered violence – but I reinterpret the
political economic context of these power struggles, to urge for a critical analysis of neoliberal
imperialism. Below, I reframe intimate partner violence as the struggle for control – over paid,
reproductive, and sexual labor broadly conceived – enacted on a terrain where urban poor
women have not achieved upward economic mobility, but largely remain materially beholden to
male partners and patriarchal family structures.

3.2 Neoliberal Imperial Restructuring and Domestic Abuse
As recounted in Chapter 1, waves of neoliberal imperial restructuring since Marcos have
somewhat reconfigured women’s roles in the Philippines, without fundamentally disrupting
urban poor women’s gendered economic precarity. Rather, restructuring has maintained their

108
marginal labor force status while depressing real incomes overall. Poor women as a
‘development’ resource are simultaneously undervalued and overstretched further. Meanwhile,
restructuring has indeed increased poor men’s precarity and unemployment, too. Domestic
abuse takes place amidst household dynamics where urban poor women are at times pushed into
informal wage labor, but overwhelmingly still financially dependent on male partners, even as
economic hardships have increased.
Scholarship on the impact of neoliberal restructuring on Philippine domestic relations
observes an increase in poor women’s paid and unpaid labor burdens, while men are more easily
able to avoid reproductive responsibilities. In one 1992 interview study of 24 households in the
Visayas, Sylvia Chant asserted few husbands took on more paid or reproductive work, despite
recession and falling earnings (1996). She wrote, “even where women shoulder all the major
responsibilities for household survival, men are generally accorded considerable entitlements in
terms of personal freedom and leisure” (304). Men often retained final say over household
decisions, and might subsidize their recreation through their wives’ earnings. In fact, men were
not necessarily opposed to women shouldering more financial responsibilities; instead, they
could exercise masculine privilege in other ways. Thus, Chant argued men’s leisure and
personal spending on ‘vices’ such as cock-fighting, alcohol, gambling, smoking, and mistresses
appeared to be a “much more common source of [domestic] conflict than women’s expanded
roles in income-generating” (315).
Complicating tropes that merely connect abuse to rising female employment, studies of
domestic violence in the Philippines suggest it is deployed variably, to defend patriarchal
privileges broadly defined. Violence can erupt to enforce men’s access to women’s reproductive
labor, as well as their enjoyment of sexual double standards. Objectives of abuse can include

109
limiting women’s economic earnings outside the house. Yet in other instances, it may not serve
to prevent women’s paid employment, but control who benefits from the earnings. Furthermore,
some studies suggest women’s employment can be protective against abuse, but not unless their
earning power is meaningful. While room remains for studies to fully trace how economic
policy effects abuse rates, I argue neoliberal restructuring’s erosion of earning opportunities for
poor women places them in harm’s way.
While many studies on the prevalence of intimate partner violence in the Philippines have
not explicitly analyzed the role of neoliberal imperial restructuring, they do point to correlations
between abuse and gendered economic inequality. Several studies implicate women’s continued
lack of earning power, and other gender disparities, as risk factors for abuse. Based on a 1994
survey of 2,050 married women in Cebu, Hindin and Adair (2002) found husbands were more
likely to dominate decision-making – identified as a predictor of violence – when the wife was
younger, unemployed, and contributing less than half of the household’s income (1394).
19

Similarly, a study of 1,000 cases of domestic abuse in the Philippines between 1994 and 1996
reported perpetrators of intimate partner violence were typically older and more educated – as
well as gainfully employed (80 percent) (Guerrero and Sobritchea 1997b). In contrast, more than
half of those victimized were not gainfully employed, while others had low-wage jobs such as in
domestic work. Meanwhile, a 2008 survey of 8,478 women across the Philippines found a
women’s earning power, education level, and employment status were protective against abusive
economic control
20
(Antai et al. 2014).

19
Hindin and Adair (2002) argued patterns of control and masculine privilege in general, not women’s employment
per se, predict men’s violence. They found men’s unemployment, women’s employment, and relative earnings did
not predict physical abuse. Rather, men’s domination of household decision-making was a much stronger predictor
(as well as, interestingly, women asserting autonomous decision-making over household resources, their own work,
their own travel, and birth control).
20
Such control was correlated with physical and emotional abuse.

110
In contrast, a 2013 national government survey reported women employed for cash were
slightly more likely to report physical or sexual spousal abuse (PSA 2014, 202).
21
Nevertheless,
other factors such as husbands’ domination of household decision-making, socially controlling
behavior,
22
the wife’s youth,
23
and differences in education level, were even more strongly
correlated with abuse than the woman’s employment. Additionally, most working respondents
still earned less than their husbands, and this was even more so for poorer quintiles (172).
Those vulnerable to domestic violence are often those more vulnerable to control,
because they are in positions of less leverage to begin with.
24
Besides factors already discussed,
a 1999 survey of 1000 households in Manila reported domestic violence was especially common
against women with physical or mental illness. Alarmingly, researchers noted ill women were
blamed for being ‘burdens’ unable to perform household labor (Serquina-Ramiro et al. 2004).
25

Like other studies globally, Philippines research portrays a consistent pattern of lower
household wealth being correlated with greater likelihood of domestic violence (e.g., Hindin and
Adair 2002; PSA 2014, 202). In explaining this pattern, some Philippine gender studies scholars,
as well as GABRIELA organizers, have argued that economic immiseration has helped fuel
domestic violence by increasing tensions within the household (e.g., Taguiwalo 1993b, 33).
Financial, physical, and other abuse operate hand-in-hand, as strategies for perpetrators to
control and deploy household resources as they see fit: troublingly, Guerrero and Sobritchea’s
(1997b) study of 1,000 reported abuse cases found that physical violence was usually

21
Unlike Hindin and Adair (2002), it did not test for statistical significance.
22
Control included jealousy or anger if the woman spoke with other men (reported by 26 percent of respondents);
insisting on knowing where she was at all times (18 percent); and frequent accusations of unfaithfulness (11 percent)
(195). Nine percent said current husbands did not allow them to work or practice their profession (197).
23
But accusations of infidelity rose again for women over age 40 (196, 202); similarly, my interviews suggested
abusive aggression could increase after ligation or menopause, when women were no longer able to get pregnant.
24
A 1993 national survey of pregnant women found physical abuse correlated with youth, low educational
attainment, lack of voice in decision-making, and husbands’ philandering (NSO and MI 1994, 91, 96).
25
Most of those injured received no medical care, echoing my own survey results on abuse and lack of healthcare.

111
accompanied by threats to withhold financial support. Such threats would have added teeth with
women’s increasing economic precarity under restructuring.
26

Some Philippines scholarship has tended to draw connections between so-called ‘vices’
and domestic violence, without directly exploring the role of neoliberal policies. Studies
examine how consequences of the former activities become sources of conflict in the family
(e.g., Serquina-Ramiro, Madrid, and Amarillo 2004; Lee 2004); as well as correlations between
alcohol consumption and abuse (e.g., Hindin and Adair 2002; PSA 2014).
27
Moral panics over
‘vice’ have often reduced social problems to a matter of individual failings, in a manner that
erases structural sources of violence (or that obscures other contributing factors). For instance,
‘vices’ such as alcohol or drug abuse are also a product of state abandonment, corruption, and
austerity. At the same time, I note sensitivities and concern over ‘vice’ index gender roles and
patriarchal inequalities in these behaviors’ social and material consequences.
During one 2000 focus group study with low- to middle-income Filipino men, those who
perpetrated physical abuse admitted their attacks were usually provoked when wives started
verbal arguments regarding their “drinking of alcohol, womanising or gambling” (Lee 2004,
426). Men’s descriptions of such fights tended to replicate stereotypes of physically abused
women as ‘naggers,’ as well as double standards regarding sexual fidelity.
28
Such
understandings might partly reflect respondents’ self-justifications, but also coincided with
husbands’ willingness to defend these privileges as their prerogative. (Interestingly, nearly all

26
Further research is needed to track how neoliberal restructuring has impacted domestic violence rates by
geographic location. Hindin and Adair (2002) found urban rates of physical abuse to be higher, despite rural
households being poorer and overall, poorer households having higher rates. Other studies found rural abuse rates
higher (e.g., PSA 2014; NSO and MI 1994).
27
A 2013 survey found two thirds of ever-married women whose husbands got drunk ‘very often’ reported physical,
sexual, or emotional abuse, compared to 16 percent of those whose husbands did not drink alcohol (PSA 2014, 200).
28
I.e., men had the expectations that “women must understand men’s weakness for sex, support men’s plans and
actions, be faithful, and avoid gossip and vices” (425). They associated domestic violence with women’s nagging,
financial stress or unemployment, and alcohol abuse which prevented them from controlling their tempers.

112
the men considered themselves chief breadwinners for their families, but some who were not
expressed support of their wives earning income, while they themselves spent on ‘vices’ (425)).
I do not seek to imply ‘vices’ would necessarily be responsible for domestic violence in
isolation from patriarchal attitudes or other factors. However, as I will illustrate through my
interview material, such activities do further stretch the finances of poor families. Economic
indigence intensifies material consequences of male consumption and personal spending on
privileges. Violence represses urban poor women when they challenge this order. For their part,
poorer women are more likely to be trapped in situations of domestic abuse, due to lack of
housing, livelihood, and social safety nets.
29
Yet even as worsening poverty helps keep them in
these binds, it can also fuel pushback from women, who might literally be going hungry, as a
matter of their own and their children’s survival. Domestic violence can index a heightened
struggle to maintain masculine entitlements under conditions of diminishing resources, against
urban poor women’s reinscribed gendered precarity (even if female ‘mobility,’ especially in the
sense of resisting control, can serve as an excuse).
Furthermore, intimate partner abuse is just one form of the sexual and domestic violence
that disproportionately impacts urban poor women over their lifespans. According a national
2013 survey, women in the poorest quintiles were more than twice as likely to report
experiencing physical or sexual violence over the last year, inside and outside the domestic
sphere, compared to the wealthiest quintile (see Table 2.1). The Center for Women’s Resources
argues, “lack of economic opportunity for women places them in a position to be controlled by
those who are in power,” whether “their spouses or anyone who is in authority” (2015, 22).

29
There is a dearth of Philippines scholarship documenting these barriers and their links to abuse. Besides
measuring household wealth, educational level, and employment, the aforementioned quantitative studies have not
explored women’s access to independent resources, should they separate, in more detail.

113
Table 2.1: Percentage of Women Reporting Physical & Sexual Violence by Wealth Quintile, 2013
Percentage who reported
experiencing...
Wealth Quintile
Lowest Second Middle Fourth Highest
Physical violence ever 22.7 23.6 22.1 17.9 14
Physical violence in last year 6.7 7.7 7 5.2 2.6
Sexual violence ever 7.9 7.8 7.5 5.2 4.2
Sexual violence in last year 3.5 3.6 3.3 2.2 1.5

Source: Philippines National Demographic and Health Survey 2013, of 10,963 women regarding VAW (PSA and ICF International 2014)

Centering how neoliberal imperialism has increased poor women and girls’ precarity is necessary
for understanding the dynamics of interpersonal gendered violence, over the course of their lives.

4. Interpersonal Gendered Violence in the Life Trajectories of GABRIELA Members
4.1 Three Case Studies: From ‘Homeless’ Domestic Workers to ‘Squatters’ in Our Own Homes
Len’s home is a small shack made of scavenged wood, perched at the side of the road,
straddling a sidewalk. Laundry hangs on a string outside. Inside, no more than six by six feet,
the size of the space reminds me of a queen-sized bed. Len, a GABRIELA member, lives here in
Quezon City with her husband and two young children. She as well as Mara and Niel, both local
organizers, are meeting with me today. We’re here because Len’s house is cooler than Mara’s.
Seeking respite from the sun, we pack in along with Geri, who will help interpret our interview.
Most of the enclosed space is taken up by a deep wooden shelf, elevated from the ground,
which doubles as resting place and storage for plastic bins. Niel folds up there, neatly tucking in
her legs to fit as she lies down, and Len sits beside her. Against the back wall, cooking
equipment is held in place by a plank. Calendars and the children’s school pictures adorn the
side walls, where clothing also hangs. Geri and I share a wooden bench at the door, while Mara
sits on the door-jam. The kids play just outside. (I notice that in the small space, my limbs are

114
the most stretched out of anybody’s.)
Like many urban poor residents of Metro Manila, most GABRIELA members I
interviewed originally hailed from the provinces. Below, through case studies of Mara, Len, and
Niel, who like other interviewees served as migrant domestic workers in childhood, I situate
intimate partner violence within longer life trajectories of abuse in the domestic sphere. I
foreground how cycles of dispossession have pushed urban poor women into situations of abuse.
Mara
When I asked Mara what inspired her commitment to organizing with GABRIELA, she
replied: “Each time I hear the appeals at rallies… I get goosebumps that everything we’re
fighting for is right. Especially when those kids are raped and killed... especially those activities
about the abuse of women.”
30
She then shared her own childhood experiences as a live-in
domestic.
Mara grew up in Bicol, the southeastern part of Luzon. Her father, a carpenter, struggled
to provide for their family. When Mara was 12 years old, around the late 1980s or early 1990s,
her mother became critically ill after a caesarian section. Since the family needed money for her
mother’s hospitalization, Mara was sent to a wealthier family to work as a domestic after she
finished sixth grade. Her employers were a Filipino couple from the U.S. They offered to help
with her studies, so Mara attended night classes and took care of their child during the day.
However, the man from America, who was around 40 years old at the time, began to
sexually harass Mara. One day, when she was changing clothes in preparation for school, he
suddenly entered her room and pushed her down on the bed. Mara kicked him and ran out of the

30
“Tuwing naririnig ko yung mga panawagan sa mga rally… pinangingilabutan din ako na tama lahat ng mga
pinaglalaban natin. Lalo na yung mga pinapatay na kabataan na nire-rape… lalo na… yung mga activity na inaabuso
yung mga kababaihan” (Mara 2013).

115
house. That night, she returned home to eat. When she was washing dishes, he again grabbed
her and picked her up. Mara pinched and fought him, so that he threatened if his wife saw the
marks, he’d hurt Mara. “Of course you’re just a kid, you still think like a kid… I didn’t know
what to do,”
31
Mara said. She kept silent because of his threats to kill her if anyone found out.
Nevertheless, Mara ran away and stayed with a classmate’s relative. She left all her
belongings behind, and had to sneak back when her employers were out to get her clothes little
by little, with another maid’s help. Mara continued to go to school, but was terrified she might
run into her boss because they lived right beside the premises. “I was scared to go outside the
[school] gate… I was so afraid if they saw, what they would do to me,” she recalled. “But I was
able to [take care of] myself whoever I was living with.”
32

Her employers tracked her down. They wanted her to return to work. They even tried
accusing her of theft, since she had left without their consent. But Mara dared them to go
through her few clothes to find something stolen. She refused to go back. She eventually told
her friend’s family about the harassment.
“I thought, if I hadn’t run away… probably something bad would’ve happened to me. I’d
go home to my parents pregnant... Of course, you can’t keep fighting them if they lock you
inside a room… Then what else… he’ll pull a knife on you.”
33
Her boss’s sister, who had
arranged Mara’s work, “said [her] brother is really just like that, very… ‘sweet.’ Eh, I didn’t
think so…! He just almost hurt you there.”
34

31
“Syempre… bata ka pa eh, batang isip pa … hindi ko pa alam kung ano gagawin ko nun” (Mara 2013).
32
“Takot akong lumabas ng gate… takot na takot akong… pag nakita nila ako kung anong gawin sa akin... pero
talagang kinaya ko yung sarili ko na kahit kanino ako manirahan” (Mara 2013).
33
“So yun naisip ko na… kung hindi ako… lumayas sa kanila malamang may nangyari din sa aking masama. Na
uuwi na lang ako sa magulang ko buntis ganun. Syempre wala kang kalaban laban pag ikinulong kana sa kuwarto…
Tapos isa pa … tutukan ka ng kutsilyo, yun” (Mara 2013).
34
“Ang sabi naman… ganyan lang naman talaga yung kapatid ko… ‘Malambing’ daw. Eh inisip ko naman hindi
naman ganun yun eh… kulang na lang saktan ka dun eh” (Mara 2013).

116
When Mara’s mother came to visit, she was shocked to find Mara no longer at the
employer’s. She brought Mara home, so that unfortunately, Mara wasn’t able to complete the
schoolyear. Nevertheless, Mara never told her about the harassment, because she was worried
about her mother’s health: “She has hypertension. I was thinking about her anger.”
35

At age 16, Mara was again forced to stop school to help support the family. She recalls,
“Life was hard… no matter how much my parents really wanted us to finish… My siblings and I
decided to work to help them. But in truth I lost myself… my own sense of resolve… I followed
what they wanted.”
36
Her high school advisor had hoped for Mara to graduate, but her brother
asked her to come join him in Manila. For several years, she worked at an illegal food factory,
for just ₱80 per day (less than half of legal minimum wage then). Mara is now married and has
two of her own children. She emphasized, “I’ve shared this story because I want… for youth…
to have courage to fight against violence… to do all they can… to save themselves.”
37

Len
Len’s parents were coconut farmers in Samar producing copra; she was one of seven
children. When Len was in sixth grade, her father passed away. Afterwards, unable to provide
for all the children, her mother gave Len to a neighboring couple for adoption. The adoptive
parents were kind, and of all her biological siblings, Len did well in school, earning awards.
However, Len’s biological mother came in conflict with her adoptive mother, when she wanted
the foster family to lend her money. Worse, Len’s biological mother physically abused Len:

35
“High blood nga. Iniisip ko yung galit niya” (Mara 2013).
36
“Sa hirap din ng buhay … kahit talaga gustuhin ng magulang ko na makapagtapos kami… kaming magkakapatid
na rin yung nag decide na magtrabaho para matulungan sila, pero kung tutuusin talaga dahil nawalan nga ako ng
sarili… wala akong sariling paninindigan nun, na… Nadala ako sa gusto nila” (Mara 2013).
37
“Share ko din lang kasi ang gusto ko lang… So yung mga kabataan… yung magkaroon sila ng lakas ng loob na
lumaban sa ganung karahasan… na gawin nila yung makakaya nila hanggang sa kaya nilang... Para maisalba nila
yung sarili nila” (Mara 2013).

117
“you experience being forced to kneel in salt.”
38
She resolved to run away as soon as she
finished high school.
In 2000, at around age 15, Len took a relative’s offer to find her a job as a maid in
Manila. Her employer, a construction foreman, promised to help her with her studies. “I really
wanted to [go to college] by whatever means, even if it meant working as a domestic, just so I
could finish,”
39
she recalled. Instead, her employer began locking her inside the house; he also
made sexual advances. A concerned neighbor helped Len escape through the roof.
Next, Len went to work at the canteen of the neighbor’s landlady’s relative, earning just
₱1000 per month (minimum wage then was ₱280 per day). After two years, due to the low pay
and her boss’s disrespectful treatment, she and two girl friends decided to run away from there,
as well.
This time, they found themselves with nowhere to go. Homeless, they stayed in a
cemetery, then with an elderly food vendor who took the teens in for a week. They went to a
neighborhood where Len had heard other migrants from her town lived; there, several men
housed them. “They were kind… But life was so hard… sometimes they had no work. You
really had nothing to eat, you really just had salt [with rice]… Sometimes you ask for burned
rice from the neighbors just to be able to eat,” Len said. “You really went hungry.”
40
One of
Len’s friends left to work as a prostitute. Then the man they were staying with lost his job. “I
felt bad, because we became his baggage.”
41

At this grave time, Len heard an old co-worker from the canteen wanted to court her.

38
“Nakaranas ka ng paluhurin ka sa asin” (Len 2013a).
39
“Talagang gusto kong makatapos ng pag-aarala sa kahit anong paraan e. Kahit magkatulong ako, basta matapos
ko lang sana” (Len 2013a).
40
“Mababait sila… pero yung hirap ng buhay sobra... minsan wala silang mga trabaho, talagang minsan wala na
kayong makain, talagang magdildil ka ng asin... Minsan manghingi ka ng tutong na kanin sa kapitbahay makakain
ka lang. Talagang magugutom ka na” (Len 2013a).
41
“Naawa ako, kasi pasanin din kami” (Len 2013a).

118
Desperate, she called him, and he acted quickly to send her money. In exchange, she agreed to
marry:
But what else would you expect? ... He helped, but of course… there’s an exchange. He
wouldn’t help you for nothing…
Even though I wasn’t ready, I went with him… What would happen to our lives, me and
my friend? … I’m thinking, how could we survive?
I was forced to marry though I didn’t have the desire … or plan… I still don’t feel… that
‘love’ they talk about… of being together…
He was the only one willing to help, so I had no choice.
42

He rented them a place to stay. At 17, Len became pregnant. She recounted having an
extremely traumatic miscarriage due to inaccessible treatment, and negligence at the hospital:
“They knew the child was dead [but did] nothing [to remove it]… They’re just eating Chippy [a
brand of snacks] while watching me suffering… [Then] I felt every stitch… When you say ouch,
the doctor even did like this [makes slapping sound] at my hips – ‘don’t move.’”
43

After they had two children, Len says her husband became alcoholic and started using
drugs. She recounted, “We’re renting a house only a little wider than here… [he’ll] bring
drinking buddies inside… until midnight. When you’re breastfeeding your child. That’s where
we had conflict.”
44
Len separated from him, sleeping in jeepneys at night with her young kids.
She met her current partner, a jeepney driver. Len considers it rare he accepts her children,
despite the financial difficulties.
45
For a year, the family simply lived in the jeepney because

42
“Pero what else pa bang maasahan mo? … tulungan ka, pero siyempre… May kapalit yun. Hindi ka naman
tutulungan kung wala lng e… kahit na hindi pa ako ready, sumama ako dahil … ano ang mangyari sa buhay naming
magkaibigan, kaming dalawa. Iniisip ko paano kami mabubuhay?... napilitan akong mag-asawa kahit wala pa sa
desisyon ko… sa plano ko… hindi ko pa maramdaman yun. Yung pagmamahal na sinasabi… bilang pagsasama…
Siya lang ang handang tumulong sa amin, so wala akong choice” (Len 2013a).
43
“Alam na nilang patay na yung bata... Wala e… kumakain lang sila ng Chippy habang tinitignan nilang
nahihirapan ako… Ramdam ko… bawat tusok… pagka-umaaray ka e, ginanon pa ako ng doktor non sa parang pige,
[makes slapping sound]… na ‘wag kang malikot’” (Len 2013a).
44
“Ang nirerent lang namin na house e, medyo malaki lang dito ng konti… maghahakot ka pa ng mga barkada mo,
mga kainuman mo sa loob... hanggang twelve midnight habang ikaw ay…nagpapadede ng bata. So, doon kami hindi
nagkasundo” (Len 2013a).
45
As a driver, he must pay ₱700 daily to the jeepney owner, so he only brings home ₱250-300 per day.

119
they couldn’t afford to rent housing. When they tried renting a spot for ₱1000 per month, they
were only able to stay four months before being evicted. Now they live at the sidewalk, and Len
works vending snacks.
Niel
When Niel was a child, her mother left to work in Manila, placing her in the care of a
stepfather. The stepfather’s family were tenant farmers in Leyte. His older relative sexually
abused Niel repeatedly. Niel tried to stay away, working at the market. She also did exceedingly
well in school, becoming valedictorian of her elementary class. Because of the abuse, Niel ran
away from home at age eleven. She met a recruiter for maids who brought her to Manila in the
early 1980s. She refused to return, as long as her abuser was still alive.
But in Manila, Niel did not find safety from violence, either. When she worked as a child
maid, her employer sexually abused her. Afterwards, Niel says she became a “vagabond.”
46
As
a teen, she found another employer who let her study at night, while she again worked as a live-
in domestic. Classmates mocked her when she entered high school at age 17; but she earned her
diploma, passing a placement test and skipping some years. By the late 1980s, Niel was a street
vendor, living with other hawkers in their boss’s living-room – until the mayor cracked down on
their location, and police regularly confiscated their goods. (Afterwards, like many of her
women peers, Niel’s job prospects included working in food factories for under minimum wage.)
When her brother was imprisoned for petty theft, Niel’s employers, who sourced the
vending outfit, paid for his release. However, the price of this aid was her marriage to their son,
Jim. The employers were some of the earlier migrants to their informal settlement, and played
an influential social role as labor recruiters. Jim had been pursuing Niel, although she was not

46
“Bagamundo” (Niel 2013a).

120
mutually interested. Niel explained,
I… became a way to repay [my brother’s] debt... Our dealer only did that… because it’s
really an exchange for marrying their son. That’s why… I don’t really love him…
I told myself that nobody will take me seriously… I have nothing in myself to be proud
of, since I’m no longer a virgin… I said, ‘It’s only my body that you’re after, so why
not?’… For me it was like… playing a game… I really don’t know what love is.
47

Niel was deeply ashamed of her abuse history. At the same time, feeling her sexuality was only
a transaction anyway, she hoped marriage might offer her greater social legitimacy and stability.
She added,
I was forced, because it was really our parents who… made the pact… My mother was
afraid, since she also had a child out of wedlock… When she saw me here, my mother
said, ‘Wherever I have fallen, that’s where [I should rise]’… She didn’t know the history
of my life, how I became what [I was].
48

Niel suggests perhaps her mother also hoped marriage would improve her lot. (‘Wherever
you’ve fallen, that’s from where you should rise’
49
is a saying sometimes used to urge others to
‘take responsibility’ for their mistakes or negative circumstances, including along gendered,
victim-blaming lines that devalue women seen as ‘promiscuous’ outside marriage.
50
)
Before marriage, Niel had essentially been landless and homeless; she had no place of her
own, depending on those who hired her for sleeping quarters. Even so, she had already fled
abuse multiple times. After marriage, Niel found herself trapped in a violent relationship. At
times, she was literally captive in Jim’s house. His violence retriggered Niel’s past traumatic
experiences, and she developed serious health complications. Yet since Jim didn’t contribute

47
“Ako... yung parang daang, pinambayad… kaya lang naman yun ginawa ng… dealer namin… kasi, kapalit nga
ang pagpapakasal doon sa anak nila. Kaya… hindi ko talaga siya mahal… sabi ko naman, walang magseseryoso sa
akin... wala naman akong ipagmamalaki sa sarili ko e, kasi di na virgin… sabi ko, ‘katawan lang naman ang habol
ninyo sa akin, why not?’ … Parang laru-laro lang sa akin yung.... Hindi ko nga alam yung love e” (Niel 2013a).
48
“Pinilit nga lang ako e, yun nga parang magulang lang kasi namin ang… pinagkasundo… natakot kasi nanay ko
kasi, disgrasyada rin yung nanay ko… nung may nakita ako dito, sabi ng nanay ko, kung saan daw ako nadapa, dun
daw yung... di naman niya alam yung kasaysayan ng buhay ko kung paano ako naging ano rin” (Niel 2013c).
49
‘Kung saan ka nadapa, doon ka na bumangon.’
50
Another interviewee invoked the saying to describe why, considering herself disgraced, she felt pressured to
accept marriage after experiencing acquaintance rape.

121
much income, Niel continued to vend rags, envelopes, or flowers, making ₱100 to ₱200 per day.
She and other neighborhood women did piecework, stringing capiz for export.
Niel tried to separate from Jim multiple times, but each time he eventually tracked her
down, with brutal retaliation. Although she resumed work as a live-in domestic in a distant part
of Metro Manila, Jim found and beat her. Additionally, Niel was tormented by fears about her
children’s well-being when she was away: “The first time I left, my children were just [young]…
I couldn’t concentrate, I was restless… Something might happen to them, what are they
eating?”
51
In later chapters, I discuss Niel’s involvement in GABRIELA, her role as a local
leader, and the organization’s support in enabling her to successfully separate from Jim.

4.2 Domestic Work, Interpersonal Violence, and ‘Development’
Even before dating or partnerships, many of my interviewees suffered interpersonal
gendered violence in the workplace, as child domestic workers. Mara, Len, and Niel’s
experiences with domestic work reflect the migration patterns of many urban poor women.
Domestic work is frequently poor female migrants’ first point of entry to Manila, arranged
through a relative (or less commonly a recruiter). Migrants typically secured such work as
teenagers or children.
52
Throughout the Philippines, live-in domestics constitute at least a third
of domestic workers (ADB 2013b, 22). Yet, just as studies have noted greater likelihood of live-
in domestics experiencing exploitation compared to other kinds of domestic workers, my
interviewees frequently reported abuse – from rock-bottom wages, long hours, broken promises
regarding education, and lack of freedom, to sexual violence. More than half
53
who said they

51
“Yung unang layas ko ano pa lang yung mga anak ko… hindi talaga ako maka-concentrate, tuliro ako kasi baka
ano nangyari? Anong kinakain?” (Niel 2013a).
52
Like Mara, many girls begin as domestics in the provinces at a younger age, before traveling further to Manila
(Camacho 1999).
53
Five out of nine interviewees who had worked as domestics.

122
had worked as domestics recounted having to flee an employer due to sexual harassment, assault,
or in one case, pressure to marry the employer’s relative.
As discussed in Chapter 1, domestic work is a central part of the economy, and major
source of wage employment for women. Yet it is not only rooted in feudal relations; it has
expanded with neoliberal imperial restructuring to become a leading sector of job creation.
54

Restructuring continues to increase rural indigence, propel gendered migrations, and harness
girls’ domestic labor. By the 1970s, most female domestic workers were recent migrants, and
most female migrants went into domestic service (Eviota 1992, 131). Austerity measures depend
on women’s reproductive labor in the private sphere, for those who can afford it. Domestic work
remains highly feminized, and in 2011, 11 percent of employed women were domestic workers
55

(ADB 2013).
In their natal families, girls often begin from positions of gendered marginalization
reinforced by structural conditions. GABRIELA critiques feudal legacies of colonization such as
the cultural valuation of daughters as ‘repayment for debt,’ to be transacted as servants to
landlords, or those more well-off, to help the family make ends meet. Scholars have noted child
domestic labor enables a gendered mobility for Filipino girls: girls are more likely to migrate to
perform such labor, while boys stay to work on the farm (Camacho 1999, 61). Yet the ‘mobility’
of girl migrants often means they are trapped within domestic (and services) worksites where
they continue to be dispossessed, without true homes to call and control as their own.
Like agricultural work, domestic work remains one of the most undervalued and
underpaid occupations, reflecting feudal and neoliberal relations which structure it. Both
domestic and agricultural workers were historically excluded from labor protections extended

54
Historically, its feminization was reified under U.S. colonization (Eviota 1992); see Chapter 1.
55
More than in manufacturing (ADB 2013, 22).

123
other sectors. The unprecedented 2013 Kasambahay Law, which legislated basic labor standards
for domestic workers for the first time, continues to enshrine their secondary status: it set
minimum wage for domestic workers in Metro Manila at just ₱2,500 per month (compared to
₱466 daily for formal employees). Minimum wage for domestic workers in the provinces is
even lower, at ₱1,500 to 2,000 per month. With enforcement of this law being another matter
altogether, domestic workers remain trapped at the bottom of pay scales.
Still, one study of 50 girl domestic workers in Metro Manila found they most commonly
named relatively higher wages in Metro Manila as the reason for their migration (Camacho 1999,
66). Like Len and Niel, a small number also mentioned domestic violence or abuse in their
home families as push factors. Children remitted home significant portions of their earnings, to
support their families and younger siblings. Even those who did not send money home were still
contributing to their family’s well-being by being one less mouth to feed, or by sending
themselves to school. Yet in this 1999 study, only 19 percent of child domestic workers who had
reached high school in the first place were able to graduate (Camacho 1999, 62).
56
The children
desired higher wages and benefits, protection from abusive employers, accessible education, and
a change in society’s low regard for domestic workers.
As they grew older, my interviewees quit domestic work for other forms of livelihood,
such as factory work (before deindustrialization in the 2000s) or vending. Besides seeking better
earnings, they hoped for wider experiences, and perhaps more personal freedom. However, live-
in domestic work remained a fallback, such as for single mothers, who might send their children
to stay with other relatives. Moreover, as recounted in Chapter 1, under neoliberal imperial
restructuring, urban poor women’s other gendered earning options are limited.

56
Nearly half of those in school had unsatisfactory grades, citing their heavy workloads, exhaustion, as well as
problems paying school expenses and transportation, as reasons (Camacho 1999, 62).

124
4.3 Spectrums of Violence and Marriage Under Duress
For some interviewees, marriage
57
offered what seemed like an alternative to childhood
abuse, economic precarity, and lack of social standing as poor young females. It dangled as an
‘escape’ from selling one’s domestic and sexual labor through other venues. As in Niel’s and
Len’s cases, personal histories of abuse, patriarchal codes for sexuality, as well as economic
indigence, all compounded pressures on urban poor women to marry under duress. Still other
interviewees discussed how their marriages were coerced or not completely voluntary, due to
unplanned pregnancy or even sexual assault. Low-income women especially in such situations,
however, faced not only social stigma and victim-blaming, but survival concerns.
April was forced to quit school after the primary level in order to help her mother, a
single parent, vend food and support her younger siblings. As a teen she rebelled against her
mother’s beatings and ran away. While she was homeless, in the late 1970s, an older man
pursued her romantically. When his family invited April to stay over after his birthday party, he
sexually assaulted her. April recalled:
Of course I was crying and crying… ‘Why are you like that? ... Why did you get drunk
and do that to me? You know I didn’t want it because I’m still young.’ I told him that...
‘The reason I am here is you knew I have a problem with my mother. I didn’t want… to
get together with you’…
He said he didn’t want to lose me because… he loves me. He said he was already
wooing me for a long time, it’s just I wasn’t giving him my answer. Because I was in
that [situation], he won’t let me get away.
58
(April 2013b)

Next, April felt so angry. Her best friend was also outraged:
She told [Joel], ‘Uy, she’s still young. They can have you jailed for what you did to her,
why did you do that?’… In front of [his] sibling and mother, he answered, ‘Eh, I do love

57
Urban poor partners would not necessarily marry legally, due to the fees and cost involved in registering.
58
“E di syempre iyak ako nga iyak… ‘Ba’t ganyan ka? ... bakit naglasing ka tapos ginawa mo sa akin yun. Na alam
mo namang ayoko dahil bata pa ako.’ Sabi ko dun sa kaniya. ‘Saka kaya naman ako nandito dahil alam mong may
problema lang ako sa nanay ko. Di ko naman gusto… kong maging asawa mo.’ Tapos sabi niya hindi na raw niya
ako pakakawalan kasi mahal niya raw ako. Matagal na rin naman daw siya sa akin nanliligaw kaya lang di ko siya
sinasagot. Dahil nandudoon na ako, di na niya ako pakakawalan.”

125
her. I will stand responsible [for what happened] even if I did that to her. The reason I
did it is if not… she would’ve left.’
59
(April 2013b)

Despite her conflicted feelings, April explained that several weeks after the assault, she
consented to becoming partners with Joel. She felt she had little choice: “I didn’t have anywhere
to go because really I can’t go home. So, I kind of accepted... for me then I had a place to stay,
someone to help me… I didn’t have a job for myself.”
60
She was 16 years old.
As elsewhere, rape in the Philippines is disproportionately perpetrated against the young;
a study of police records found that perpetrators were usually older and often better-off
economically than their victims (e.g., Candaliza 2001; S. Santos 2004). Until the 1997 Anti-
Rape Law, rape was legally defined as a ‘crime against chastity’ rather than against the victim’s
personhood (hence for an act to be considered rape, a victim had to prove she was ‘chaste’). In a
context where promiscuity ruins a girl’s reputation, abortion is illegal and expensive, and poor
women’s economic prospects dim, such pressures only reinforce ideologies that at least, a man is
‘taking responsibility’ for rape (and perhaps unplanned pregnancy), by offering marriage.
Interviewees discussed social pressures to marry after losing their virginity, particularly in cases
of ‘kidnapping’ or assault portrayed as courtship. As for April, though, socioeconomic status
colluded with victim-blaming and sexual assault-excusing attitudes.
Dominant sentiments in urban poor communities oppose ‘broken families’ and support
maternalist ideologies for women’s roles. Because of pressure from the Catholic church, divorce
remains illegal. Even legal separation is expensively inaccessible for most urban poor women.
61

59
“Sabi niya dun kay [Joel], ‘Uy bata pa yan, pwede kang ipakulong niyan sa ginawa mo sa kaniya, bakit mo
ginawa yun?’… sagot naman sa kaniya ni [Joel] kaharap yung kapatid niya saka nanay niya, ‘Eh mahal ko naman
siya, paninindigan ko naman kahit ko ginawa sa kaniya yun. Kaya ko ginawa kasi kung hindi… aalis pa rin siya.”
60
“Wala rin naman akong pupuntahan kasi nga di pwedeng umuwi sa bahay. Kaya parang tinaggap ko na rin.... para
sa akin na meron akong matutuluyan, merong tutulong sa akin… wala naman akong trabaho para sa sarili ko” (April
2013b).
61
Though due to cost, low-income people often informally marry, separate, and find new partners without legal
recognition.

126
Moreover, the pressure to keep the family ‘intact’ disproportionately penalizes poor women
rather than men. Ideologically, women are held more responsible for sacrificing to maintain
family cohesion, and ensuring the reproductive sphere functions smoothly (e.g., Aguilar 1996;
Eviota 2007). Women and girls have carried the burden of guarding against promiscuity,
62
so
sexual double standards hold them responsible for ‘provoking’ rape. Likewise, women are often
blamed for provoking physical abuse or infidelity. If a woman separates due to abuse, she rather
than just her attacker will often be held responsible for the impact on children.
Yet these gender ideologies should not be dehistoricized as merely more ‘extreme’
examples of global patriarchy. For one, they are also legacies of colonization, including the
imposition of feudal oligarchy and a Catholicism stressing gendered ideals of submission (e.g.,
Eviota 1992; Roces 2012). Furthermore, urban poor women suffer intimate partner violence in a
context without a welfare state or meaningful social safety nets for food, cash relief, or shelter.
Ideologies emphasizing patriarchal compliance also draw life-blood from power relations
in a political economy where for poor women, single motherhood literally becomes a life-and-
death matter for dependent children. Several interviewees who endured years of domestic
violence, saying they felt obligated to hold the family together for their children’s sake, had
themselves suffered growing up in a ‘broken family.’ In their own childhood experiences, single
motherhood
63
effectively meant being pulled out of school to work from a young age, and
increased hunger; in some cases, the absence of a parent reinforced a child’s vulnerability to
abuse by other caretakers. They hoped to protect their own children from a similar fate. Besides
social stigma, the potential material impact on dependents looms; notions of ‘sacrifice’ and
‘selfishness’ take on this desperate register. I suggest ideologies of forbearance towards intimate

62
Legally, only females and not males can be charged with adultery.
63
Women able to time separations, under more favorable economic options, might fare better (e.g., Chant 1997).

127
partner abuse held by urban poor women are not simply a matter of ‘cultural backwardness.’
Such survival responses – if not for themselves, for their children – are deeply connected to the
immiserating political economy of neoliberal imperialism, which has perpetuated a long-standing
absence of sufficient public supports.

4.4 Precarity in the ‘Home:’ Intensifying Gendered Struggles Over Scarce Resources
Cultural ideals present the ‘responsible’ husband as one who can bring home the cash and
provide for the family, even handing over his earnings for his wife to manage. Such a division of
labor is the hegemonic standard in urban poor communities, too, even if real-life relations fall
short. Urban poor women typically focused on childcare when their children were young, but as
soon as able, engaged in meagerly compensated economic activity to help make ends meet. For
almost all interviewees, though, being able to earn more than their male partners was foreclosed.
Men’s status as marginally more privileged earners further reinforced household divisions of
labor where women take more responsibility for childcare. Most poor women interviewees
remained highly dependent on partners for cash income.
Furthermore, they were often unable to stop men from embezzling earnings on ‘vices’
such as drinking, gambling, beerhouses, and sexual services or mistresses. After joining
GABRIELA, members frequently spoke of husbands’ opposition to their political involvement.
64

Yet when discussing intimate partner violence before they joined GABRIELA, interviewees
repeatedly explained this violence not in terms of their changing mobility; but described conflicts
over the use of scarce family funds, men’s unemployment, as well as drug and alcohol abuse.
For my interviewees, a male partner’s greater earning power did not necessarily mean he
provided sufficient or even most resources for the family’s basic needs. Sometimes, despite their

64
See Chapter 5.

128
more paltry incomes, poor women ended up shouldering their own and their children’s
necessities, because husbands spent their earnings on themselves, rather than the family. As I
discuss in Chapter 3, when GABRIELA sought to create its own definitions of VAW according
to Filipino women’s experiences, it expanded the concept of ‘financial abuse’ to include not just
economic control, but the prevalent problem of economic negligence.
Additionally, GABRIELA redefined ‘emotional abuse’ to include infidelity. Rather than
simply viewing this as an attempt to uphold sexual morality, I suggest it serves as a recognition
of many partnered women’s lack of consent to so-called ‘third parties,’ and lack of power to
define the terms of their own relationships. It also reflects how given gendered inequalities, such
‘affairs’ can be manipulated to exert unequal violence and harm. One pattern in interviewees’
experiences where financial and emotional abuse combined involved a husband starting a
‘second family’ with a younger woman, and abandoning his first wife and children.
April became a stay-at-home parent after marrying Joel. They moved in with his mother.
He earned a living in auto-repair, and only came home Saturdays to bring April money. Over
time, his drinking increased. One December, as she was pregnant with their fourth child, April
waited for him to bring home his Christmas bonus, so they could buy necessities for the children.
Instead, Joel arrived drunk and said he’d spent all the money at the beerhouse. April was so
angry she left him for several months. However, her own relatives were not happy to house her
and the young children. After Joel sobered up and promised he’d change, she rejoined him. The
family tried renting their own space (which April hoped would encourage Joel to take more
responsibility), but his income was not enough to prevent them from constantly getting evicted.
April began to vend snacks, and later peel garlic for just ₱70 per day, to help make ends meet.
By this time, Joel had returned to drinking, inviting his buddies over late into the night. April

129
says the drinking sessions became a source of their fights because he would order her to serve
him and his guests food – when there was barely enough money for their children’s meals. April
spent her own earnings to buy food for their growing family.
Dina married an older man when she was 15, “just a child.” In Leyte, he earned a living
alternately farming, doing construction, and driving a tricycle, while Dina helped farm. Once
they had children, though, Dina became a stay-at-home mother. The family moved to Manila,
where her husband repaired cars and then drove a taxi in the 1990s. However, he became
addicted to gambling. Dina says that as a driver, he sometimes earned as much as ₱1,500 to
₱2,000 daily, but would only give her ₱300 per day for herself and their five children’s expenses.
He would drive a week, then take a week off for gambling. He lost money and sometimes
refused to work altogether, neglecting the family’s needs. What’s worse, while her husband had
always been extremely controlling, in this period he became physically and sexually abusive, as
well. Dina had submitted to his demands without protest when she was younger, but became
reluctant as she realized other married women had more freedom. “When he’d come home…
drunk, he’d quarrel with me... Until the time came he beat me up constantly. Maybe, I endured
that some years,”
65
she said. After her husband’s death, Dina worked as a live-in domestic to
support her children, for just ₱3000 per month in the early 2000s.
Interviewees’ experiences of physical and emotional spousal abuse tended to reflect their
gendered economic dependence on male partners, instead of the availability of better earning
opportunities for women than men. Most urban poor interviewees who told me about verbal or
emotional abuse were stay-at-home mothers who were financially dependent on male
breadwinners. Several of those who suffered physical abuse were forced to earn income because

65
“Pag uuwi na ng bahay, pag lasing na, ako na inaaway… hanggang sa dumating yung time na binubugbog ako
lagi. Siguro mga ilang taon ko ding tiniis yun.” (Dina 2013)

130
of their husbands’ financial neglect. Even so, abuse reflected male control, but usually not
women’s higher earnings.
66

Belying narratives of female upward mobility and male backlash, only a handful
67
of
urban poor GABRIELA members I spoke with noted their earnings had ever at some point
exceeded their male partners’. For these interviewees, female economic standing usually seemed
associated with decreases in physical abuse. For instance, Jon was the only urban poor woman I
spoke with to have a job at a call center; she had not attended college, but secured this work due
to her English skills. She had suffered physical abuse as a teen when her husband’s earning
power (at minimum wage) was still greater than hers; but as main breadwinner for her family,
she now says the main problem is his financial neglect.
Elisa earned more than her future husband before they married, but subsequently
experienced downward mobility and increased abuse. She made minimum wage at a shrimp
export factory in the late 1980s, while he earned less as a subcontracted security guard. After
marriage, she largely quit formal employment and he became the main breadwinner; the factory
also moved away. Later, Elisa’s husband had mistresses, and grew physically violent when she
confronted him about his cheating. By this time, she was financially dependent on him, and her
earning options had narrowed with restructuring, to unreliable vending (and a brief stint at a
sardine factory for under minimum wage, when her husband was unemployed).
Queenie was the one exception who continued to experience physical abuse, despite
making more than her husband. However, his violence appeared to be directed at controlling her
income, reproductive labor, and sexuality, rather than preventing her from working per se.

66
Most interviewees reporting physical abuse described being financially dependent on partners at the time of abuse.
67
An exceptional minority of just four interviewees (two who had earned more in the past, and only two who
currently did so).

131
Queenie and her husband, Nestor, were both vendors when they met. When their children were
young, she earned ₱250 a week doing laundry. Because Nestor refused to contribute enough for
the family’s food, she returned to selling newspapers, where she could make ₱70-100 daily.
Queenie says Nestor earned more, sometimes ₱250-300 daily, but would only pitch in ₱150 for
the family’s dinner, keeping the rest for himself. She used her income for breakfast and lunch.
As their family grew, Nestor began to drink more and contribute even less to the family.
To provide for their four children, Queenie found a job as a street-sweeper employed by the city.
She received minimum wage (₱466 per day), higher than her husband’s earnings. Yet as a
result, Nestor took the opportunity to contribute even less: Queenie says she now shoulders all
household expenses, utilities, and rent, while he chips in only about ₱115 for dinner. “He
doesn’t want me to have money that I keep,” she pointed out. “But for himself, he’s very
secretive… He [even] went back to Cebu [because] he has money… He doesn’t spend for the
daily expenses.”
68
When drunk, her husband is violently jealous and physically abusive; but
Queenie says that when sober, he pretends not to have awareness of what he did.
Nestor’s abusive tactics enforce a double standard of who contributes (and benefits from)
household and paid labor, but do not prevent Queenie’s income generation. Rather than
restricting her work as a sweeper, he essentially tolerates and even gains from the arrangement
because it leaves him with more money for himself. His violence and manipulation serve not to
block her economic ‘mobility,’ but to position himself to exploit it for his personal gain, at the
family’s expense. ‘Jealousy’ becomes a mechanism of control to preserve masculine privileges
such as alcohol and travel. Nestor imposed both financial control and neglect: he policed
Queenie from saving her earnings, preventing her from developing financial independence; and

68
“Ayaw niya ng may pera ako na nakatago… Kung siya malihim siya... Umuwi siya sa Cebu may pera siya e… di
siya gumastos sa pang-araw-araw” (Queenie 2013b).

132
refused to provide support proportional to his earnings. Moreover, the family’s economic
situation remains precarious, so that despite Queenie’s marginally higher earnings, Nestor’s
financial contributions remain significant.
In exploring patriarchal privilege and conflict over men’s ‘vices,’ I do not wish to
reaffirm dominant narratives of urban poor communities’ ‘pathology’ that criminalize people
without taking into account the larger social and political economic context producing their
violent circumstances. Furthermore, I contest the trope that neoliberal imperialism would serve
as a potential route for women’s escape, if only not for men’s ‘backward attitudes’ that have
been provoked by restructuring’s supposed liberatory effects. Rather, labor-force participation in
itself does not necessarily reconfigure patriarchal relations. Although the literature and my
interviews illustrate how women’s economic clout can be protective, employment per se has not
enabled them to escape abuse: the quality of these jobs and their earning power matters. Yet
restructuring has overall eroded economic opportunities for poor women.

4.5 Trapped: Reasons for Staying
Interviewees who suffered intimate partner abuse often attempted to leave these
relationships multiple times. However, as is common in cycles of domestic violence, they
returned more than once before making a definitive break. Along similar lines, a 1999 survey of
1,000 women in Manila found only one third of physically abused women had left their partners,
though they did so an average of 2.2 times; furthermore, the vast majority of those who left (83
percent) eventually returned (Serquina-Ramiro et al. 2004).
69
Those interviewees who were
successful in leaving an abusive partner tended to have access to independent housing, sufficient

69
Chant found Filipino women more likely to go back to abusive partners than women in Mexico (1996).

133
livelihood, and resources from supportive kin.
70
Often, they also waited until their children were
older and more independent, before finally separating.
GABRIELA organizers and survivors themselves reiterated economic constraints, and
concerns over providing for children, were reasons for staying in abusive relationships:
It’s not [like]… those more well-off families. First and foremost, they cannot separate
from their husband right away because of economic [issues]… How will they support
their children, the woman doesn’t have a job.
71
(Lisa 2013)

She decided to let her husband go. But then when times got tough, she decided to come
back… You… hear them say, ‘I can’t leave my husband because I don’t have work.’
(Carlos 2013b)

Because of our society’s character… economic [factors] are more pronounced… What
would be the condition of… a ‘broken family’?
72
(Maris 2013a)

As previously discussed, Maris’s comment foregrounds how motives for avoiding ‘broken
families’ are inflected by economics. On one level, the above analyses reflect GABRIELA’s
political education on domestic violence, which highlights economic pressures on women as a
reason not to blame victims of abuse. But at the same time, these sentiments index the dire
economic straits faced by urban poor women.
73
Meanwhile, Elisa, who initially earned more
than her husband-to-be, explained how she saw her income as a source of strength: “I was really
defiant [when] I had my own money. I was working. But other wives… they’re not able to
stand up… the husband says do this – you can’t refuse because he’s the one running their life.”
74

70
In Chapter 5, I discuss GABRIELA’s role in configuring such support from both kin and non-kin.
71
“Hindi … sa… mga may kakayanan na pamilya. Unang-una hindi sila agad makahiwalay doon sa asawa nila kasi
dahil sa economic… paano nila bubuhayin yung anak nila e, walang trabaho si babae,”
72
“Dahil doon sa katangian nga… ng ating lipunan, mas tumitingkad yung usaping pang-ekonomiya… paano na ang
kalagayan ng… broken family?”
73
Additionally, GABRIELA members recognized the role of perpetrators’ manipulation through cycles of violence,
cultural pressures, the state, and victims’ feelings of love, in influencing them to stay. I focus my discussion on
economic pressures as an underemphasized, class-related aspect of how structural violence reinforces abuse.
74
“Suwail na talaga ako noon… dahil may sarili akong pera. Nagtatrabaho ako. Pero yung sa ibang nanay… hindi
nila kayang tumayo… sabi ni asawa, ganito ang gawin mo, hindi ka pwede pumalag kasi nga siya ang nagpapatakbo
ng buhay nila” (Elisa 2013).

134
Responsibility towards young children was a common theme in women’s reasons for
returning to abusive relationships. When Dina tried separating from her former husband, her
children were forced to stop school: “They stopped since I brought them to the province… He
said… he’ll change... So, I got back with him, for my children... I thought of my children who
were studying.”
75
As Niel’s worries about her children’s meals when she left her husband
illustrate, such cares took an especially heavy tenor given extreme poverty and absent public
supports.
Although Queenie has told her husband she might as well leave him since he hardly helps
the family anyway, she remained reluctant to actually do so. She explained the largest reason is
no one else looks after the basic needs of their youngest child:
He’ll say, ‘Go on, leave – but the children stay.’ I am not okay with leaving my
youngest... Sometimes, they won’t even have breakfast in the morning… When I get
home, [that’s when] he’ll breakfast…
[My husband] is negligent; he doesn’t offer food for the children. He even shouts at
them, ‘You should start working now, so you can get your own food!’…
As long as my youngest is still young, I’ll endure… The two [older children] are okay…
Even if they [must] make their [own] household, and get married, that’s okay.
76

Queenie posed the matter of separation as her freedom from abuse, at the possible expense of her
son’s hunger. She also alluded that for her older daughters, marriage might be their most likely
option for sustenance.
If Queenie were to separate, her husband Nestor would force her to move out of their
neighborhood and give up her housing there. He vehemently asserted he himself refuses to
leave, and even threatened to kill her if she separates. But Queenie’s job is tied to her location:

75
“Natigil kasi nga inuwi nga ng probinsya. E di sabi niya…magbabago daw uli siya... nakipagbalikan na ako kasi
sa mga anak ko rin. Inisip ko yung mga anak ko, nag-aaral” (Dina 2013).
76
“Ang sabi niya, ‘Sige, alis ka – iwan mo ang mga bata.’ Syempre di rin ako kumportable na iiwan ko yung maliit
ko... Minsan nga pag umaga di nag-aalmusal yun e… pag uwi ko yun ang almusal niya… Pabaya siya e, di siya
nagaalok sa mga bata ng pagkain. Sinisigawan niya pa… ‘magtrabaho na kasi kayo para may suporta kayo sa
pagkain niyo’…Hangga’t maliit pa yung bunso ko titiisin kita… Kasi yung dalawa OK lang yan e. Kahit
magkabahay sila e, mag-asawa man yang dalawa, OK na” (Queenie 2013b).

135
she only has employment as a street sweeper in her neighborhood. If she were to move, she
would not necessarily be able to secure steady employment elsewhere right away, to support
bringing her youngest child with her. Additionally, her son’s schooling would be disrupted by
the move. She worried, “Suppose we separate, what if [Nestor] keeps returning to me?… What
I want [is] for him to leave here. But what he wants is that I go away. Then where would I leave
my children? [And] my work is here.”
77
Queenie’s dilemma underscores spatial dimensions to
intimate partner violence and power, tied to the geographic configuration of livelihood, housing,
social services, and freedom. It also demonstrates how in her circumstances, minimum wage
work in itself was still simply not enough to pull her to economic independence.

5. ‘Justice’ and Critiques of State Complicity
Yet another option might be for Queenie to involve the police and law enforcement
against Nestor’s physical abuse. But in our conversations, she expressed little confidence in this
having a positive outcome. I now discuss experiences of another GABRIELA member, Ann, to
illustrate some shortcomings of law enforcement responses to domestic violence since the
passage of the 2004 Anti-VAWC Act. The reform’s provisions allow urban poor women to seek
protections orders from the local barangay – arguably the most accessible of its recourses.
78

Ann
When I first met Ann, she had been living in a stilt house over lake Laguna de Bay, in
Muntinlupa, for seven years. She and many of her neighbors previously inhabited the shore, but
were displaced onto the water by the government’s Community Mortgage Program (CMP), a

77
“Halimbawa maghiwalay kami, e paano kung babalik siya sa akin?… Ang gusto ko… wala siya diyan. E ang
gusto niya kasi ako nag aalis e. E saan ko naman iiwan ang mga bata ko, e andito ang trabaho ko.” (Queenie 2013b)
78
See Chapter 4. Barangays are the most local government units.

136
credit scheme offering informal settlers the possibility of buying legal residency.
79
As discussed
in Chapter 1, the CMP is a component of the state’s increasingly marketized housing policies and
retreat from already minimal services provision since 1986. As elsewhere, after shore residents
managed to secure a loan, the CMP turned them against each other; credit is awarded to
neighborhood associations as a whole, so residents able to keep up with payments force out
poorer families like Ann’s who cannot, reselling their rights to others. Furthermore, fraud and
loan restructuring, negating most families’ repayments, abetted the displacement of half the
original residents. Out on the lake, just next to their old neighborhood, evicted families have
built stilt dwellings, with rickety bamboo poles serving as walkways in between. Refuse and
sewage clogs the brackish water underneath.
Ann was born in Mindanao, but grew up near Muntinlupa when her family moved to the
Metro Manila in 1980. She was one of the only urban poor residents I spoke with whose parents
had both graduated from college; the family was financially stable and even able to afford living
in a subdivision. Ann’s father was a welder, while her mother eventually became an OFW in
Saudi Arabia. Ann and her siblings attended college, too, but she would drop out in her fourth
year. During her last semester, Ann’s aunt stopped financing her education since she disagreed
with Ann’s course of study, in journalism.
In the late 1990s, Ann tried to support her studies by working at the Philippine Daily
Inquirer, and as a cashier at a gas station, but couldn’t manage and stopped school. She tried
ghost-writing stories for a famous author of romance pocketbooks, Gilda Olvidado, at ₱700
promised per story. She would be told her submissions had been rejected, only to see them
published for sale later. Around this time, Ann became pregnant. “My father forced me to get

79
See Chapter 1 for more on the CMP.

137
married. I still really didn’t want to,” she says. “If I didn’t get pregnant, I wouldn’t have.”
80

Several years later, Ann separated from her husband, a well-to-do businessman, and
aspired to raise her two children herself. But as a mother taking sole responsibility for her kids
in the context of gendered restrictions on economic possibilities, her trajectory followed a path of
rapid downward social and economic mobility.
81
Moreover, her marital separation coincided
with foreclosed economic options as structural adjustment caused rapid deindustrialization
through the 2000s.
While married, Ann had worked as a clerk in an Eveready factory. Although employed
there for three years, she was treated as a ‘contractual’ or temporary worker paid just ₱225 per
day, slightly under Metro Manila’s minimum wage at the time. There was a union, but she
wasn’t included. In 2001, Energizer bought the factory and transferred it to Cebu, likely drawn
by even cheaper wages in the provinces. (As discussed in Chapter 1, neoliberal restructuring in
the 2000s resulted in heightened instability for industry due to pressures from cheap imports.)
It was after losing the Eveready job that Ann next made her failed bid to work at a
Toshiba assembly line. As recounted in Chapter 1, she passed their hiring exam and was even
overqualified based on educational attainment. However, the factory didn’t employ her because
at 4’11” she was three inches short of their ‘height requirement.’
82
While the vast majority of
low-income women have not attended college, Ann wasn’t the only urban poor resident I spoke
to with some higher education. Nonetheless, employment prospects remain bleak for these

80
“Pinilit ako ng tatay ko na magpakasal. Ayaw ko pa talagang… Kung hindi ako nabuntis, hindi ako mag-aasawa
eh” (Ann 2013a).
81
See Chapter 1. While single motherhood does not always mean economic indigence across class, among low-
income Filipino families, female-headed households have lower average incomes than male-headed households (see
also Chant 1997, 38).
82
See Chapter 1, where I discuss the neocolonial and racialized undertones of such requirements. Employers
typically include requisites based on appearance, youth, single status, and ‘pleasing personality’ for women, that are
also inflected with colonial legacies.

138
women, in terms of quality of jobs available, and being able to get one at all.
Ann got together with an old high school friend, Nelson, who became her second
‘husband’ or live-in partner. In 2001, she moved into his neighborhood on the shores of Laguna
de Bay, then known as a ‘squatter’ area. Nelson worked as a fish vendor, sometimes making
₱300 or ₱340 per day. Later, he sold mineral water at a bustling transit hub, earning up to ₱900
daily. However, he became involved in petty theft and drugs. He also grew physically violent.
For a period when Nelson was temporarily unemployed, Ann began working as a contractual at
Century Tuna for six months, deboning fish for just ₱175 per eight-hour day (in violation of
minimum wage law; again there was a union, but she wasn’t a member). In 2004, while
employed there, she took the opportunity to separate from Nelson, due to his violence. But when
this factory also closed, she moved to find restaurant work in Mindanao temporarily – before
coming back to Nelson in 2005.
Ann and Nelson had four children together, and moved out onto the lake. In 2009,
Typhoon Ondoy / Ketsana destroyed all the stilt homes. GABRIELA Muntinlupa distributed
relief goods and surveyed the neighborhood about residents’ needs. Ann decided to officially
become a GABRIELA member.
Meanwhile, the domestic abuse continued. Ann said she began to fight back. She told
Nelson, “‘Remember, I’m a [member of] GABRIELA, I can tell them about you’… He got even
madder.”
83
Finally, in 2012, she decided to report his physical abuse to the barangay for the first
time. She went alone. Although due to their close living quarters, neighbors knew of her
situation, and she of others’ domestic conflicts, she did not talk openly with them about it. She
had only confided in a friend and officer in GABRIELA who had helped her previously, and

83
“‘Alalahanin mo GABRIELA ako, pwede kitang isumbong sa GABRIELA’… Nagalit siya sa ‘kin nang lalo”
(Ann 2013b).

139
encouraged her to stand up for her “rights as a woman.”
84

“The barangay [official] said to me, ‘Mother, are you really sure you’ll have your
husband arrested?’ He said… ‘I guess, that’s also your right really… as a woman,’” Ann
recalled. “That’s when I thought, ‘It’s like that for real – if we make an arrest, that’s from the
VAWC [law].’”
85
Previously, she hadn’t quite believed in her legal right to file a complaint.
Throughout Metro Manila, GABRIELA has conducted educational efforts to raise awareness of
the Anti-VAWC Act, so that for many members, the term ‘VAWC’ is synonymous with the
reform.
86
Ann says when the neighbors saw she was getting the barangay involved, “They told
me, ‘What...! Can you have them arrest him? You have them get him, teach him a lesson!’”
87
–
their responses somewhere between solidarity and bemusement.
“Barangay [patrols] and police arrived. He climbed up on our roof,” Ann said. “Because
I really wanted him caught, he fell down into the sea.”
88
When he emerged soon after, the
patrols and police were already gone. Ann tried to go back to the barangay. Nelson brutally beat
her again until she was unable to move. Then he left, taking the children with him.
Later, when Ann told the barangay she had been beaten again after they left, “They didn’t
care… They just said, ‘Maybe, Misses, you’re the one at fault? … You keep nagging’… I got
mad at the barangay then.”
89

When Nelson took the kids, Ann’s youngest was just months old and still breastfeeding.

84
“Marami na daw karapatan yung babae bilang babae” (Ann 2013b).
85
“Sabi… sa ’kin… ng taga-barangay na, ‘Aba nanay, sure ka ba na ipapahuli mo yung asawa mo?’ Sabi …
‘Sabagay, karapatan mo rin talaga yan e… bilang babae’… Ngayon inisip ko…‘Ganyan talaga. Pag hinuli namin
yun ng taga-VAWC” (Ann 2013b).
86
The Anti-VAWC law was co-authored by GABRIELA leader Liza Maza; see Chapter 4 for further discussion.
87
“Sabi nila sa ’kin, ‘Ano… kaya mo ba na ipahuli mo yan? Ipahuli mo yan, bigyan mo ng leksyon!’“ (Ann 2013b).
88
“Dumating yung barangay doon, tsaka mga pulis. Umakyat siya doon sa bubong namin. Kasi sa kagustuhan ko
nga siyang papahuli, nalaglag siya sa dagat” (Ann 2013b).
89
“Wala silang paki e… Sabi lang, ‘Baka Misis ikaw ang may kasalanan?… Bunganga ka nang bunganga’…
Nagalit pa nga ako sa barangay noon e” (Ann 2013b).

140
Distraught, she found the children at his relative’s and brought them back. Nelson showed up a
week later. At first, Ann ignored him, letting him interact with the kids but refusing to talk. At
the same time, she elaborates,
We were being asked to leave our house… We’d already missed two months’ rent. Just
two months [but] our [landlords] knew [Nelson] had earnings… I was going round and
round, I didn’t know what to do, where I’d get the rent money. Christmas came, [the
kids] were asking for presents…
Then [Nelson] gave some money… Of course I accepted it… I didn’t say anything to
him. I just took the money... [the kids’] schooling was in disarray. This one stopped…
that one stopped... And this one’s always absent, when I was trying to get [money].
90

Nelson moved back in, although Ann would not talk to him for several months. She gave up on
approaching the barangay again about what had already happened: “I had no income… [and] the
process at the barangay is really so slow.”
91
While Ann did not directly articulate it to me, she
would also face the dilemma of how to make ends meet if Nelson were imprisoned.
What happened next to Ann’s 13-year-old daughter is deeply disturbing. One night,
Nelson sexually assaulted the child, threatening to kill her and her brother. The girl immediately
woke Ann and told her. When Ann called for help, Nelson ran away, throwing the neighbors off
course by yelling Ann was attacking him. As of my interview, that was the last they saw of him.
Ann was racked by guilt afterwards. With advice from GABRIELA, she brought her daughter to
a clinic for a medical exam, which unfortunately, was traumatic for the child. Additionally, that
day they paid ₱100 each for transportation, which they couldn’t afford; so they had no money
left for even food when they got home.
The reaction of peers and neighbors has been extremely difficult for the children, as well.

90
“Pinapalayas na kami doon sa bay namin… dalawang buwan na kaming walang bayad. Dalawang buwan pa lang
‘yun. Alam naman ng kapitbahay naming na kumikita si [Nelson]… Ikot ako nang ikot din noon. Di ko alam kung
anong gagawin ko, kung saan ako kukuha ng pambayad sa bahay. Pasko, namasko sila… Tapos… nagbigay siya
ng pera noon. Siyempre tinanggap ko ‘yun… hindi ko siya inimik. Tinanggap ko lang yung pera… di nakapag-
ayos ng pag-aaral. Ito, nahinto… ‘Yun nahinto.... Tapos ito palaging absent kapag kukuha ako” (Ann 2013b).
91
“Walang income… ang bagal ng proseso sa barangay talaga e” (Ann 2013b).

141
When I spoke with Ann, her daughter was living with an aunt, but had been deeply hurt by
teasing about the assault on facebook. Ann said her younger children cry when they have to go
home to sleep; compounding this, the neighbors’ children tease them Nelson is there, to scare
them. She added even adults have taunted the boys, saying they’ll grow up to be rapists like
their father. Sadly, among many interviewees, it was not uncommon for the stigma of domestic
violence or sexual assault to become attached to all associated parties, especially those with less
power or social standing, rather than to the violence itself or perpetrator. In urban poor
communities, teasing can be a vehicle for reinforcing hierarchy; it may be inflected with
anxieties around the teasers’ own social status, reminding others they are not ‘better-than,’
although by perpetrating patriarchal, classist, or other tropes that reinforce oppression.
Following the assault, Ann herself experienced serious health problems. She is
dependent on her father’s help to support her children, but he doesn’t always have funds (he no
longer has a home, and sleeps where he works). She is a recipient of government assistance
through the Conditional Cash Transfer program, but these small payments are hardly enough to
resolve the crises she faces, or even stop her children’s hunger.
92
The local GABRIELA chapter
has tried to raise money to defray some of her expenses, and organizers spoke to neighbors about
being supportive towards the family. Nevertheless, when I first met her, Ann was unable to
make rent. The family, including several toddlers, was evicted to the area underneath another
stilt house, where the dogs usually live. There, dangerously close to the water, Ann feared for
the children’s safety, especially in case of flooding. She still had to pay ₱500 per month for rent,
compared to ₱900 per month in her former dwelling.
I ask Ann what justice looks like to her. She answers, the death penalty for Nelson. And

92
See Chapter 1 for more on the CCT program.

142
that she wants to be able to move elsewhere, as well as for her family to support her daughter,
“because if you leave it to the government, many are uncared for, right?”
93

When I ask Ann what would be most helpful, she says,
I feel I really have nothing… I really want to have my own business, so we can leave this
place. I want my children to go to school… for us to become normal… That no one can
say something… hurtful to a mother, telling your child, ‘b*tch [Ann], when he grows up,
he’ll be a rapist, too’…
We used to live up there, now we live wherever, just beneath a house… because I don’t
want my children to be separated. That’s not what I dreamed of…
I want to have a house…
Do you know what pains me too much? … When you really have nothing, no friends,
[and] they make you feel… ‘you’re on your own with your life there’… When I have
nothing to eat… they show my children [they have food]… You have nothing to give…
‘Ma, ma, please give me that.’ And then your neighbors will hear… Of course it’s
embarrassing, and painful, because you can’t give anything…
I leave it in their minds, go to school even without food… It’s okay if our stomach is
hungry because when you go home your this is filled…
What I really want the most... is capital. Because if there’s capital, you can grow it…
there’ll be a business… I want to raise myself… work for my children…
I also really want to move house.
94

* * *
Ann’s narrative illustrates the disjoint between the state’s promise of protection under the
Anti-VAWC law, and on-the-ground realities of law enforcement inefficacy as well as victim-
blaming experienced by urban poor women. Dismissive attitudes towards domestic violence by
barangay officials were widely reported by interviewees across Metro Manila. While in Ann’s

93
“Kasi kung iasa mo naman sa gobyerno, marami namang napabayaan di ba?” (Ann 2013a).
94
“Yung pakiramdam ko sarili ko na walang-wala ako… Gustong-gusto ko… magkaroon man lang ako ng sariling
negosyo man lang, tapos makaalis kami sa lugar na to… gusto ko makapag-aral yung mga anak ko at maging
normal kami… Yung wala… na pwedeng sabihin nila na… masakit din yun sa isang nanay na sabihan yung anak
mo, ‘putangina [Ann], pag laki niyan, rapist din yan’… Nakatira kami sa taas, ngayon kung saan na lang, nandoon
na lang sa silong… dahil ayaw ko ring magkawatak-watak yung mga anak ko eh. Hindi ko pinangarap yun…Gusto
ko magkaroon ako ng bahay… Alam mo kung saan ako masaydong nasaktan… Pag wala ka na pala, wala kang
kaibigan… pinaparamdam sa iyo na… ‘bahala ka na sa buhay mo diyan’… Pag wala akong makain… Papakita pa
nila sa mga anak ko na nagbibigay… Wala kang maibigay… ‘Ma, ma, pahingi naman ng ganoon.’ Tapos,
maririnig… ng kapitbahay mo… syempre nakakahiya, tsaka masakit, kasi wala kang maibigay… Inilagay ko talaga
sa isip nila na, pumasok kayo kahit wala kayong baon… Di baleng gutom ang tiya natin kasi pag-uwi niyo naman
may laman ang dito niyo... Yung pinakagusto ko talaga… ng puhunan. Kasi pag nandoon na yung puhunan…
mapapalago mo yun… nandoon na… yung negosyo… Gusto ko… itayo ko sa sarili ko… pagsisikap yung mga anak
ko… Gusto ko ring… talagang lumipat ng bahay eh” (Ann 2013a).

143
Muntinlupa neighborhood, GABRIELA organizing was relatively less established, local
GABRIELA members frequently play the role of accompanying survivors in their interactions
with police and officials, to help advocate for them. GABRIELA’s organizing takes place in
communities where local members often embrace legal protections and ‘rights’ for women
offered by legislation like the Anti-VAWC law, even if survivors rarely seek out actual state
involvement. The law serves as a potential source of clout, including symbolically. Along such
lines, Ann saw ‘justice’ in terms of punishment under the law.
Yet Ann’s narrative also gestures towards how gendered poverty and structural violence
impelled her dependence on Nelson for sustenance and housing. Not only police failure to
apprehend him, but lack of economic options, drove Ann back to Nelson; and when their
relationship finally ended, she was left even more indigent. Her trajectory illustrates
inadequacies of a neoliberal imperial citizenship built on marketization (plus poverty alleviation
targeting the ‘poorest of the poor’), rather than on addressing structural inequality itself.
Neoliberal restructuring, and a larger spectrum of violence, feed into urban poor women’s
experiences of domestic abuse. I suggest calling in law enforcement, or even buttressing police
power to apprehend perpetrators, responds to crisis without adequately addressing its roots.
A ‘carceral feminist’
95
approach to domestic violence might call for harsher police action
and expanded powers, such as through mandatory arrest policies, to prevent further harm by
imprisoning perpetrators like Nelson. However, this still ignores structural pressures that
reinforce cycles of violence – as well as many urban poor women’s ambivalent relationship
towards state violence and incarceration.
96

95
See Introduction.
96
And, while not fully explored by this dissertation in the context of the Philippines, harmful impacts of expanding
the state’s punitive powers, on women from poor and racialized communities targeted by state violence.

144
Naming State Abandonment and Responsibility
Local organizers repeatedly asserted that even when domestic violence survivors file
complaints, they usually have not pressed charges to actually jail those who have perpetrated
abuse, because they cannot afford to lose their primary breadwinners. As one explained,
This is about livelihood… For instance, my husband beat me; I won’t file a complaint...
I don’t want to send him to jail, because if I… get him picked up by the police or
military… imprison him… how will my family, my children live? … I’ll just endure that
I’m a punching bag, or else… my children won’t eat.
97
(Maris 2013b)

Organizers noted such economic factors compound the emotional violence and complicated
feelings of shame and love involved in abusive relationships. Organizers’ and survivors’
comments indicated limits of incarceration as a strategy for addressing intimate partner violence,
given families’ economic dependence on perpetrators.
Instead, local members and organizers offered varying critiques of state violence and
responsibility. Angela, a GABRIELA member in Tondo who served on her local chapter’s
VAW Response Team, suggested the government should step in to provide financial support to
battered women who jail their abusers:
If the government is really sincere in helping… why don’t they support [the victim]? …
She won’t jail her husband since he’s the one earning… She’s a battered wife so support
her… [else] their [family] has no livelihood.
98

Moreover, organizers also implicated state violence in reinforcing interpersonal gendered
violence. For these urban poor women, the state’s negligence only evinced its deeper stakes in
perpetuating VAW. The very infrastructure and premises of the state had to change. Niel

97
“Usapin ito ng pangkabuhayan… halimbawa, ako, yung asawa ko, binugbog ako, hindi ako magrereklamo…
Ayaw ko siyang ipakulong kasi pag pinakulong ko siya o pinahuli ko siya, pinadampot ko siya ng pulis o military…
ikukulong siya… papano na mabubuhay ang pamilya ko, yung mga anak ko... titiisin ko na lang na ako’y gawing
punching bag kaysa hindi kakain… yung anak.”
98
“Yang gubyerno, kung talagang sincere sila na tumulong… bakit hindi nila suportahan itong ano? ... hindi niya
ipapakulong ang asawa niya kasi yun ang naghahanapbuhay… Eto binubugbog to ng asawa kaya suportahan niyo,
kasi yung asawa niya pinakulong niya, wala nang bubuhay sa kanila” (Angela 2013a).

145
asserted,
If the government’s information [dissemination] were massive, more women would
know… their rights. But… those working in government… perpetrate violence against
women, too, that’s why they don’t carry out the laws...
Because they too… violate the law’s content…
Like in the news, who primarily abuses women? It’s the military ranks, isn’t it?
From the police to even Malacañang employees, they’re committing abuse against
women… Plus, add clergy… They use their position… holding power in the state…
That’s why… although we hold trainings, [people] don’t know there are laws... that will
protect women… What we know is GABRIELA is the defender, the champion of
women’s rights… I’m still more comfortable coming to GABRIELA for help than the
barangay directly… Because I think really, the barangay is… not genuinely serving.
99

Not only does the state offer inadequate support, so women are pressed to rely on abusive
partners. As Niel comments, state agents directly perpetrate interpersonal gendered violence.
Niel identifies a power struggle over the very nature of the state, not only legal reforms, as
necessary. She calls for a different kind of state that is truly accountable, as part of
decolonization, noting its impact on culture and awareness. In pinpointing the role of police and
military in perpetrating VAW, she begins to deviate from carceral feminist agendas.
In chapters to follow, I continue to elaborate on how GABRIELA’s social movements
interventions against intimate partner violence are shaped by poor women’s reluctance to
incarcerate, and by organizers’ critiques of the state’s role in exacerbating gendered violence.
Even as Gabriela Women’s Party was instrumental in helping legislate the Anti-VAWC Act,
organizers’ visions of justice exceed that delineated by the law, and their tactics exceed relying

99
“Kung massive ang information ng gubyerno, maraming kababaihan ang makakaalam kung ano ang kanilang
karapatan. Kaya lang… ang mga nagtatrabaho sa gubyerno na gumagawa din ng karahasan laban sa kababaihan,
kaya hindi ganon yung pagpu-push through ng batas kasi sila din mismo e, buma-violate sa laman ng batas…
katulad na lang nung mga nababalita. Sinu-sino ang pangunahin na nang-aabuso ng kababaihan? Di ba sa hanay ng
military Sa hanay ng mga kapulisan at mismong mga empleyado ng Malacanang ay gumagawa din ng pang-aabuso
sa kababaihan. Plus nadadagdag na lang yung kaparian… nagagamit nila ang kanilang posisyon bilang nasa poder
sila ng pamahalaan… kaya… kahit nung nagtraining kami, hindi namin alam may batas pala na magpoprotekta sa
hanay ng kababaihan…. Ang alam lang namin ang GABRIELA ay tagapangtanggol, tagapaglaban sa karapatan ng
kababaihan… mas kumportable pa akong dumulog sa GABRIELA kaysa direkta ka sa barangay… kasi sa tingin ko
talaga, ang barangay… hindi naman talaga totoong naglilingkod” (Niel 2013a).

146
on the state. Organizers have opposed local cases of abuse perpetrated by military personnel,
police, and barangay officials. In areas with strong local organizing, members have responded to
domestic violence with survivor-centered options for urban poor women that may or may not
involve state intervention, and either way, usually do not end in incarceration.

6. Closing: The Gendered Resonance of GABRIELA
This chapter has considered how neoliberal imperial restructuring helps serially trap poor
women in abusive relationships. Intimate partner violence represents a power struggle for
resources that include women’s paid earnings, unpaid reproductive labor, and sexuality – both in
a few situations where women may be higher earners than their partners, but in many more
situations where they are not. Restructuring has reified material consequences of patriarchy, and
intensified conflict over scarce resources in the domestic sphere. Furthermore, domestic
violence is only one facet of interpersonal gendered violence – let alone structural violence –
urban poor interviewees have been disproportionately exposed to, over the course of their lives;
they suffered gendered violence from caretakers and employers, intimate partners and law
enforcement.
Neoliberal imperial policies not only reinforce, but also replicate, dynamics of intimate
partner violence. Abuse not only devalues its victims, but is a struggle to extract labor –
emotional, sexual, reproductive, or paid – by gaining power and control. I suggest that like an
abusive partner, the neoliberal imperial state forces poor women to make up for its own shortfalls
and withdrawals from responsibility. Sometimes the abusive state’s ‘control’ looks like
privatization, and denial of social services, so women must increase their unpaid care labor.
Sometimes, its ‘control’ looks like policies that compel women into low-wage informal sector

147
work, to try to make ends meet so the abusive state does not have to redistribute resources to the
dispossessed. To advance such an agenda, the neoliberal imperial state operates in public-private
partnership with domestic abusers. It would mutate patriarchy, by building some domestic
violence shelters with job interview assistance, rather than transform the structural status quo.
Behind its control are threats of violent dispossession, militarization, and early death.
GABRIELA members’ analyses of how structural violence exacerbates interpersonal
gendered violence, and their visions for a different kind of state, respond to the above political
economy. Those I spoke with expressed a range of reasons they had grown invested in the
organization. Some came to a radical consciousness partly because GABRIELA tapped on
gendered experiences of violence, including at the ‘personal’ level of sexual and relationship
abuse. Others were drawn to GABRIELA’s organizing around economic justice and housing,
reaching a transformed consciousness of their gendered roles in the process. GABRIELA’s
resonance with urban poor women members, as they are caught in these crosshairs, is tied to its
engagement with their gendered experiences of violence, across the scales of ‘home,’ ‘housing,’
and ‘homeland.’

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CHAPTER 3

‘Abante, Babae! Palaban, Militante!’
1
GABRIELA,

A Third World Women’s Organization, Confronts ‘Violence Against Women’

It is not enough that women are educated, organized and mobilized without addressing
their specific problem as women… Domestic violence and problems on women’s health
must be met head-on… Communities must be mobilized to address these… At the same
time, we learned that addressing these concerns helps strengthen women’s organizations.

– GABRIELA 25
th
Anniversary brochure (Manglalan et al. 2010, 6)

1. Opening
Since GABRIELA’s inception, urban poor women resisting and surviving domestic
abuse have become the women’s federation’s grassroots organizers and local leaders in Metro
Manila. Over the decades, GABRIELA has likewise sought to deepen its efforts to collectively
challenge interpersonal gendered violence in communities where it organizes. The paths of
prominent survivors who have become political leaders reflect growing capacity to do so.
Carmen Deunida, known affectionately as ‘Nanay Mameng,’ is an urban poor mother and
long-time community leader who has stood up to displacement since the 1950s. In the early
1980s, she became an organizer with the GABRIELA-affiliated mass-based group
SAMAKANA; she was elected its chair in 1987, and subsequently served as chair of Kadamay, a
poor people’s organization tackling housing issues and demolition. Prior to joining GABRIELA,
Deunida suffered domestic violence from her husband for decades. She separated from him off
and on, and finally ceased communication though he continued staying at her house. By the
early 1990s, Deunida was outspoken regarding ‘violence against women’ (VAW), in economic

1
“Advance, woman! Struggle, militant!” in Tagalog.

149
and interpersonal realms (e.g., Laya 1992b; Laya 1993). She shared about her own experiences
of abuse to help the organization refine its analyses of VAW in local context (Libang 2013b).
She also counseled other women in her neighborhood, supporting them to leave violent
relationships. Nanay Mameng’s organizing activity is a testament to her tremendous
determination and courage to defy oppression. In published interviews, however, she does not
mention collective interventions against the relationship violence she herself experienced, while
it was still occurring (GABRIELA 1995, 12–8; Andaquig 2002).
Nere Guerrero joined a GABRIELA affiliate in Manresa, Quezon City, during the late
1980s. A low-income mother as well, Guerrero was initially drawn to the organization to defend
her community’s homes from demolition; but she, too, had endured years of physical abuse from
her husband. Only after joining GABRIELA, Guerrero came to reject the regular domestic
violence she suffered as wrong. She began to defend herself physically. In 2002, GABRIELA
launched a Palag (resist) campaign against domestic abuse in her neighborhood; other local
women in GABRIELA helped confront her husband. The beatings ended, and her husband
eventually even grew supportive of her political activities. In the late 2000s, ‘Nanay Nere’
became current chairperson of SAMAKANA (Manglalan et al. 2010, 13).
2

For GABRIELA, addressing interpersonal gendered violence is both politically necessary
and pragmatic. As an organization, GABRIELA considers doing so to strengthen, rather than
detract from, its movement-building. Its social movements interventions are brought to life by
an ethic of mass-based organizing, as well as an analysis that links gendered violence to political
economic conditions, including neoliberal imperialism, and thus, the necessity of larger
structural change. But how did this organization, with such a position and approach, arise?

2
See also (Raymundo n.d.).

150
GABRIELA’s own development helped effect a shift in the Philippine left: the status of domestic
abuse has transformed from an issue not actively acknowledged, to one treated as worthy of
politicization.
The first part of this chapter explores historical roots of GABRIELA’s ideology and
approaches towards interpersonal gendered violence, as well as what it terms ‘VAW’ more
broadly. GABRIELA’s strategies against VAW have been shaped by its role in the Philippine
left, especially its close institutional ties to the larger ‘national democratic’ (ND) movement; as
well as by interchange with global and Philippine feminist politics. Perhaps most remarkably,
through the 1990s, local women’s organizations – including those affiliated with GABRIELA –
tested a range of community-based tactics deploying collective action against domestic violence.
GABRIELA drew upon these while distinguishing its own praxis.
GABRIELA has arrived at its own understandings of VAW that connect its political
genealogy to struggles for decolonization. It challenges assumptions that ‘nationalist’
movements need be intransigently patriarchal – as well as neoliberal imperial feminist
conceptions of liberation that would delink gender oppression from capitalism and imperialism.
Furthermore, GABRIELA’s organizing developed amidst a crisis in the Philippine left and
among women’s organizations with post-1986 ‘democratization,’ regarding how to navigate
critical collaboration with the state, NGOization, and ‘gender mainstreaming.’ These conditions
renewed questions about the place of mass-based organizing. Through my discussion of
GABRIELA’s evolution, I emphasize how organizers have positioned themselves regarding both
their political analysis of gendered violence, and commitment to base-building organizing of
poor women.

151
In the second part of the chapter, I discuss GABRIELA’s contemporary structure, and
introduce social movement principles it applies to promote survivor-centered,
3
collective
responses to interpersonal abuse. I explore internal organizational practices for handling abuse,
conflicts, and romance between or involving organizers. Finally, I trace the National Office’s
role in building Metro Manila chapters’ capacity to respond to VAW in their communities.

2. GABRIELA and Its Social Movement Field: 1980s-1990s
Women cannot be emancipated for as long as the whole Filipino people are oppressed.

– GABRIELA 25
th
Anniversary brochure (Manglalan et al. 2010, 3)
2.1 Roots and Emergence
“Abante, babae! Palaban, militante!” – meaning “Advance, woman! Struggle,
militant!” in Tagalog – is GABRIELA’s signature chant at marches and other public events. Its
organizers often pair these words with the cry, “Makibaka, huwag matakot” – a slogan
popularized during the anti-Marcos dictatorship movement, roughly meaning “Dare to struggle.”
As Lourdes Veneracion-Rallonza has written about such revolutionary gender politics, “it was to
challenge the state that the modern women’s movement emerged” (2008, 219).
In the late 1960s, the Philippines was beset by steadily deteriorating social, political, and
economic conditions, linked to trade liberalization, oligarchal governance, as well as continued
neocolonial economic and military domination by the U.S., as the latter escalated war in
Vietnam. In this context, the ND movement arose to become the largest and most influential left
formation in the Philippines, from the early 1970s until its splintering after the late 1980s. Its
rise paralleled and cross-pollinated with national liberation movements throughout the Third

3
‘Survivor-centered’ support takes its cue from what the survivor decides or desires. See Introduction.

152
World after WWII. Postcolonial ‘nationalism’ encompassed a range of political objectives that
exceeded building capitalist nation-states, with merely formal political independence. For anti-
racist leftists globally, ‘nationalism’ as counter to foreign domination was not only a vehicle to
resist a global ‘color line’ in wake of Western colonization (e.g., Bois 2007); it was also
considered an intrinsic part of class struggle against capitalism, a system seen as breeding
imperialism and ‘national’ oppressions.
Splintering from older left organizations, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)
and New People’s Army (NPA) formed in 1969. These groups anchored an alliance called the
National Democratic Front, which helped inspire the larger ND movement and vice versa.
Influenced by the work of Mao Zedong, the ND movement’s political framework emphasized the
‘semi-feudal’ character of Philippine society. Additionally, CPP leader Jose Maria Sison put
forth formative critiques of U.S. imperialism, as well as ‘bureaucrat capitalism,’ a term referring
to oligarchal interests’ capture of the Philippine state for self-enrichment. For decades, this
tripartite of feudalism, imperialism, and bureaucrat capitalism, as primary sources of oppression
and targets for resistance, would be broadly influential in Philippine left analysis, including
GABRIELA’s.
In 1970, an important precursor to GABRIELA emerged: students helped form
MAKIBAKA, the first women’s organization to develop from within the ND movement; they
protested outside the Miss Philippines beauty pageant. MAKIBAKA asserted freedom from
foreign and feudal oppression was prerequisite for women’s liberation. At the same time, its
members initially tended to treat women’s oppression as a mere derivative of class exploitation
(Lacsamana 2011, 41–2); through the 1970s, Filipino women organizers trying to draw attention

153
to gender oppression were often labeled ‘divisive.’
4
When Marcos declared martial law in 1972,
MAKIBAKA was driven underground and joined the NPA’s armed struggle.
By Marcos’ final years in the early 1980s, as the anti-dictatorship movement peaked, a
range of women’s organizations mushroomed. These included feminist and socialist feminist
groups that posed gender and class oppression as irreducible to one another (e.g., PILIPINA,
KALAYAAN); sectoral organizations focused on urban poor or peasant women (SAMAKANA,
KaBaPa); and women’s issue groups protesting the Marcos regime (AWARE, WOMB)
(Kwiatkowski and West 1997; Sobritchea 2004b; Lacsamana 2011). On October 28, 1983, ten
thousand women demonstrated against Marcos (Manglalan et al. 2010, 2). Building on coalition
work that had made this protest possible, leaders from KALAYAAN, PILIPINA, and the Center
for Women’s Resources helped convene GABRIELA in 1984 (Lacsamana 2011, 44; Angeles
1989, 186, 189). GABRIELA initially brought together numerous women’s groups as a multi-
sectoral, cross-class united front against Marcos.
GABRIELA’s emergence marked a transitional moment in Philippine women’s
organizing: early members controversially proclaimed themselves ‘feminists,’ but appropriated
the term to describe a politics strongly allied with a broader nationalist and left coalition (Aguilar
and Aguilar-San Juan 2005, 173). From its incipient years, GABRIELA’s backbone included
low-income women’s groups such as SAMAKANA (urban poor women), Amihan (peasant
women), and KMK
5
(women workers), which allied with the ND movement; in fact,
GABRIELA helped found BAYAN, an umbrella federation of ND movement groups, in 1985.
6

4
In early years, MAKIBAKA insisted it stood for the ‘liberation of women’ rather than feminism (Aguilar and
Aguilar-San Juan 2005, 171), but in the 1990s with the growth of Philippine feminism, its members also came to
describe the organization as ‘feminist’ (e.g., see Laya 1992c).
5
Kilusan ng Manggagawang Kababaihan
6
GABRIELA remains a member organization of BAYAN, which also includes federations in the peasant, trade
union, teachers, youth, religious, and other sectors.

154
After the fall of Marcos, its key campaigns included opposing the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant,
and the presence of U.S. military bases; the latter movement helped lead to the state’s rejection
of the U.S. bases treaty’s renewal in 1992 (Angeles 1989, 190; Mutia 1990; Manglalan et al.
2010, 2).
GABRIELA’s initial mobilizations against VAW closely connected the exploitation of
women to national oppression. Its first VAW campaign involved a 1985 picket of hotels
welcoming Norwegian sex tourists, their trip arranged by a mail order bride agency advertising
Filipinas as “pliant” and “submissive” (De Jesus 2004, 82).
7
Early on, GABRIELA also
implicated state violence and militarization in VAW. As human rights abuses continued to
escalate under Cory Aquino, it opposed disappearances, torture, and sexual abuse of women by
police and military; even while demanding justice for women political prisoners.
In its 1980s organizing among urban poor women, SAMAKANA’s orientation materials
not only foregrounded housing issues. They envisioned low-income women’s leadership in
advocacy for domestic violence legislation; community campaigns on gender equality within and
without the household; as well as opposition to the objectification and commodification of
women (a primer included examples like sex tourism) (SAMAKANA 1980s, 16). By
GABRIELA’s 1991 National Congress, leaders noted it had yet to address domestic violence on
a mass-based, systematic scale, but they hoped to poise the federation to do so (Peredo 1992).

2.2 The Field Shifts: Gender Mainstreaming, NGOization, and the Neoliberal Imperial State
With ‘democratization’ after 1986, the Philippine social movements field shifted

7
The campaign sought not to ban such marriages, but regulate businesses involved to protect against trafficking.

155
dramatically for women’s organizations and the left.
8
Due to complicated internal and external
factors,
9
the ND movement lost its hegemony over the Philippine left, in a series of splits
reverberating widely across social movement organizations through the 1990s (although to this
day it continues to be influential, both over GABRIELA as well as many mass-based, ‘people’s
organizations’). New feminist groups sought autonomy from dominant left formations. At the
same time, NGOs funded by international donors proliferated,
10
while advocates appointed
within the government or working in collaboration with the state pushed for ‘gender
mainstreaming.’ As the flourishing of Philippine feminism coincided with NGOization and the
left’s weakening, women’s movement organizers, feminists, as well as leftists who accused
feminists of ‘depoliticization’ debated the implications (e.g., see A. Santos 2010, 119; Aguilar
1995). GABRIELA organizers consciously renewed their commitment to mass-based
movement-building in reaction to the changing political terrain.
The question of critical collaboration with the state – and particularly with Cory Aquino
as the first woman president – was a chief source of fractures among women’s movement
organizations, as well as within GABRIELA. Even before Cory’s election, GABRIELA could
not reach consensus over whether to boycott the elections, or support her candidacy.
11
In the
course of disagreements, leaders and organizations (e.g., PILIPINA, AWARE, CAP-Women’s
Desk) wishing to support her presidency left the federation in late 1985 – a split some perceived
as inflected by class interests.
12
GABRIELA’s core consolidated further around mass-based

8
A ‘democratic space’ re-opened, but Anderson cynically writes, this “perhaps most aptly translated as ‘middle
class room for manoeuvre between the military, the oligarchy, and the Communists’” (1988, 25). For accounts of
impacts on the Philippine left, see (Boudreau 1996; Abinales 1996; Sobritchea 2004b).
9
See note above for some accounts.
10
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the number of registered NGOs in the Philippines rose
from 23,800 in 1984 to 70,200 in 1995, though most were likely not operating actively (Hilhorst 2003, 27).
11
These issues also split the larger anti-Marcos movement, with ND groups adopting a boycott position.
12
Several ND-oriented leaders described the fissure as a ‘middle-class fallout’ reflecting class biases. Additionally,
it tended to fall along lines of advocates versus mass-based organizations: Leonora Angeles writes splits were

156
organizations of low-income women aligned with the ND (Angeles 1989, 195–7; Taguiwalo
1993a, 42; A. Santos 2010, 117). In subsequent years, these GABRIELA member organizations,
such as Amihan or SAMAKANA, increasingly found civil society collaboration with the Aquino
regime hard to reconcile with escalating political killings and militarization (Anastacio 2012).
13

As noted, under Cory Aquino, state repression including assassinations, torture, and
sexual violence surged,
14
even as space opened for ‘gender-responsive’ governance and a state-
sanctioned civil society. Meanwhile, globally, priorities established at the 1985 and 1995 UN
Women’s Conferences influenced the allocation of development funds for gender mainstreaming
(e.g., Sobritchea 2005). Philippine women’s groups successfully tapped into these new
resources; many secured grants to take an issue-focused approach, highlighting problems such as
sexual violence, reproductive health, and sexuality traditionally neglected by the left (e.g., A.
Santos 2010, 133–4). But NGOs operated within a sphere closely managed by the state, and
delimited by its neoliberal development agenda.
15

At its 1991 National Congress, GABRIELA celebrated its efforts to help ‘mainstream’
gender into the ‘national agenda’ of both the state and social movement organizations (e.g.,

imminent, due to tensions within GABRIELA’s National Council between “centrists or moderates who have no
mass-base and were only coming in as individuals or members of small women’s groups, but were elected to top
posts… and the activists who… because of their political background managed [to] maintain close contacts and
coordination with grassroots organizations” (1989, 192). Some former GABRIELA leaders went on to join Cory
Aquino’s cabinet (Segovia 2008, 91).
13
In the mid-1980s, GABRIELA participated in coalitions that proposed gender equality provisions for the Aquino
Constitution (Honculada and Pineda Ofreneo 2003, 134). It joined networks, e.g. the G-10 and UKP (Ugnayan ng
Kababaihan sa Pulitika), engaged in legislative advocacy around reproductive health and a ‘women’s agenda.’ Yet
by the mid-1990s G-10 was defunct, and GABRIELA’s involvement in UKP declined due to the uncritical stance of
some UKP leaders towards the administration (Sobritchea 2004b, 106, 110). GABRIELA refrained from working
directly with the Presidential NCRFW (Honculada and Pineda Ofreneo 2003, 134).
14
As activists, social workers, clergy, and union organizers were murdered, those perceived as affiliated with the
ND movement were heavily targeted; meanwhile, repeated military coups pushed Aquino further right (e.g., B.
Anderson 1988; Scipes 1996; Tuazon 2011c).
15
E.g., development funds for NGOs from international donors were required to pass through government agencies;
NGOs had to align their programs with the state’s neoliberal development plans, and maintain positive relations with
its agencies, to secure funding (Sobritchea 2004b, 111).

157
GWU 1992b, 15–6).
16
However, in 1994, the GABRIELA-affiliated Center for Women’s
Resources (CWR) published critical analyses of new ‘gender-sensitive’ legislative reforms’
economic implications (e.g., CWR 1994). By the late 1990s, GABRIELA leaders spoke out on
political limitations of ‘gender mainstreaming,’ and particularly its complicity with neoliberal
restructuring and imperialist exploitation (e.g., GWU 1998, 26; Taguiwalo 1999).
During the 1970s, U.S. and European feminist scholars had critiqued the exclusion of
women in post-WWII development; they proposed a ‘women in development’ (WID) model
melding modernization and liberal feminist theories (Connelly et al. 2000, 56–7). WID has, in
practice, dominated ‘gender-mainstreaming’ approaches of governments, relief and development
organizations, and bilateral donors (Connelly et al. 2000, 64). However, in the 1980s, as harmful
impacts of neoliberal policies became undeniable, Third World feminists challenged WID
(Tambe and Trotz 2010, 215). Drawing on Marxist and socialist feminism, they offered a
‘gender and development’ (GAD) perspective that included a materialist analysis of neocolonial,
class, and race inequalities, alongside patriarchy. GABRIELA organizers increasingly critiqued
WID-focused ‘gender mainstreaming,’ overlapping with Third World feminists’ GAD analysis.
GABRIELA’s criticisms of gender mainstreaming were not a rejection of state reforms
for gender equity wholesale – but, similar to Third World feminist challenges to WID, a caution
about its blind-spots, and deployment as a tool to co-opt more liberatory agendas against
gendered violence. Rather, GABRIELA’s participation in gender mainstreaming has continued
to evolve.
17
But at the same time, GABRIELA has paralleled and even combined such efforts
with opposing neoliberal imperial ‘development’ and militarization – as well as with prioritizing

16
At this Congress, it crafted plans to continue increasing “feminist awareness” in the larger movement and
development NGOs; it proposed campaigns regarding VAW, as well as issues of reproductive health, militarization,
the economy, the environment, and indigenous women (GWU 1992b, 15–6).
17
See Chapter 4.

158
grassroots, mass-based organizing of poor women.
Through the 1990s, impacts of ‘NGOization’ were hotly debated among women’s
organizations and within the Philippine left. GABRIELA leaders raised questions about the
nexus between international development funding, gender mainstreaming, and women’s NGOs.
In a 1993 speech, Adora Faye De Vera, then deputy secretary general of GABRIELA, urged the
women’s movement to study effects of aid on organizing. She relayed concerns about how
dependency on such aid could cause “distortions” in movement-building according to the
priorities of donor agencies: grassroots organizations reported funders often preferred “livelihood
projects or education and training rather than advocacy and actual organizing work” (1993, 11).
Stressing accountability to collective empowerment, De Vera cautioned against the rise of
‘femocrats,’ “personalities who speak for the… movement on the strength of their expertise, not
necessarily their involvement… creating middle-level bureaucracies that preclude the effective
empowerment of women at the grassroots” (11). She asked,
How will individual grassroots women, raised [under] patriarchal authority, ensure their
genuine participation in project conceptualization… without a strong, independent
women’s organization? How can livelihood projects really benefit the community… not
just the few… directly involved… who degenerate into ‘paid employees’ of the project
once the organization becomes weak? (11)

Such concerns would inform GABRIELA’s community-based strategies.
Given movement splits and changing conditions, ND-affiliated organizations held a
‘rectification’ campaign to consolidate their strategy, politics, and ranks. ‘NGOism’ was among
the issues discussed. For De Vera, the ‘rectification’ movement involved redirecting efforts
“from sweeping mobilizations that have run far ahead of its ability to sustain and consolidate, to
the basics of grassroots organizing” (1993, 12). By the mid-1990s, GABRIELA refreshed its
commitment to base-building, as a counter to the vertical hierarchy of NGOism, and the distance

159
of professionalized staff or officers from GABRIELA’s low-income mass base (Anastacio 2012).
This reorientation affected NGOs and service organizations within GABRIELA; such groups
implemented concrete practices to hold research and advocacy accountable to ‘POs’ (mass-based
people’s organizations) and low-income women at the grassroots. For instance, CWR instituted
rotating staff immersions in community-based organizing and undercover research, rather than
restricting researchers to office jobs. It honed participatory action research methods that
simultaneously build grassroots organizing power (e.g., Libang 1999). CWR would play a
critical role supporting GABRIELA’s political education around VAW.
To some extent, among women’s organizations debates on NGOization (like rifts over
collaboration with the state) unfolded on ND versus non-ND lines. For instance, one feminist
involved in 1990s domestic violence counseling asserted, “We cannot wait for the national
democratic revolution to happen before [attending] to... battered and sexually abused women…
In fact, the revolution can wait” (in Sobritchea 1993, 20-1). Yet by 2007, in a focus group
involving leaders of Philippine women’s organizations, some – especially those not aligned with
ND organizing – lamented the lack of a larger agenda or analysis uniting their work, beyond
advocating around issue areas like VAW, the GAD budget, or reproductive health (Santos-
Maranan et al. 2007). Various women’s organizations had sought autonomy from the patriarchy
of left political formations; and yet, some now questioned their autonomy from international
funding streams.
18
Discussants also bemoaned a lack of mass base-building. But the report
tended to sideline “sectoral and ideological movements” that do sustain mass organizing efforts,
portraying these as typically not prioritizing “the women’s agenda” (25). By featuring
GABRIELA’s organizing against VAW, I explore contributions of a women’s group that has

18
A participant shared, “It’s now international agencies… determining our agenda... Are we really autonomous? …
Women’s NGOs… now seem to be project-based and fund driven… What about our visioning?” (24).

160
tried to defy a narrow ‘gender-mainstreaming’ agenda, while prioritizing base-building.
As neoliberal restructuring devastated unions, GABRIELA’s recommitment to base-
building would coincide with a turn towards community- rather than workplace-based struggles
in Metro Manila.
19
Through the 2000s, women labor leaders who lost their jobs would shift their
energy to community organizing. They brought their skills and experience with issues like
workplace sexual harassment to GABRIELA campaigns against VAW (Maris 2013a; Lisa 2013).

2.3 Changing Relations with Global and Local Feminisms
GABRIELA’s gender analysis has drawn on feminist influences, even if by the late
1990s, it came to disavow the label of ‘feminist’ organizationally.
20
GABRIELA delegates
attended the 1985 NGO Women’s Forum in Nairobi, where Judy Taguiwalo, a co-founder of
Amihan and past CWR director, writes they were “exposed directly to the different currents of
feminism in the world;” subsequently, they partook in more exchanges expanding their
“knowledge and practice of feminism” (1993a, 42). Taguiwalo continued, such links
made GABRIELA more appreciative of Western feminist efforts to view women’s
subordination beyond Marxist economic and cultural explanations…
The persistence of patriarchy in countries which have had successful revolutions…
underscored the need to ensure… gender concerns are treated distinctly from other
national and class issues. [emphasis added] (42)

According to other accounts, the GABRIELA delegates also returned influenced by the liberal
concept of ‘global sisterhood’ (Hilhorst 2003, 68) – a framework heavily critiqued by women of
color and Third World feminists, as well as some GABRIELA organizers, for minimizing
hierarchies and difference between women.

19
This shift also built upon the ND movement’s community organizing experience during Martial Law, when
repression made trade union organizing almost impossible (e.g., CWR 1995, 28).
20
Individually, some leaders continue to consider themselves ‘feminist.’

161
Gabriela Women’s Party Congresswoman Emmi De Jesus
21
recounts that in the early
1990s, GABRIELA asserted feminism and nationalism must go hand-in-hand: to be a feminist
should mean being a nationalist, and vice versa (2012). Through forums and publications,
GABRIELA leaders helped convene local women’s organizations to define their own Philippine
feminist agenda. For instance, Liza Maza helped to form the Laya Women’s Collective, which
began publishing Laya Feminist Quarterly in 1992 (GWU 1992a). While highlighting
GABRIELA- and ND-affiliated organizing among low-income women, Laya served as a venue
for feminist analysis on the direction of Philippine women’s organizing. A ‘feminist forum’
interviewed grassroots leaders, service providers, clergy, and government officials on issues such
as the meaning of feminism, abortion, legalizing prostitution, and economic crisis. Nelia
Sancho, an early secretary general of GABRIELA and former beauty queen, chaired a 1990
forum on pornography and rape in the Philippines, featuring SAMAKANA and Amihan
organizers along with service providers, attorneys, and media personnel (AWHRC 1990).
In 1993, De Vera celebrated GABRIELA’s advancement of a distinct gender politics at
the grassroots, “not simply as particularizations of general issues” (1993, 1). Rather, women
were “developing their own struggles,” defining “their own needs” and “ways of envisioning the
future” (1-2). Furthermore, she argued “this self-definition” fed low-income women’s leadership
in “people’s struggles of all kinds, whether for class, national or gender interests” (2).
Transnational exchange illustrates how liberal and hegemonic global feminist discourses
have historically been more institutionally available to Third World women’s organizations.
Additionally, Philippine feminists often found Marxist, socialist, and radical feminist critiques
more prominent, than those of U.S. women of color feminists. By the 1980s, individual

21
De Jesus was a founding member of both SAMAKANA and GABRIELA (Salamat 2009b).

162
GABRIELA organizers had studied the former First World feminist writings. In the early 1990s,
U.S. Black feminism also made its influence felt to a more limited degree, through the writings
of bell hooks.
22
In a 1994 Laya article partly inspired by hooks’ critique of white, middle-class
feminism, Taguiwalo advocated organizing against the state and its policies as the enemy, in
order to unite struggles against multiple forms of oppression (1994, 29). (At the same time,
overlapping with carceral feminism, she voiced support for harsher penalties for intimate partner
violence; I continue to explore GABRIELA’s bounds of confluence and disjoint with Black
feminist critique.)
23
Trends in unequal resources for exchange have contributed to a relative
weakness in coalition-building with U.S. feminists of color. In contrast, GABRIELA has
continued to cultivate strategic alliances with liberal and global feminists, especially in
campaigns regarding VAW, despite differences on other issues. Arguably, such alliances have
helped GABRIELA tap into international feminist support and funding inaccessible to other ND
movement organizations (e.g., focused on peasants, workers, or migrants).
Nevertheless, global feminism’s marginalization of anti-imperialism has also helped
propel GABRIELA’s divergence from it. In contrast to Nairobi, by the Beijing UN Women’s
Conference in 1995, GABRIELA clearly distinguished itself from Western imperial feminisms.
Seeking like-minded allies, GABRIELA and MAKIBAKA led a rally against Hillary Clinton’s
speech before the NGO forum, pushing to return anti-imperialism to the agenda of women’s
international solidarity (Hilhorst 2003, 70). GABRIELA has coalesced its own international
networks around its Third World gender politics;
24
and prioritized international meetings around

22
hooks’ writings continue to predominantly represent U.S. feminism of color; institutionalized, for instance, in
Philippine women’s studies graduate-level course curriculums.
23
See Conclusion.
24
GABRIELA has held regular international solidarity conferences since 1986. By 1988, it had support networks
in over 20 countries, which furthered transnational campaigns and paved the way for future overseas chapters.

163
imperialism, militarization, and globalization.
25

In the late 1990s, GABRIELA came to reject the ‘feminist’ label, despite charges of
economic reductionism by international feminists. Rina Anastacio, formerly with GABRIELA’s
education department, explains the federation revised its educational modules to stress
integrating a gender analysis with class and nationalist struggle (2012). The modules would
address patriarchy as part of the social structure, but not on the same footing as the ND tripartite
of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism – in order to emphasize uniting with
oppressed men, rather than viewing them as a ‘principal enemy.’ GABRIELA’s member
organizations take what they term a ‘comprehensive’ approach to organizing, in a political
tradition shared with other ND movement groups: with a common goal of building a mass-based
left, they seek to help organize all members of a community, not just women (often in
coordination with ND organizations from different sectors).
26
Distancing itself from ‘feminism’
intertwined with how GABRIELA has situated its struggle against gendered violence within the
context of ND movement goals. But this shift also tracked GABRIELA’s changing
interpretations of the political boundaries of ‘feminism,’ given neoliberal imperial ‘gender
mainstreaming’ and NGOization, internationally and locally.
As an additional outcome of rectification discussions, the National Office simplified its
previous system of dividing work into separate commissions by issue area, formerly along the
lines of UN Women’s Conference agendas.
27
The National Office decided UN-styled

25
E.g., its international conference was themed around building anti-globalization movement in 1998, and resisting
the U.S. War on Terror in 2004. After its victory against U.S. bases, GABRIELA hoped to help solidify an Asia-
Pacific-wide women’s anti-bases network (e.g., Peredo 1992). In 2011, it helped launched the International
Women’s Alliance.
26
GABRIELA organizers help recruit men and children into allied ND groups, while leading local struggles around
community-wide issues. In turn, other ND groups in BAYAN encourage women to affiliate with GABRIELA.
27
After the 1985 Nairobi conference, the National Office created commissions on VAW, state violence,
reproductive rights, overseas Filipinas, women and economic development, as well as women and the environment.

164
commissions had siloed various issues, rather than facilitating more holistic political strategies
and structural analyses. Instead, for political campaigns, GABRIELA eschewed such
compartmentalization. However, while consolidating campaigns infrastructure, in 1995 the
National Office still established its own teams for health and VAWC (‘violence against women
and children’) services, that would in turn support teams in local chapters. Despite its turn from
feminism, GABRIELA prepared to tackle domestic and sexual abuse.

2.4 Philippine Women’s Organizing and Social Movements Approaches to VAW
Through the 1990s, Philippine women’s organizations and NGOs experimented with a
variety of community-based responses to domestic and sexual violence. These initiatives
combined service provision with forms of grassroots collective action, whether community
education or direct intervention in conflict situations. GABRIELA’s current community-based
strategies developed in conversation with, and build upon decades of, such vibrant activity.
In the late 1980s and through the 1990s, women’s movement organizers established the
first domestic violence shelters and VAW crisis centers throughout the country. GABRIELA
leaders helped start some of these key service organizations, such as the Women’s Crisis Center
(WCC) in Quezon City, established in 1989, which introduced “feminist counseling” in response
to VAW.
28
WCC in turn helped Lihok Pilipina, a women’s NGO in Cebu, develop community-
based domestic violence programs (e.g., Masilang-Bucoy 2002).
Some community-based initiatives worked in partnership with government agencies as
part of movement-backed ‘gender mainstreaming.’ The Bantay Banay (Family Watch) program
of Lihok Pilipina set up volunteer neighborhood patrols who knocked on doors in cases of

28
WCC founders included Mother Mary John Mananzan (GABRIELA co-founder and chair), Sylvia Estrada-
Claudio (head of the Gabriela Commission on Women’s Health and Reproductive Rights until 1995), Nelia Sancho.

165
domestic abuse, ready to offer counseling and mediation (Masilang-Bucoy 2002). Lihok Pilipina
began Bantay Banay in 1992, together with local government units and service providers. It
paired the program with emergency shelter; community trainings, including for men; medical
and legal services; as well as coordination between police, social services, and NGOs. Bantay
Banay became widely known, inspiring similar programs in Bicol, Mindanao, and elsewhere.
GABRIELA helped foment, and closely followed, a range of intervention projects. In
1994, CWR published an issue of its political education zine, Piglas-Diwa, dedicated to
“Domestic Violence and Interventions” (Santiago 1994). It not only discussed domestic violence
in low-income communities, but surveyed initiatives in response: from service providers (WCC
29

and KALAKASAN
30
); to NGOs organizing community-based interventions (Lihok Pilipina and
HASIK
31
); to mass-based GABRIELA organizations like SAMAKANA and Amihan.
Moreover, the zine articulated GABRIELA’s own movement-based philosophy towards
addressing VAWC: “In the long-run, organizing the whole community – men, women, and the
young – is still the key towards socio-cultural change as well as the means to bring back the
‘private’ issue of domestic violence into public concern” (Santiago 1994, 22). It recounted a
Quezon City case of abuse that resulted in fatality after neighbors were intimidated from
intervening, arguing that “perhaps if the community was more organized and prepared, they
would have succeeded in stopping the beating” (22). Rather than presenting ‘community watch’
programs as the purview of NGOs only, Piglas-Diwa compared Bantay Banay to the organic
practices of North Cotabato women striking wood to signal for collective intervention against

29
Besides service provision, by 1994, WCC started a peer support ‘transition program’ (Santiago 1994, 15).
30
KALAKASAN was a consortium of groups that ran a domestic violence phone hotline (Sobritchea 2004a, 51).
31
From 1992 to 1996, HASIK implemented community watch and awareness-raising programs in Quezon City. In
one barangay, men formed an group, SWAT (Support for Women Advocates of Talanay), to intervene in domestic
violence and discuss gender issues with other men (Felix and de la Paz-Ingente 2003, 190; Santiago 1994, 21).

166
domestic violence; Amihan’s and SAMAKANA’s ‘quick reaction teams’; and indigenous
women’s organizing in the Cordilleras for traditional councils of elders to recognize intimate
partner abuse (22–3). It discussed how BUKAS,
32
a GABRIELA-allied urban poor women’s
organization in Butuan City, formed a volunteer ‘court’ of respected community members to
confront a domestic violence perpetrator (23).
Both Piglas-Diwa and Laya documented early collective actions against domestic abuse
where mass-based GABRIELA organizations amplified the effectiveness of service provision.
In one example of “organizational pressure” involving Amihan, an abuse survivor from a rural
area received temporary shelter in Manila from Amihan staff (Santiago 1994, 24). Meanwhile,
the local women’s peasant organization extracted written promises from the perpetrator that he
would stop preventing the survivor’s political activities, and agree to separation if he hit her
again. The perpetrator was a member of a peasant group for men, also organized by Amihan.
He promised both local organizations not to get drunk again and gave them authority to “tie him
up until he was sober” if needed (Oliveros 1993, 10; Santiago 1994, 24). Later, Amihan officers
in Manila facilitated a discussion between the couple, where she demanded he contribute more to
housework. Reportedly, the local groups acted as ‘guardians’ of the relationship, and the
perpetrator kept his promises. Thus, Piglas-Diwa argued, “While women’s temporary shelters, a
more responsive legal, police and judicial system and other similar interventions address the
battered wives’ immediate needs, women’s empowerment through their own organizations is a
strategic solution to the problem [emphasis added]” (Santiago 1994, 24). Piglas-Diwa even
quoted then director of WCC, Racquel Edralin-Tiglao,
33
as asserting, “until [survivors are]

32
Babaye Ugma ug Karon sa Agusan-Surigao
33
Edralin-Tiglao helped to found SIBOL, an advocacy coalition instrumental in passing the 1997 Anti-Rape Law; as
well as Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, WomenHealth, WEDPRO, and KALAKASAN.

167
organized, they’ll never really achieve empowerment” (15). Such sentiments paralled
GABRIELA’s analysis of the interdependence between personal and collective liberation.
In 1994, Piglas-Diwa strategized on the place of legal remedies for intimate partner
abuse, pointing out limitations of incarceration. Domestic violence had yet to be recognized as a
crime, but this was already a goal of women’s movement organizing. The zine argued:
While batterers should face the consequences of their actions… women’s groups point
out that battered women rarely want to separate from their husbands or see them go to
jail. What women want is for the battering to stop, prompting some sectors to push for
the ‘rehabilitation’ of the batterers instead. In these cases, the law can be used by the
women as a leverage… to negotiate changes from their husbands. (Santiago 1994, 16)

Recognizing emotional and economic constraints that make separation unlikely, Piglas-Diwa
suggested that the law’s main utility was as ‘leverage’ for women during cycles of violence. In
subsequent chapters, I discuss how along similar lines, local organizers have used collective
action to leverage the Anti-VAWC Act on the ground.
34

The above aspects of GABRIELA’s social movements approach – comprehensive
organizing of the whole community, collective action, politicization of survivors, and state
intervention as leverage rather than as an end in itself – continue to characterize its tactics for
addressing intimate partner violence today. In its social movement field, community-based
interventions have differed regarding their stances towards state involvement, movement-
building on other issues, and the necessity of organizing survivors. Still, thanks to the totality of
Philippine women’s movement activity, the left has shifted from considering domestic abuse a
‘private’ matter in the 1970s, to a systemic indication of gendered inequality worthy of organized
response.

34
Meanwhile, regarding the problem of economic independence, Piglas-Diwa discussed a credit program for
survivors offered by BUKAS in collaboration with GABRIELA (Santiago 1994, 25).

168
3. GABRIELA Defines VAW
GABRIELA organizers found it important to craft their own definitions of VAW – a term
popularized through UN global feminist discourses – based on conditions faced by low-income
Filipinas. In 1992, the CEDAW committee defined VAW as violence “directed against a woman
because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately” (True 2012, 9). As such,
VAW included ‘gender-based violence’ like domestic and sexual abuse, or discrimination; as
well as other forms of structural violence disproportionately hurting women. Nevertheless,
global feminist agendas have tended to focus more on the former than latter. Below, I detail
GABRIELA’s contrasting framework for naming VAW; and then briefly discuss how the
federation has used campaigns around prominent cases to link addressing domestic and sexual
abuse to a ‘national democratic’ agenda for decolonization.

3.1 Process and Political Interventions
In 1993, SAMAKANA and the GABRIELA Commission on VAW (GCVAW) partnered
to design trainings on ‘VAWC’ for GABRIELA’s grassroots members (Santiago 1994, 24).
Such trainings were already taking place but without systematic tools or documented curriculum;
GABRIELA’s orientations broached the topic of VAWC, and now it sought to create an in-depth
module. From 1994 to 1998, GABRIELA held a series of forums and discussions (‘Usapan
Babae’) with national leaders, community organizers, and grassroots members, especially from
SAMAKANA, Amihan, and KMK, about how they experienced VAW, and how to address it
through organizing (Libang 2013a; Montes 2013).
35
CWR and National Office services staff
helped coordinate these activities, responding to a need that “came from the communities” to

35
E.g., in 1994, SAMAKANA organizers and officers in Metro Manila convened to share experiences as both
VAWC victims and interveners. Similar discussions were held in Bicol, Butuan City, and beyond (Libang 2013b).

169
deepen and “systematize” their experience (Libang 2013b).
Gert Libang, director of CWR from 1995 to 2004, summed up three key interventions
GABRIELA sought to make, based on pooling examples from discussions:
People look at violence against women as a ‘personal’ thing… We wanted to show… it
was a public issue… Secondly… the state had a responsibility… [Finally,] it’s not only
‘gender-based’… or a ‘cultural’ thing. It could also be economic… political. (2013a)

The exchanges reinforced GABRIELA’s analysis of state and economic violence as part of
VAW. Besides domestic abuse, participants spoke of sexual exploitation in the community, in
the workplace, and by the military (Libang 2013a; Montes 2013). Libang observed, “We got
definitions, of course, from the United Nations… but… were talking about, this is our
experience… how we look at violence against women” (2013a).
While adapting UN discourses of ‘state responsibility,’ GABRIELA has not narrowly
defined such responsibility only in terms of criminalizing VAW. It holds the Philippine state
responsible for negligence of women’s lives through neoliberal economic policies and lack of
social service infrastructure; as well as for imperialist militarization and the impunity of state
agents who perpetrate VAW. Libang has connected the genealogy of GABRIELA’s VAW
analysis to women’s international solidarity against the political repression of struggles for
decolonization (“not actually VAW as defined by the UN,” she noted, “which is very
bourgeois”). For example, by the mid-1990s, GABRIELA joined commemorations of
November 25 as International Day to End VAW, a date marking the assassination of the Mirabal
sisters in the Dominican Republic (it held screenings of In the Time of the Butterflies).
Discussion participants raised the need to counter victim-blaming attitudes. At the same
time, according to Libang, local organizers cautioned the VAWC module should not come off as
too ‘anti-male,’ to avoid difficulties bringing men into organizing. Drawing attention to state

170
responsibility helped reframe VAW as a societal, rather than merely individual problem, while
considering how gendered violence is institutionalized. Regarding economic violence, with
continued feedback through the 1990s, GABRIELA linked VAW, including intimate partner
violence, to rising poverty. Libang explains, “That also came out during the discussions with the
leaders in the communities… In their everyday dealings with their members… it’s… graphic…
how this increasing poverty could really push people to violence within the home” (2013a).
36

From the above discussions, GABRIELA created a VAW orientation by the late 1990s,
that it next sought to widely disseminate (Montes 2013). For instance, it partnered with the
women’s department of KMU,
37
a federation of labor unions in the ND movement, to respond to
workers coming forward about workplace sexual harassment and domestic violence. KMU
requested assistance in conducting VAWC trainings; and subsequently included GABRIELA’s
orientation on the situation of women in its regular workshops for all members (Libang 2013b).
38

3.2 Forms of VAW
GABRIELA’s VAWC orientation is organized around what it terms the ‘Seven Deadly
Sins of VAW.’ These key forms of VAW are named as: rape and incest; sexual harassment;
intimate partner and domestic violence; sex trafficking and prostitution; economic violence,
including lack of livelihood and gender discrimination; lack of reproductive healthcare; and state
violence, such as militarization and political repression (CWR 2008; De Jesus 2004;
GABRIELA 2013). During workshops, the VAWC orientation is often paired with historical

36
Libang raised the issue of unemployment fueling men’s anger, also noting women’s lack of livelihood and
gendered burdens of responsibility.
37
Kilusang Mayo Uno
38
In 2002, CWR surveyed 1,000 urban poor women, students, workers, and public employees in Metro Manila on
VAW (CWR 2002); local chapters sought data since previously, their main source was only police reports (Libang
2013a). GABRIELA incorporated results into its orientations and advocacy.

171
context that roots contemporary experiences of patriarchy in legacies of colonization and feudal
inequality, as well as continuing neoliberal imperial development policies. While its definitions
of VAW overlap with liberal and radical feminist discourses, it infuses these with an ND analysis
and adapts them to its political perspectives on Filipinas’ conditions.
GABRIELA’s inclusion of prostitution as a form of VAW was controversial among
feminists who sought to emphasize the legitimacy of sex work (Montes 2013). It not only notes
coercive practices in the sex industry, but places the latter in the context of imperialism,
militarization, and neoliberal development (e.g., CWR 1999; CWR 2008). Early campaigns
against U.S. bases led to the organizing of prostitutes in the vicinity.
39
While advocating for the
decriminalization of prostitutes, GABRIELA links the eradication of the industry to
decolonization. Such politics resonate with efforts by Philippine feminists to historicize
prostitution as arising through colonization, and proliferating with economic restructuring and
militarization.
40
GABRIELA frames modern-day prostitution as resulting from the state’s failed
development policies. It suggests emphasizing sex work is a job ‘like any other’ overlooks its
tendency to boom as a gendered survival strategy, with increasing immiseration (e.g., CWR
1999, 20).
41
Likewise, GABRIELA has framed trafficking and the mail order bride industry as
extensions of the Philippines’ labor export policy, under neoliberal restructuring.
42

39
GABRIELA’s VAW Commission helped start Buklod, a women’s center for prostitutes in Olongapo. Buklod
held a petition campaign for U.S. troops (not prostitutes) to have HIV clearance cards; medical and livelihood
support for sex workers; and moral damages from the U.S. government (Mutia 1990).
40
Philippine feminists have argued the ‘prostitute’ did not exist as a concept in local pre-Hispanic societies; others
document indigenous communities’ lack of familiarity with rape (i.e., use of force to coerce sexual relations) (e.g.,
CWR 1999, 2; Valle 2014).
41
E.g., GABRIELA stressed how SAPs under Ramos, and development dependent on tourism and attracting foreign
investment, exacerbated prostitution; it argued rural displacement, labor flexibilization, and the sex industry are
interconnected (CWR 1993).
42
GABRIELA’s materials reproduce the term ‘white slavery’ to refer to sex slavery. The phrase originated among
19
th
-century European abolitionists of prostitution known for morality campaigns at the expense of sex workers’
wishes, to refer to white prostitutes, rather than Black victims of trans-Atlantic slavery. Language regarding ‘white
slavery’ is incorporated into the Philippine Penal Code, copied from Spanish colonial law. When I asked a

172
Regarding reproductive health, GABRIELA has strongly positioned itself against
population control, stressing healthcare access and empowering women to make their own
choices. It connects population control to neoliberal imperial logics of austerity that punish the
poor, instead of eradicating poverty (e.g., Padilla 1994, 8). Rather, GABRIELA has advocated
improved women’s, maternal, and reproductive healthcare broadly, opposing privatization of
health services. Its political education workshops have broached the topic of abortion by
discussing its prevalence, and harms of criminalization (e.g., CWR 2001, 34–5). Currently,
GABRIELA campaigns against the state’s ban on home births, which it argues criminalizes poor
women who cannot afford or access hospitals, without improving health services.
Urban poor women leaders in GABRIELA have long advocated for economic violence to
be considered a form of VAW. Deunida of SAMAKANA urged the women’s movement to
focus on “pushing the government to address… violence against women, which includes…
poverty [as] a form of violence” (Laya 1993, 42). Moreover, GABRIELA defines economic
VAW not only in terms of gender-based discrimination, unemployment, unequal pay, and labor
market segmentation; but also increased informalization and contractualization that
disproportionately hurt women (e.g., CWR 2008, 21–2). Meanwhile, GABRIELA has sought to
connect domestic and sexual abuse not only to patriarchal attitudes, but neoliberal political
economic conditions (e.g., Taguiwalo 1992; Taguiwalo 1993b; CWR 2011).
Since the 1990s, GABRIELA’s definitions of domestic violence have focused on four
forms: physical, emotional, sexual, and financial (e.g., Santiago 1994, 3). As noted in Chapter 2,
GABRIELA redefined financial abuse to include not only control, but also neglect. GABRIELA
reframed emotional abuse to include the common problem of men’s infidelity or womanizing,

GABRIELA organizer, though, why the organization used this term and where it came from, she replied she wasn’t
sure but for her, ‘white’ referred to the often ‘white’ customers who were military personnel or sex tourists.

173
abetted by sexual and legal double standards (which may lead to financial harm, as well, when
men abandon dependents).
43
Forms of domestic violence affecting access to resources are
especially salient for poor women. At the same time, considering womanizing a kind of
‘emotional abuse’ recognizes the psychological damage of treating an intimate partner
disposably, given unequal power relations.
GABRIELA’s conceptualizations of VAW overlap with, but also differ strikingly from
other contemporary approaches, which often conceive of state and economic violence in much
more limited terms. For example, a 2003 manual on how to organize community-based
responses to VAW in the Philippines, funded by the Ford Foundation, does not consider lack of
healthcare to be VAW; and refers indirectly to state violence as merely “institutional violence”
or “rape in war” (Felix and de la Paz-Ingente 2003, 8–9). (GABRIELA broadly counts effects of
militarization and negligence in war and ‘peace’ as state violence.) Regarding economic
violence, the Ford Foundation manual focuses narrowly on occupational discrimination and
sexual harassment, rather than structural economic policies with gendered effects.
44

3.3 National VAW Campaigns
GABRIELA’s national campaigns against VAW, and in particular intimate partner or
sexual violence, have often responded to high profile cases, chosen because they involve gross
abuse of authority, foreign exploitation, state agents, or the military. For example, in the 1980s,
GABRIELA took up the case of 12-year-old Rosario Baluyot, a prostituted child in Angeles City
near the U.S. bases in Subic; Baluyot perished from infection, because part of a vibrator broke
off and remain lodged inside her ovary (De Jesus 2004, 83). In the mid-2000s, GABRIELA led

43
The 2004 Anti-VAWC Act defined intimate partner violence using a similar framework, lending it legal weight.
44
And in its definitions of domestic violence, it does not use the term ‘financial abuse,’ although it includes
controlling or withholding money as a form of “psychological abuse” (Felix and de la Paz-Ingente 2003, 11).

174
the outcry demanding justice for ‘Nicole’ in the ‘Subic rape case.’ ‘Nicole’ was gang raped by
U.S. soldiers stationed under the U.S.-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). Only one
perpetrator, Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, was convicted, but the verdict was later overturned
and Smith released to the U.S. Whereas in the 1980s, GABRIELA connected its campaign for
Baluyot to calling for the removal of U.S. bases, similarly GABRIELA demanded the VFA’s
termination, highlighting its social costs and unequal terms, which continue to ensure impunity
for U.S. military personnel.
GABRIELA has campaigned against VAW perpetrated by those in political power, to
draw attention to both interpersonal gendered violence, and the absence of a genuinely
democratic state that is truly accountable. It has taken up the cases of myriad domestic violence
survivors victimized by powerful politicians and businessmen;
45
a woman governor, Imelda
Papin, sexually harassed by colleagues;
46
a 12-year-old girl raped by former Congressman
Romeo Jalosjos in 1995 (Manglalan et al. 2010, 8–9). It has publicized numerous victims of
torture, rape, detention and extrajudicial killing at the hands of the state.
47
Foregrounding the
Philippines’ neocolonial status and the violence inherent in its labor export policy, GABRIELA
organized solidarity for overseas domestic workers and trafficking victims whose brutal murders
were covered up;
48
and called for the release of domestic workers on death row abroad.
49

While drawing connections between multiple issues, these campaigns have helped to
raise public awareness of gendered violence, solidify VAW as a political issue taken up by ND

45
E.g., on behalf of Ma. Theresa Carlson, Rachel Tiongson (live-in partner of Deputy Adviser of the National
Security Agency Luis “Chavit” Singson), Ruby Rose Barrameda (wife of businessman Manuel Jiminez III), and Ma.
Lita Fe Landazabal (live-in partner of tycoon Benedict Gochangco) (Manglalan et al. 2010, 9).
46
This case was used to back women’s movement demands to amend the law to include peer-to-peer harassment.
47
E.g., Angie Ipong, a health worker sexually abused by the military in 2005; Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno,
two university students abducted in 2006, likely tortured and murdered by the military (Manglalan et al. 2010, 10).
48
E.g., Maricris Sioson, an entertainer in Japan; her 1991 murder was proclaimed a case of hepatitis by a Japanese
hospital, but autopsy in the Philippines revealed head injuries and multiple stab wounds, including in the vagina.
49
E.g., Flor Contemplacion in 1995 and now Mary Jane Veloso.

175
movement organizations besides GABRIELA, and also politicize its own grassroots chapters. In
2003, GABRIELA campaigned against a liquor company that used the tagline, “Have you tasted
a 15-year-old?” (“Nakatikim ka na ba ng Quince Anos?”), resulting in the ad’s removal; this
example was then included in GABRIELA’s VAWC trainings to raise awareness about sexism
in the media.
50
Urban poor GABRIELA members I spoke with throughout Metro Manila were
generally familiar with the Subic rape case, also discussed in the organization’s workshops. In
2014, GABRIELA again spearheaded an international campaign following the murder of a
Filipina trans woman, Jennifer Laude, by U.S. Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton; in the process,
GABRIELA instigated discussions of both LGBT rights and the VFA at the local level.
Besides campaigns around high-profile cases, the National Office has coordinated
additional VAWC campaigns to encourage local chapters’ active intervention against abuse. It
launched a “Combat Triple S” campaign, on sexual harassment, sex trafficking, and sexual
discrimination in 2001; a “VOW v.s. VAW” (Voices of Women Against VAW) grassroots
education campaign in 2002; and a “Blow-a-Whistle” campaign aimed at urban poor
communities, encouraging people to support those experiencing violence, in 2003 (GWU 2005b;
Torres 2004). For its 25
th
anniversary in 2009, GABRIELA launched “iVow to Fight VAW,”
reaffirming participants’ commitment to combat VAW.
VAW campaigns have served as a vehicle for cross-class outreach and coalition-building,
attracting GABRIELA mainstream media attention and name recognition. GABRIELA joined
an international alliance with liberal feminist Eve Ensler, who helped launch a global campaign
against VAW called “One Billion Rising” (OBR) in 2012. GABRIELA became OBR’s official
partner in the Philippines; it used the project as a platform to promote media, education, and

50
Gabriela Women’s Party publicized the campaign in its election outreach, and then took legislative action around
exploitative advertising (De Jesus 2004, 85; Roces 2012, 141–2).

176
grassroots organizing around VAW, culminating in national mobilizations on ‘V-Day,’ February
14. Although media coverage of OBR globally has focused on a liberal message of
empowerment and freedom from gender-based violence, GABRIELA’s own OBR activities in
2013 highlighted the necessity of resisting imperialism, environmental degradation, state
violence, and capitalist exploitation, as contributors to abuse. ‘V-Day’ in Metro Manila featured
speakers on women workers, indigenous peoples, migrants, LGBT rights, and more. In
subsequent years, OBR’s global coordinators, including director and long-time GABRIELA ally
Monique Wilson, have steered the campaign’s international publicity materials to explicitly
discuss gendered violence “at the intersection of poverty, racism, war, the plunder of the
environment, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy” (the 2015 OBR mobilizations were
globally themed “Rise for REVOLUTION”) (OBR 2014).
Through VAW campaigns, GABRIELA has aimed to reach a wider audience with its
political analysis of VAW’s connections to broader structural violence. Since the 2000s, these
campaigns have also bolstered GABRIELA’s electoral organizing and legislative advocacy. At
the same time, in Metro Manila, they have depended on urban poor women from local chapters
to carry out grassroots discussions, and mobilize for public demonstrations.

4. A Political Economy of Organizing: Structure, Decision-making, and Finances
Among GABRIELA’s most important contributions regarding how to build
transformative social movements, are ways its grassroots organizing defies ‘non-profit’ models
that rely on salaried, professional ‘staff’ organizers. Its volunteer-driven, low-budget structure
helps GABRIELA maintain organizers’ accessibility to the poor, its reach, and arguably, its
radically oppositional critiques. Its organizing model helps unite member organizations around

177
common political goals, rather than sending them off to compete for funders.
51
I now briefly
outline the structure of GABRIELA’s organizing.
Grassroots organizers emphasize no one person is ‘leader’ of GABRIELA, but that it is
collectively run. A National Congress of representatives from chapters and affiliated
organizations is the highest decision-making body in its by-laws. The Congress meets every
three years
52
to elect national officers, decide overall priorities and programs, as well as confirm
or revise decisions of the National Executive Committee (NEC). The NEC consists of seven
elected national officers;
53
and representatives from sectoral member organizations of women
workers, peasants, urban poor, and students. The NEC supervises a Secretariat, comprising
national officers and the coordinators of National Office committees,
54
who carry out the
National Office’s day-to-day work. In between Congresses, a National Council of
representatives from regional chapters and member organizations, as well as the national
officers, meets regularly to assess and formulate coordinated plans. At the regional level and
grassroots, GABRIELA consists of member organizations
55
and their chapters; over 15 regional
GABRIELA chapters, as of 2013; and local GABRIELA chapters, including overseas.
56

GABRIELA’s Constitution lays out broad, unifying goals and principles.
57
However, the
federation is dispersed and decentralized, in that local chapters retain final decision-making over

51
GABRIELA member organizations, especially affiliated NGOs, do sometimes apply for project-based funding.
But political awareness around NGOism, as well as the strength of mass-based POs, are checks against simply
letting funders determine political priorities.
52
Previously every two years.
53
Secretary general, deputy secretary generals, chairperson, vice chair, treasurer, and international relations officer.
54
Committees are: campaigns; organizing and education; services; international relations; admin and finance.
55
In 2013, member organizations included the mass-based Amihan (National Federation of Peasant Women), KMK
(Movement of Women Workers), Migrante (overseas migrants), SAMAKANA (urban poor women), GABRIELA
Youth (youth and students), women’s branch of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, Khadidja (Moro women),
Innabuyog (Cordilleran indigenous women), Lawig Bubai (women and children in prostitution); as well as the
research and advocacy NGOs Salinlahi Alliance of Children’s Concerns, and CWR.
56
In Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the Middle East, Canada, the U.S., and the Netherlands
57
See Appendix A.

178
their own priorities and operations. The regional and national structure offers coordination and
strategic guidance; but actual implementation of plans depends on local conditions and the
capacity of each chapter. Still, the Constitution includes rules for decision-making by consensus
and then vote if consensus cannot be reached.
58
Each chapter should hold regular membership
assemblies with quorums to elect officers. Meanwhile, from the local to national level,
collectives form the building blocks of GABRIELA’s operations, carrying out and assessing day-
to-day organizing work.
As soon as they form, local GABRIELA chapters hold elections and organize
committees, such as around VAWC, health, political education, cultural work, or campaigns. In
my Metro Manila sites, local elected officers were urban poor residents of the communities they
represented, and likewise, most grassroots organizers were urban poor women. As full-time
volunteers for GABRIELA, organizers tended to be more committed than officers who might be
newly minted; but many officers were long-time members also deeply involved. Potential
organizers are recruited through local collectives of organizers, officers, and active members;
they are required to go through a series of political education and skills trainings. Regionally, in
Metro Manila, local organizers and officers attend regular coordinating assemblies. These
include trainings and briefings on political issues, as well as planning for upcoming campaigns
and mobilizations.
59
But besides helping coordinate regional action, grassroots leaders
spearhead campaigns and projects around local issues and needs.
60
Local organizers and officers
are at the frontlines in offering direct assistance regarding VAW and health issues.

58
It also outlines disciplinary procedures for GABRIELA members or leaders who seriously violate general
principles of unity, or programs of action decided at National Congresses.
59
Other GABRIELA affiliates and chapters participate in different coordinating bodies, depending on location.
60
See Chapter 5 for discussion of local campaigns at my sites. These included organizing around evictions and
demolition, as well as health and safety; arranging services, education, childcare, and food programs; and more.

179
GABRIELA’s national officers include co-founders and long-time organizers; current
Gabriela Women’s Party representatives in Congress; and several younger leaders who were
formerly members of Gabriela Youth. They and the Secretariat are more likely to be college-
educated compared to urban poor personnel at the grassroots, but include women who are not.
Many national leaders themselves started out as grassroots organizers; GABRIELA stresses the
importance of those who serve on coordinating bodies having experience in mass organizing.
The Secretariat’s daily work includes more ‘professionalized’ activities like writing statements
and curriculums, documentation, media work, internal communications, and service provision.
61

Principles of mass-based movement-building, shared through systematic organizing
trainings, emphasize the need to adopt positions, strategies, and campaigns that involve and
speak to the needs of the potential mass base. The effectiveness of organizers is measured by
their ability to empower local leaders and increase this base. More experienced organizers, who
help start chapters and mentor others, can significantly shape local operations; but on the ground
level, less involved and potential members vote with their feet, so to speak. Arguably, the most
vibrant and powerful movement organizations are those with strong local leaders and campaigns;
national officers and staff recognize and strategize how to advance this.
62

Local organizers and officers convened neighborhood assemblies and chapter meetings,
usually once or twice per month where I conducted fieldwork. Here, they shared topics
presented regionally, and participants discussed both local campaigns and larger coordinated
action. In 2013, key issues discussed from the national to local level included the ‘pork barrel’
corruption scandal, the Reproductive Health Act, peace talks, privatization, and price hikes.

61
Although at the local level, GABRIELA members and organizers engage in many of these tasks, too.
62
Still, during interviews, several urban poor leaders expressed shyness at participating fully in National Office
strategy meetings, due to differences of class, educational level, and background with national officers and staff,
suggesting the importance of continually fostering more open communication and feedback.

180
These resonated with local members in chapter meetings I attended, held on rooftops or outdoors
whenever the nanays were free; discussion leaders usually proved adept at facilitating engaging
report-backs, with no more tools than a sheath of papers and the benches we sat on. Local
meetings seemed to offer women information about political conditions they were curious about,
and depth of analysis absent from mainstream media. These participatory meetings tended to
feel more lively than comparatively formal National Office meetings.
GABRIELA as a whole runs on a shoestring, with local chapters primarily responsible
for their own fundraising. The National Office has an operating budget of around just $40,000
annually. Its greatest source of funding is ‘people-to-people’ donations, including from
international allies, especially in Europe. Other funds are cobbled together from project-based
grants (although not from the Philippine state or UN). Local chapters’ fundraising activities
include engaging in petty vending and handicrafts, to finance transportation or supplies; and
soliciting donations.
63
Membership dues of just ₱5 per month go directly to local chapters.
National Office staff ‘salaries,’ including those of degreed ‘professionals’ who provide
health and counseling services, are ‘socialized’ or set collectively based on need, rather than
‘expertise.’ Factors considered include family size, dependents, as well as health, transportation
and housing needs. Salaries are fairly minimal, so those without children live in the office itself.
Moreover, such practices of collectivizing finances have been adopted by GABRIELA-affiliated
NGOs and even Gabriela Women’s Party’s infrastructure.
64
National officers are not salaried but
volunteer. While these practices do not eradicate inequality, they help cultivate a culture of
accountability and space to dialog about professionalization, corruption, and class. They serve as
a reminder for staff about impacts of materiality on social distance.

63
From members, allies, and politicians (although chapters separate receiving support from endorsement).
64
As well as throughout the ND movement.

181
Local organizers live in extremely humble conditions. Occasionally, they may receive a
minimal stipend disbursed by the National Office; support prioritizes single mothers and those
with children in school.
65
If at all, full-time volunteer organizers in Metro Manila received an
amount of under ₱2,000 per month,
66
covering just food and transportation for organizing duties.
Local organizers literally rely on the community’s generosity for basic needs. Similar to other
urban poor residents who regularly go hungry, I observed some meals to consist of mere rice and
salt, even for organizers’ families with young children.
Becoming an organizer involves real sacrifice – of health, of other opportunities to earn
income, and more. Some organizers who were urban poor community members found
organizing somewhat easier than their ‘ordinary’ lives, which for instance, might likewise
involve hunger or vending outside in the hot sun all day. However, organizing still posed
difficult choices around time allocation, especially for those with care responsibilities to young
children or dependents. Urban poor organizers often described facing a constant struggle
between desiring to get more involved, and fighting opposition from husbands, family
obligations, and economic necessity.
Yet organizers are usually encouraged to ‘go full-time’ because they were already active
volunteers. Despite the difficulties, local women stay in GABRIELA because of what its
collective support has meant to their lives, as well as because of their commitment to the struggle
and care for the direction of society. These grassroots organizers have made GABRIELA one of
the ND movement’s largest mass bases – and among left women’s organizations, arguably the
most successful in activating numbers of poor women.

65
The National Office collects budget requests from local chapters and plans fundraising to help meet needs.
66
Around US$43. In comparison, 2013 minimum wage for Metro Manila was ₱466 per day.

182
5. Social Movement Principles: Empowerment and Collectivity
I now begin to discuss some principles of social movements organizing that animate
GABRIELA’s approaches to interpersonal gendered violence, and that are deeply influenced by
ND movement traditions. ND organizations exchange political education curriculums with one
another.
67
One series shared in common includes an orientation on women in the Philippines, as
well as standardized modules on youth, peasants, Philippine history, voter education, how to
organize, and more. Below, I focus on how GABRIELA conceives of what I will term
‘empowerment’ and ‘collectivity,’ two principles that shape its survivor-centered ethos regarding
domestic and sexual abuse; I consider how organizers’ trainings relate to these. Afterwards, I
explore internal ND movement practices that GABRIELA has drawn upon, when addressing
abuse, conflict, and romance between organizers.
5.1 Empowerment
GABRIELA’s approach to empowerment has two facets: taking the side of the victimized
and oppressed; and changing power relations. Some National Office staff described countering
what they termed ‘dependency’ as part of empowerment.
68
By ‘dependency,’ they referred to a
hierarchical relationship of patronage that can develop between parties of unequal power,
whether a postcolonial state like the Philippines and U.S. imperial center; a serf and feudal
landlord; a service recipient and priest, lawyer, social worker, or anyone else in authority.
Rather than perpetuating patron-client dynamics, which ND activists see as modern-day
feudalism, an organizer’s role is to activate oppressed persons’ own sense of power and
ownership over the course of history, effecting both cultural and political change.

67
E.g., through the umbrella organization of BAYAN.
68
In Part 3, I explore how local organizers tended to focus more on creating alternative supports.

183
Organizers conceived of empowerment as not only an individual, but ultimately a
collective matter. Local organizers emphasized the creation of alternative supports, fostering
mutual aid, and fomenting resistance. Nevertheless, in GABRIELA’s responses to gendered
violence, the affected person’s choices and desires are central. Heeding survivors’ decisions and
encouraging them to ‘take ownership’ of these (while also working to politicize them) reflects
GABRIELA’s and other ND organization’s approach to organizing in general.
For movement-building to be effective, resisting widespread victim-blaming attitudes and
transforming passivity become essential – especially given the extreme risks and hardship
involved in blatantly challenging power structures in the Philippines. Detractors have accused
ND movement organizers of paying the poor to attend protests, a tactic actually common among
traditional politicians and other political groups. However, the policy of ND groups forbids such
mobilization methods, as short-term patronage tactics that ultimately undermine the effectiveness
of oppositional movement-building. (Nor do they have funds to do so on a large scale.)
Recognizing they face an unavoidable ideological struggle without easy shortcuts,
GABRIELA and other ND groups put a premium on political education and stressing that people
take part in political actions because of their own interest, support for demands raised, and
ultimately, ideological convictions. Just as ND organizers wish for members to voluntarily
participate out of their own decisions to do so, and just as they recognize that people collectively
must determine if they will struggle and this cannot be imposed, I will discuss how GABRIELA
organizers seek to promote survivors’ ownership over responses to domestic and sexual abuse.
And similar to how other ND groups approach those suffering oppression as not only service
recipients but potential organizers, so GABRIELA has approached ‘victim-survivors’ of VAWC.
ND organizers promote empowerment of the oppressed by trying to actively value their

184
perspectives and side with them – a strategy always more complicated in practice. In leadership
workshops, organizers are taught to constantly ask ‘for whom,’ as means of revealing inequality,
difference, and power dynamics. They are urged to not be judgmental of others, but first ask
why a behavior or situation has arisen, including given its structural context. This does not mean
refraining from taking a side; to the contrary, organizers are urged to side against oppression. At
the same time, they are asked to actively solicit the perspectives of the less powerful, and to
consider a larger context of unequal power relations, rather than ‘blaming the victim.’
At the grassroots level and up, shared trainings on how to organize stress Marxist-
Leninist-Maoist concepts such as the creativity and potential power of ‘the masses,’ or poor
people, to shape history; as well as the value of acting according to both the interests and
willingness of ‘the masses.’ Maoist principles, such as ‘trusting and believing in the masses,’ not
judging others for lack of formal education, or living simply so as not to emphasize social
distance from the poor, are discussed and illustrated with concrete examples. Such principles
encourage organizers to immerse themselves in the lives and conditions of the poor, besides
valuing their standpoints and collective power.
69

These principles actively subvert mainstream cultural tendencies to demonize and
disparage the poor. They potentially counter victim-blaming tropes. The poor are regularly
ridiculed and made to feel shame about their condition – their appearances, speech, lack of
English facility or formal education, and health indicators. Shame and shyness are easily elicited
by the display of class markers, or by traversing a space they do not belong (e.g., Pinches 1991;
Garrido 2013). For organizers to ignore class – both in terms of material impacts as well as
cultural meanings – and the social distance status symbols create would help silence those with

69
In Chapter 5, I elaborate how these principles shape local organizers’ day-to-day work and responses to VAWC.

185
less power.
70
In this context, the value of living ‘simply’ models culture change, suggesting
different aspirations, such as egalitarianism, shared power, and collective responsibility, rather
than consumerism and competition.
71

For some GABRIELA organizers, such organizing principles served as their first point of
reference for siding with VAWC survivors. That is, urban poor women attributed their survivor-
centered practices to principles of mass-based movement-building, while often expressing lack
of familiarity with ‘feminist’ ideologies per se. The importance of backing the less powerful and
refraining from victim-blaming is not only communicated through GABRIELA’s VAWC
trainings, but embedded throughout its political education and organizing philosophy. At the
same time, VAWC trainings have helped organizers refine how to apply these ethics to
interpersonal gendered violence, given widely internalized misogyny.

5.2 ‘Kolectibong Pagkilos’
GABRIELA’s focus on empowerment through organizing stresses fostering “collective
spirit” and “collective action,” referred to by grassroots members as ‘sama-samang pagkilos’
(movement together) or ‘kolektibong pagkilos’ (collective action) in Tagalog. An ethic of shared
planning, discussion, decision-making, and action is part of organizers’ basic training.
Moreover, GABRIELA’s practices of collectivity differ from other institutions’ that employ
similar forms, but without democratizing or social change goals.
A leadership training for local organizers in Muntinlupa I observed stressed the
difference between ‘traditional’ leadership, and GABRIELA’s practices of collective leadership

70
Likewise, mainstream media plays on demeaning stereotypes to dismiss the poor and indigenous, portraying those
critical of inequality as uncouth ‘ingrata’ or uneducated dupes; siding with those hurt by structural violence means
battling such discourses.
71
See also Chapter 5. External symbolics are only one facet of deeper ethics organizers strive for: being as
accessible as possible to those one is organizing; and sharing in similar material pressures.

186
(‘kolektibo ang pamumuno ng mga lider’), a model common to the larger ND movement.
Whereas traditional leadership would operate through a hierarchical chain of command, perhaps
under an individual, GABRIELA emphasizes shared decision-making involving the voices of
grassroots members. Additionally, GABRIELA’s political goals, as laid out to all members in its
Constitution, should guide organizational plans, rather than leaders’ personal whims. At the
training, participants were asked to compare GABRIELA with the structure of the state’s 4Ps
program, and another women’s group sponsored by a politician’s wife. The goal of the exercise,
looking at who makes decisions and how, was to reflect on what it means to be a mass-based
social change organization.
The principle of collectivity emphasizes that social change requires collective struggle.
Furthermore, rather than replicating authoritarian or clientelistic social relations, GABRIELA
ideally applies ‘collectivity’ to promote democratic organizational practices, as well as mutual
support and cooperation. Its empowerment-related principles help infuse collectivity with a
power analysis, to change exploitative relations, in contrast to collective organizations that seek
to uphold patriarchal, capitalist, and other inequalities.
‘Kolectibong pagkilos’ applies not only to GABRIELA’s decision-making, but also to
operations, crisis response, and interpersonal relations in general. Avoiding the social isolation
of survivors structures GABRIELA’s interventions against abuse, including through the National
Office’s service programs. Day-to-day movement work and social support is structured by
collectives. Emphasis on collective process has served as a helpful vehicle for reinforcing
survivor-centered responses to VAW.
72

72
See Chapter 6.

187
5.3 Collectivizing the Interpersonal: Abuse, Conflict, and Romance Among Organizers
GABRIELA has long concerned itself with issues of ‘democracy’ in the domestic or
private realm. For example, as it engaged in comprehensive organizing that included whole
families and children, organizers strategized and practiced what ‘democracy in the family,’ not
just the country, should look like (e.g., Alvarez 1994). Meanwhile, the ND movement has its
own evolving traditions of conflict resolution and organizational discipline aimed at curbing
internal abuses of power. GABRIELA and other ND groups have adapted these to address
intimate partner abuse between organizers and within movement institutions.

‘Sexual Opportunism’ and ‘Financial Opportunism’
ND organizations share internal guidelines and regulations regarding interpersonal
relations. Organizations vary in how these are applied, and interestingly, GABRIELA has a
reputation as one of the more strict regarding abuses in romantic relations. Committed full-time
organizers follow a code of responsibility that does not apply to the general membership,
regarding ethics of being role models and mentors. GABRIELA maintains internal records
documenting serious problems or violations.
‘Sexual opportunism’ is a term used throughout the ND movement, referring to taking
advantage of others romantically or sexually. The concept recognizes how an organizer in a
mentorship or leadership role abuses their authority by doing so. ‘Sexual opportunism’ includes
sexual violence and harassment, deception and cheating in intimate relationships, and taking
advantage of others’ vulnerability. To one organizer I spoke with, it also included dating a
member one is organizing; although a national officer clarified, this would depend on the
circumstances. Similar to recognizing the power dynamic between service providers and clients,
bosses and employees, teachers and students, GABRIELA organizers acknowledge the potential

188
power relation between organizers and the members they are organizing or recruiting: members
might look up to organizers for support and guidance. While chapters have discretion on how to
handle ‘sexual opportunism,’ key practices are that the response is collective, and the party
harmed is part of decision-making. An organizer and former National Office services staff,
Katherine, explained the victim should be consulted as a principle of the “democratic process of
organizing,” where “everyone is expected to have a voice;” collectives might approach the
harmed party separately so she has her own space to speak (2013b).
In one case of cheating involving two young GABRIELA organizers in Metro Manila,
the parties were separated and the cheater not allowed to date again for six months. The party
who had been deceived helped decide on this discipline. Even though she and her ex’s
organizing work potentially overlapped, GABRIELA collectives coordinated so they wouldn’t
have to cross paths, to maintain a healthier level of separation for the deceived party. Other
possible forms of discipline for ‘sexual opportunism’ might involve demotion; being assigned
additional tasks or to another area (according to Katherine, not necessarily as punishment, but to
encourage change or support those hurt, if either might find getting busy or a change of scene
helpful); being required to attend educational discussions. For instance, Katherine related that
when a non-GABRIELA organizer sexually harassed a GABRIELA member, she urged his
collective to give him a VAWC orientation, and not allow him to contact the member again.
‘Financial opportunism’ refers to someone using their position of influence or power in
GABRIELA to solicit money for personal gain.
73
For instance, cases have arisen of organizers
collecting funds or running chapter activities for their own enrichment. Ideally, such persons are
expelled and others informed they are not in GABRIELA. Concerns regarding financial

73
Also, organizers should not treat members like employees or peons; such behavior is addressed organizationally.

189
opportunism encompass political consequences for the movement; in the context of NGOization,
organizers critiqued foundations channeling money to self-appointed leaders, for ‘projects’ not
accountable to movement and collective decision-making.
Taking sexual and financial opportunism seriously stems from the experience of
organizers witnessing how such behaviors tear movement-building apart. Katherine emphasized,
“You lose members because of… sexual opportunism… When there’s an ‘SO’ in the area I’m
organizing, it really pisses me off because… You lose members if you don’t handle it properly.”
She continued, “As an organization that fights imperialism, bureaucrat capitalism, and
feudalism… You have to be conscious of how power dynamics play in relationships. You don’t
want to repeat oppression” (2013b). Katherine argued,
All complaints should be taken seriously and you should always look at it from the…
political perspective, like, [as an] issue of power dynamics…
If you’re an organizer you should really be careful… how you treat the members, like
you don’t flirt with them… you don’t date them just to recruit them…
Handling this… is a matter of life or death for an organization. Because you want to be a
good organizer… a good role model, and suddenly you do something like this, you lose
the trust of the masa [member of the masses]. (2013b)

Losing such trust would violate a cardinal principle of organizing. GABRIELA makes the ethics
of romantic relationships between committed organizers a deeply collective matter. This
personal area is political, because of GABRIELA’s gender politics and organizing principles.
According to Katherine, part of how GABRIELA handles ‘sexual opportunism’ is to
investigate both sides before making a judgement, but also to consider “power dynamics” –
including, she says, “who is the organizer and who is not… who’s the masa [general member]
and who’s not… age” (2013b). Katherine explained duration in the organization matters,
because those involved longer are expected to be more personally and politically responsible:
If you have an organizer and then you have a new member… no matter how much the
member tried to, quote unquote, ‘seduce’ you… it’s still always considered… you could

190
always get away from that situation because you’re an organizer – you know how…
power dynamics work. (2013b)

Moreover, as part of evaluating power dynamics, GABRIELA considers whether there is
intimate partner abuse, as well as gender or the influence of “feudal patriarchal… culture.” If
there’s violence, “you have to really separate the two,” she explains.
The Philippine left has a history of institutionalizing organizational policies regarding
interpersonal, romantic, and sexual relations. These have sometimes recognized gendered
violence, but not necessarily opposed it, or patriarchal inequality.
74
The ND movement’s
handling of ‘sexual opportunism’ shifted because MAKIBAKA, GABRIELA, and other
women’s organizing politicized sexual harassment and intimate partner abuse. Meanwhile, ND
groups no longer discipline premarital sex (previously treated as an offense), and GABRIELA
especially encourages collective childcare and shared parenting responsibilities. ND movement
groups recognize same-sex relationships.
75

Mediating Conflict and Romance
Principles of collectivity are stressed in both interpersonal conflict and dating relations
more generally. In the ND movement, addressing a more minor interpersonal grievance can
involve talking to someone from the offending party’s collective, rather than to the offender
directly. The group discusses how to address the problem together, and raises it with the
critiqued party collectively. This is not necessarily considered going behind someone’s back;
rather the collective can provide a buffer to depersonalize and focus on issues at hand with group
insights, rather than one person’s. Culturally, this also helps facilitate dialog; pressures to
maintain ‘harmonious’ relationships can mean that, while violence is easily enacted against those

74
For an account of patriarchal regulations on sexual relations in the Huk rebellion, see Lanzona (2009).
75
E.g., the underground NDF recognized same-sex marriage since 1998, and permits divorce (NDF 2005, 75-80).

191
less powerful, honestly criticizing peers and especially those in authority is awkward. In
practice, some organizers observed collectives tend to side more with their own members, when
conflicts arise between those from different collectives; but despite these dynamics, we discussed
several instances where group decisions to address harmful behavior were successfully upheld.
Katherine recounted giving feedback about another organizer’s victim-blaming comment
regarding sexual harassment. (The latter had remarked someone deserved getting harassed
because she wore short shorts.) Since Katherine didn’t intervene in the moment, she told her
collective she was “sending a complaint… for this kind of attitude” (2013b). The offending
party accepted fault and apologized when her own collective relayed the complaint. Meanwhile,
Katherine’s collective urged her to just address the issue immediately in the future, instead of
waiting for a meeting. Collectives hold regular assessments where constructive criticism on
interpersonal relations and feedback, including on people’s attitudes, may be raised.
76

Regarding dating, one can inquire with the collective of the person one is interested in, to
learn if interest is mutual. The collectives of both parties are then informed; they help advise the
relationship, and provide support if it doesn’t work out. For committed movement organizers,
then, political collectives play a role similar to family or barkada (peer groups) who are often
collectively and closely involved in match-making, facilitating romance, and conflict
management between intimate partners, in mainstream Filipino culture. Potentially unlike
family or barkada, though, committed organizers and their collectives also strive to uphold
certain ethical codes sanctioned in the movement, such as only dating one person at a time, and
avoiding deception around such matters. GABRIELA collectives bring their analysis on
interpersonal gendered violence to intervene in situations of relationship abuse.

76
These are held in a format known as ‘criticism self-criticism’ (CSC), a practice with historically Maoist
influences. In Chapter 6, I discuss CSC’s role and organizers’ views on its impacts further.

192
6. The National Office and Taking It to the Communities
“Marxist feminist group therapy.” When we first met in 2007, that was how Obeth
Montes jokingly described the collective ‘counseling’ sessions she helped organize to support
women experiencing intimate partner and sexual violence. GABRIELA’s National Office
houses a walk-in clinic and small counseling room. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Montes
initially counseled survivors one-on-one. But since the services department was launched in the
mid-1990s, she and others here have increasingly integrated their counseling work with
community-based organizing.
In 2003, GABRIELA revised its by-laws, so it could directly organize its own mass-
based chapters under the name of GABRIELA.
77
The National Office staff and officers have
since played a more hands-on role supporting the grassroots organizing of Metro Manila
chapters. Below, I offer a local history of the National Office’s efforts since the 2000s,
particularly through its services committee, to help cohere community-based responses to VAW.
I first explore the services staff’s approach towards connecting service-provision with
organizing, before discussing group counseling, trainings for local organizers, and community-
based alternatives to institutional domestic violence shelters.

6.1 Service Provision With A Movement Vision: ‘Victim-Survivors’ as Potential Organizers
Rather than seeing women who come for counseling as ‘clients,’ the services team has
approached them as ‘potential advocates’ and organizers. Gert Libang, elected a deputy
secretary general of GABRIELA in 2005, had training as a psychologist and would sometimes

77
Previously, GABRIELA was a coalition of member organizations only, including mass-based groups from various
sectors such as SAMAKANA and Amihan. The change partly grew from its success recruiting GWP chapters
through new electoral organizing; and from the National Office’s efforts to expand services work in connection to
organizing (GWU 2005a).

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assist Montes. Libang contrasts GABRIELA’s movement orientation with her past experiences
handling casework:
When a battered woman comes, when a woman who is raped comes, you see her case
only as her case.
But… in... the mere fact that a woman reports her case, there’s a potential for her, that in
talking she will encourage others… to come out, too…
In many institutions, they look at [her] as a victim, so she’s a ‘client’…
GABRIELA never saw women ‘victims’ as ‘clients,’ [but] as women who have gone
through… gender-based violence… and need help… coming to terms with it – and then,
knowing the justice system here… will never provide them justice… finding ways… they
can find justice not from the courts… but by being an advocate, for example. (2013b)

Since legal justice is elusive, ‘empowerment’ may involve a practice of reclaiming or affirming
one’s value and humanity through struggling for change. For her part, Montes described
counseling as a vehicle for organizing: “Services work should be integral [to] organizing… It’s
also a way to organize women... You have this framework that this person should be part of the
movement… you should also organize [her]… She can be part of changing the society” (2013).
Montes and other GABRIELA organizers sometimes use the term ‘victim-survivor’ to
refer to those who have suffered trauma. The phrase reminds that even as they survive, they
were victimized by an unjust system. Moreover, the persistence of systemic violence means
‘healing’ may not be possible as long as grinding institutionalized injustice remains. ‘Closure’
cannot be prematurely actualized. Particularly for poor women and others deeply affected by
structural violence, liberation from the latter is necessary for meaningful personal liberation, yet
can only be realized with social change, and hence movement organizing. Thus, GABRIELA
treats politicization and getting involved in movement-building as possible avenues of healing.
Montes suggested such an organizing approach to counseling invites the possibility of
structuring solutions beyond traditional patron-client relations that preserve hierarchical
‘dependency.’ Contrasting GABRIELA’s counseling with that of strict service providers,

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including government institutions like the DSWD, she explained,
There’s always a danger… in… regular counseling… it’s like a dole-out system… We
are careful not to have that… It should always be in a framework of… making them part
of the movement changing the situation…
When I do counseling… my approach is to empower and also raise the level of awareness
of women… so that they themselves… can be part of resolving… their problems. (2013)

Through counseling, Montes and Libang said they encourage women to take ownership of their
own empowerment. Montes described helping women brainstorm different options, but
emphasized they would make their own choices.
When counseling one-on-one, Montes says the first few sessions she lets the counselee
vent. While establishing rapport, she then gradually begins to help her gain insight on her
situation and address it, building her sense of capacity and responsibility to do so. Montes might
ask her to list ideas for self-care and reaching out to others, to write about her experiences, to
read or research. She might ask the counselee to observe and analyze her daily routine; when
they discuss her experiences, Montes tries to place these in larger political and economic context.
Later sessions involve more goal setting, option weighing, and action planning. Over time,
Montes invites counselees to political events and activities; they debrief after and the counselee
evaluates her experiences. In most cases, Montes says counselees want to focus on their own
problems, and she accepts this as part of the work. Counselees have varied desires and come to
different decisions about how to handle their situations under tremendous pressures; her role
remains not to dictate, but support them in their decision-making. Nevertheless, as I discuss in
the next section, Montes would combine individual counseling with spaces of group support and
mobilization, creating additional paths to collective empowerment and politicization.
Libang and Montes found their actual practice in GABRIELA somewhat at odds with
their schooling in therapy. They stressed the importance of counseling being rooted in

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experience, over professionalized credentials; e.g., Libang argued, “I may be a psychologist, but
if I’ve never handled cases… in a [low-income] community setting, I would never know what to
do” (2013b). By de-professionalizing the counseling process, the services staff has sought to
expand accessible support at the grassroots level. Services staff would incorporate much of the
philosophy discussed above into counseling trainings held with local organizers.
GABRIELA’s reasons for emphasizing the potential of survivors to become organizers
are pragmatic, as well: scaling up is a necessity for addressing systemic problems. As the
organization’s VAWC work has developed, the number of women approaching GABRIELA has
increased yearly, beyond the capacity of the National Office’s limited staff. Although
GABRIELA had long contemplated fostering community-based responses to abuse, National
Office staff were increasingly confronted by the need to. It’s “very dialectical,” Libang mused:
“Because the needs are growing… we have to think of ways… of bringing back… victims to the
communities… [Then,] in bringing them back they… do advocacy work… recruitment for
setting up chapters” (2013b).

6.2 From Radical Counseling to ‘Circle of Friends’
In 2002, Montes began to supplement individual counseling with group therapy.
78

Initially, this was because more women were approaching her than she could handle. By 2003,
the ‘group’ became the ‘Circle of Friends,’ a collective of victim-survivors who had experienced
intimate partner and/or sexual violence, as well as their friends and relatives. Services staff felt
gathering family members, too, was essential for strengthening survivors’ support networks and
helping these understand what women were going through. Meeting monthly, the Circle of
Friends offered a space of collective support, and political education about social issues. Women

78
Montes would start off with individual counseling first, since some were not ready to open up in a larger group.

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began attending each other’s court hearings; they would fundraise for food and transportation to
do so, as well as to take group action, hold educational events, and join protests. By 2005, Circle
of Friends had over 50 active members, including volunteer anti-VAW advocates (Montes 2013;
GWU 2005a; GWU 2004).
Montes related how one member of Circle of Friends wanted to confront her husband
about why his abusive behavior was wrong. When she presented it to the group, they offered to
assist her. They all met him at a restaurant, listening as the woman challenged him and chiming
in to back her up. When he said he would stop beating his wife, another woman said they should
draft an agreement; he signed a promise to stop, which they later notarized as a legal document,
and he asked Montes for counseling. Montes considered the confrontation a form of therapy for
the group: “It’s also an empowering thing… The husband was put on the spot and he has to
admit in front of these women… They could see that, ah okay, we can do something” (2013).
Yet even at that time, she says, she knew the violence would continue. Nevertheless, she
emphasized, the action was about supporting the victim-survivor’s decision. Afterwards, the
husband was “too macho” to follow through on counseling. The beating stopped for one year.
When it occurred again, the wife decided to file a legal case. The husband then tried to accuse
GABRIELA of brainwashing his wife; but fortunately, they had the evidence of the agreement
he had signed.
79
The woman was eventually able to win her case.
GABRIELA’s collective action approaches demonstrate a capacity to weather through
cycles of domestic violence – and in fact, use these cycles to build further power of both
individual survivors and collectives, towards change in the long-term.
80
GABRIELA’s broader

79
As a practice, the services staff has women sign statements they are willingly approaching GABRIELA for
assistance, as legal protection in case they later return to abusive relationships.
80
See also Chapters 5 and 6.

197
social movement vision, combined with its commitment to stand with survivors’ decisions and
support resistance on the issues affecting them, has helped sustain such activities. In other
contexts, collectives have frequently burned out trying to resolve intimate partner violence
quickly, while failing to do so on a short-term timetable; survivor-centeredness and preserving
the group’s viability can seem like trade-offs. However, Montes demonstrates how combining
survivor-centered support – based on backing victim-survivors’ choices – and building collective
power, is possible; as well as the central role other survivors can play for each other. On one
hand, Montes takes a cynical attitude towards the cycle of violence, predicting its continuation;
yet this also allows her to focus on other goals like supporting victim-survivors’ wishes, group
therapy, and movement-building. Movement-building starts with taking the side of survivors
and creating collective spaces for them, while also knowing the violence won’t end right away.
In following the initiative of survivors, Montes gave way to the spontaneous and unexpected: she
had never engaged in a group confrontation between survivors and a domestic violence
perpetrator before and was unsure what might happen.
By the late 2000s, most National Office services staff were victim-survivors who had
formerly approached GABRIELA for support. Several had joined Circle of Friends before
becoming staff. Montes felt this had certain strengths and challenges: on the one hand, survivors
were often incredibly effective counselors because of their empathy; but on the other, services
work could be retriggering. Still, for Montes what mattered was “their commitment… to be an
advocate, and to have the heart for it… If you have [a] staff who is very skilled in psychology…
but… doesn’t have the heart for it,” she also would not be able to sustain the work (2013).
Nevertheless, Montes felt it important to expose the victim-survivors to other aspects of

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organizing work, apart from VAWC service provision.
81

Montes considers joining rallies to be a form of ‘group therapy,’ too. She says,
We try to raise… awareness… that aside from focusing on their problems, they could see
the other problems of the society… They came to realize that by joining rallies… it’s
part of their therapy, [since] they can shout… vent out their anger. (2013)

In combining empowerment, healing, and mobilization, Circle of Friends paralleled the
GABRIELA member organization Lila Pilipina, which has organized former ‘comfort women’
since 1994, to take political action; and Lawig Bubai, for women and girls in prostitution.
Circle of Friends would eventually become inactive after 2007. Montes went on leave
because of an injury. The women were geographically scattered, transportation to the meetings
was difficult, and perhaps they had other priorities. Many were under pressure to earn income;
others stopped attending when their individual VAW situations were resolved. Nevertheless, for
GABRIELA National Office staff, the group represented a vision of collective action that could
be made more accessible and geographically localized, if implemented in a community-based
manner. Furthermore, Libang says, at this point Metro Manila GABRIELA chapters were ready
to provide intense collective support against abuse, with grassroots members in some already
taking the lead in doing so. In local chapters, support for survivors could engage active
GABRIELA members more broadly, not only other VAW survivors.

6.3 VAWC Trainings and Grassroots Empowerment
Through the 2000s, as chapters set up their own health and VAWC teams, they held
VAWC orientations based on GABRIELA’s now systematized curriculum. Additionally, to
supplement the orientation, by 2000 Montes had begun developing a training module on
‘paracounseling.’ Similar to quick response ‘paramedics,’ local ‘paracounselors’ would provide

81
GABRIELA has continued to refine practices to avoid retriggering survivors; see Chapter 7.

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community-based, emergency counseling and support in response to VAWC, rather than simply
referring cases back to the National Office (Montes 2013).
In Tondo, Quezon City, and Muntinlupa chapters where I conducted fieldwork, National
Office services staff held workshop series lasting several days, on both VAWC as well as legal
tools and ‘paracounseling’ techniques. (The legal workshops helped clarify the newly passed
2004 Anti-VAWC Act; whereas before this law, GABRIELA had focused more on counseling.)
In Tondo, rounds of these trainings were held from 2003 to 2007, and again in 2010. In Quezon
City areas, VAWC orientations were systematically integrated into new chapters’ activities since
2003; while ‘instructors trainings’ geared at preparing local organizers to themselves lead
VAWC orientations and interventions were held in 2008. Finally, in Muntinlupa, where chapters
I visited were relatively newer, National Office staff assisted with VAWC trainings in 2010.
82

In part, the trainings responded to requests from local organizers for more support, as
they were already intervening against interpersonal gendered violence, particularly as VAWC
orientations had become increasingly systematized into local activities.
83
The new trainings did
not wholly initiate such interventions; they built on a previous history of VAWC workshops and
direct action since the early 2000s and before. However, they helped incubate a new wave of
local leaders, deepening their capacity to respond.
84

In my interviews with grassroots organizers and urban poor GABRIELA members, many
described VAWC trainings with National Office staff as transformative. The VAWC
discussions touched personal nerves; urban poor women opened up about their own experiences
for the first time. Perhaps because of the space to share, several would describe these interactive

82
See Chapter 5 for more on field sites.
83
For instance, even before their ‘instructors training,’ local Quezon City organizers took collective action regarding
domestic violence and child sexual abuse. See Chapter 6.
84
See Chapter 5.

200
workshops as among the politicizing discussion activities they related to most. The workshops
enabled spaces of conversation and shifted collective relations.
Furthermore, the workshops actively challenged victim-blaming attitudes in ways that
had lasting impact on participants. Several organizers vividly recalled how discussions shifted
their acceptance of common rape victim-blaming tropes, as well as tendencies to view domestic
violence survivors as provoking or desiring abuse. A key topic of the workshops was the ‘cycle
of violence’ in intimate partner abuse, and victims’ reasons for staying in abusive relationships
(including economic factors).
85
One Muntinlupa organizer named this as formative in changing
victim-blaming views she had held. Another local organizer and former prostituted child in
Quezon City recounted how the trainings altered her attitude from blaming sex workers, to
seeing prostitution in the context of women’s limited economic opportunities. A Tondo
organizer was already committed to treating victims non-judgmentally before the workshops –
but hadn’t realized how her reactions continued to subtly judge, until the trainings helped her see
ways she had internalized such tendencies, and consciously cultivate other practices.
86

Tools used during these trainings included a questionnaire with different VAW scenarios,
and interpretations based on common victim-blaming tropes that were widely held by workshop
participants at first. (For instance, questions explored: he hit his wife because a) she’s a nagger;
b) she didn’t have dinner ready; etc. So-and-so was raped because: a) she wears revealing
clothing; b) she went home late at night; c) she was drunk; etc.) Initially, participants would
often fault the women in their answers. However, these reactions would fuel debate and

85
According to Libang, GABRIELA’s analysis of the cycle of violence itself developed in dialectical conversation
with local chapters’ experiences and understandings, including in Tondo (Libang 2013a).
86
In Part 3, I explore how local organizers have applied and adapted such understandings, to practice survivor-
centered interventions. After all, some emphasized coming to a different perspective on victim-blaming was a
process that included not only workshops, but also concrete experience afterwards as they handled cases.

201
discussion, leading to later attitude changes. Other tools have included using mainstream movies
like Jodi Foster’s The Accused, or commercials, to solicit views and prompt discussion
(participants often reacted by saying the former film’s gang rape was the victim’s fault for
drinking and flirting); brainstorming and guessing games; drawing and sharing symbols. Montes
stresses she had no fixed methods but would adapt them to participants, taking into account
varied levels of formal education. Through discussion, Montes would challenge victim-blaming:
for instance, by asking the participants what if they were in the victim’s shoes. Some workshop
attendees would remain silent, but then towards the end of the discussion, disclose they
themselves had experienced intimate partner or sexual abuse. Montes would follow-up
afterwards with particularized counseling for these GABRIELA members and organizers; in Part
3, I detail impacts of such support from services staff, and later local collectives.
In 2013, I attended a two-day VAWC training on paracounseling and the legal process,
facilitated by Montes and other National Office services staff, for local organizers from new
chapters of Gabriela Women’s Party. The training implemented many of the aforementioned
themes, stressing survivor-centeredness alongside doing service work with the larger goal of
movement-building for structural change. An early segment asked participants to reflect on the
purpose of local chapters’ service provision. The facilitators discussed the political economic
context of government negligence, lack of social services, and rising VAWC. They affirmed the
ultimate need for systemic changes to address these problems (and the inadequacy of even ‘band-
aid’ social welfare programs like 4Ps
87
that offer limited ‘dole-outs,’ but do not tackle structural
causes of poverty). They reinforced the goal of service work is to organize women, while
offering concrete responses to problems; further, service provision should be geared at

87
See Chapter 1. 4Ps is a ‘Conditional Cash Transfer’ program targeting poor mothers.

202
reinforcing the importance of collective action.
88

The paracounseling training used role plays to help participants reflect on survivor-
centered responses, and how to foster the survivor’s empowerment. First and foremost, the
facilitators defined ‘counseling’ as listening, and helping women figure out how to address their
problems – rather than giving advice. They pointed out society’s victim-blaming tendencies
foster a “kultura of tahimikan” (culture of silence) – including the passive silence of victims
when others advise them. Jane Balleta, a healthworker on the National Office’s services staff
who is also a former political prisoner,
89
explained, it’s important to listen because the victim has
already been quiet a long time, and when she approaches you, is finally ready to speak. The
facilitators discussed the importance of affirming and believing the victim; of showing you don’t
blame her, including by avoiding accusatory questions or interrupting. At the same time, Balleta
explained that putting the survivor’s experiences in social context could help her see she’s not
alone, and open the door for later politicization.
Counselors’ approach would not be to tell victim-survivors what to do; neither would
GABRIELA do everything for survivors. Instead, role plays helped participants consider how to
encourage the victim’s own decision-making, action, and realization of her agency. Still, besides
helping plan next steps, counselors would try to draw survivors and their relatives into
organizing. Towards this end, chapters’ service programs might include health-worker trainings,
VAWC and health response teams, and other activities.
While the legal training I observed noted some of the legal process’s limitations, it
proposed case documentation as a basis for planning future campaigns. Interestingly, the
training did not include much sharing or discussion of methods for how to engage in collective

88
For instance, to offer mutual support, and also demand greater state investment in public goods.
89
Balleta was one of 43 healthworkers (the ‘Morong 43’) detained as a group and tortured in 2010 by the military.

203
interventions against VAWC, outside of helping survivors navigate a legal process. Yet Gert
Libang has noted that historically, GABRIELA has long stressed the legal route as only one of
several options for survivors and their supporters.
90

The training ended with participants making plans to hold their own local trainings, and
launch VAWC campaigns (including to implement VAW desks at the barangay level, and the
state’s required ‘gender and development’ spending). In the years after trainings at my field
sites, local organizers led the way in bolstering capacity to respond to VAWC in their
communities. For instance, following their 2008 instructors trainings, Quezon City urban poor
women facilitated the same workshops nine times with GABRIELA members from 2008 to
2009, and continued to hold workshops in new locations. As GABRIELA continues to
systematize political education within the organization, the National Office and local chapters
have set the goal of reaching all GABRIELA members in Metro Manila with its VAWC
orientation. Meanwhile, local chapters’ strategies for how to handle VAWC on the ground are
being shared with one another informally.

6.4 Community-based Alternatives to Domestic Violence Sheltering
During the 2000s, local organizers and the National Office tested out alternatives to
sending women to institutional domestic violence shelters, on a case-by-case basis.
91
Women
seeking respite from intimate partner violence worked with organizers to be secretly sheltered in
their own neighborhoods, or in other urban poor communities with strong GABRIELA chapters.
They would stay in the homes of other GABRIELA members. Such strategies were an extension
of GABRIELA’s survivor-centered decision-making, planned in coordination with victim-

90
See also Chapter 4, regarding impacts of the Anti-VAWC act on organizers’ frameworks.
91
Previously, the National Office had more commonly referred women to outside shelters (Libang 2013a).

204
survivors, depending on their wishes and needs.
Some victim-survivors found institutional shelters less than ideal: restrictive in their rules
and regulations, socially isolating, and a difficult psychological transition. In contrast, Libang
says goals of alternative sheltering are to continue connecting survivors with their pre-existing
support systems; allow them to earn livelihood; and offer a familiar atmosphere. Discussing
drawbacks of institutionalized domestic violence shelters, Libang observed,
They are not allowed to get into contact with friends… because of course… it’s opening
the whole institutional shelter to dangers… It creates a lot of dependence on the part of
the woman, especially if she’s bringing along her children. (2013b)

But when sheltering women in the community, GABRIELA organizers work together with
victim-survivors to collectively decide on agreements for their housing. Libang explained,
One thing about putting them in another organized community is… it’s going to be a
collective thing… talking about what rules and regulations should be followed…
If it’s an institutional shelter when you go in there are these, ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you should not,
you should not, you should not...’ But when it’s in a community setting then they have to
talk it over – what does it mean… what are the precautions the women in the community
should take, because some cases are different from the others. (2013b)

Community-based sheltering potentially allows a more socially connected, empowering,
collectively decided upon, and tailored living situation.
Libang notes the potential for community-based sheltering to be scaled-up into a
widespread practice. In contrast, she asserts running a shelter is much more costly: “Everything
that the woman and her family needs will be given to them, starting from food, even clothing,
etc.;” and shelters are required to follow government regulations such as having a licensed social
worker, who “passed a board… got a license… and continued to renew the license… Besides
taking care of the women you are sheltering, there is much, much paperwork” (2013b). Thus,
community sheltering presents the possibility of more accessible emergency care, rather than
relying on the very few state-sponsored shelters available.

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However, organizers only carry out these practices depending on a survivor’s wishes.
Alternative sheltering is not always desired or feasible, when there are no nearby chapters the
woman can be brought to, or communities willing to take her in. Libang observes, “We’ve been
successful… [with] women from the urban poor community who are very much organized
and… willing to go to another community where there is a chapter of GABRIELA, so that they
can continue their [organizing] work” (2013b). These survivors were received by organizing
collectives who were already accountable to movement goals. Thus, community-based
sheltering has depended on the scale and vitality of movement organizing. In some ways, it
operates as a replacement for kinship networks, which are frequently unavailable regarding
intimate partner violence.
92

Alternative sheltering initiated by local GABRIELA chapters has been carried out in
coordination with other ND movement organizations. Nor is it a complete aberration from other
ND groups’ practices of collective support. For example, Cristina Palabay, formerly secretary
general of Gabriela Women’s Party and a leader of the human rights organization Karapatan,
notes that in the late 2000s, victims of torture and abduction by the military were housed in
organized communities where they could continue helping with movement-building work. The
victims were considered witnesses and offered ‘protective custody’ by the state, but they decided
against accepting this given its punitive and isolating nature. Furthermore, Palabay points out
that accepting state ‘protection’ might only have put them at more risk;
93
whereas instead, living

92
One former services staff advocated, “when it comes to women from the community, and there’s a chapter
already,” it’s recommended “to have her stay in the community… it’s really crazy for a battered wife [who] got out
of the relationship” to suddenly be sent somewhere unfamiliar “with no one to talk to;” she explored sending
survivors to relatives, and then institutional shelters as a last resort, when they just dropped by the National Office
without a strong prior relationship to GABRIELA (Katherine 2013a).
93
Especially as victims of state violence. For instance, a woman in the government’s Witness Protection Program
was sexually assaulted by her own guard, Gerry Lintan, prompting GWP to file a 2002 resolution to investigate
(Philippine House of Representatives 2004).

206
in communities and taking part in organizing served as a form of rehabilitation for both the
survivors and their families (Palabay 2012).
94

Libang sees the potential of continuing to expand alternative sheltering practices,
depending on continued trainings for local chapters, their growing experience, as well as
GABRIELA’s expansion, so more chapters are available to coordinate. Rather than survivors
approaching the National Office, Libang envisions, “with the communities ready then it will be
in the communities that they will be organized, it will be the communities where they will be
turned into advocates” (2013b).

7. Closing
Through the 1990s GABRIELA systemized its training materials on VAWC, while
experimenting with forms of collective intervention and support for survivors through direct
action, counseling, and emergency shelter. In the 2000s, the National Office helped promulgate
the approach of treating survivors as potential organizers among local urban poor women in
Metro Manila. In Part 3, I delve further into how local organizers have adapted on these
methods, and impacts of their social movements interventions. First, however, in Chapter 4, I
next examine how GABRIELA’s involvement in parliamentary struggle, and the passage of the
2004 Anti-Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC) Act, have influenced the terms of
on-the-ground organizing against abuse. Despite GABRIELA’s history of critiquing the limits
of electoral politics and ‘gender-mainstreaming’ reforms, its participation in these arenas has
continued to unfold; its multiple levels of political activity are not without tensions and
contradictions.

94
Meanwhile, other ND organizations have approached GABRIELA on behalf of survivors, whom GABRIELA has
housed in its offices.

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CHAPTER 4

Gabriela Women’s Party: Legislative Reform and Neoliberal Imperial Feminisms

1. Opening
In 2001, GABRIELA’s multipronged political strategies assumed a new form in the
electoral arena. GABRIELA began fielding its own political candidates to Congress, through the
newly established Gabriela Women’s Party (GWP). As discussed in Chapter 3, in the late 1990s,
GABRIELA leaders critiqued ‘gender mainstreaming’ for its complicity in neoliberal
development. But to date, several of GWP’s legislative victories involve ‘gender-
mainstreaming’ reforms that criminalize trafficking and intimate partner violence – riding on
years of women’s movement lobbying and pressure. These successfully enacted laws represent
only a fraction of GWP’s legislative agenda. Nevertheless, stressing its commitment to tackling
gendered violence as the most successful women’s political party thus far, GWP prominently
advocates for the reforms’ importance, both in mainstream media and grassroots organizing.
How is GWP’s advocacy around VAW partly embedded in neoliberal imperial feminist
discourses, and in what ways is it divergent from these? As GABRIELA opposes state violence,
while also supporting increased state capacity for criminalization, what kinds of tensions does
this positionality inhabit, and how does it navigate them? The Philippines’ ‘weak state’ imposes
criminalizing reforms only partially; rampant VAW, especially that perpetrated by state actors,
continues unchecked. Still, when the state has incorporated ‘gender mainstreaming,’ it has often
prioritized neoliberal imperial and carceral feminist frameworks for doing so. In Part 3, I focus
on how community-based organizing exceeds the legal tools it draws upon. Yet even as on-the-
ground organizing pushes the limits of the law, the passage of the 2004 Anti-Violence Against
Women and Children (VAWC) Act has strongly delineated discourses and frameworks of

208
community-based interventions regarding interpersonal gendered violence in Metro Manila.
While analyzing the extent of state capacity to criminalize VAW is out of the scope of
this dissertation, I do speak to the ways neoliberal imperial feminist paradigms both shape the
imaginations of local GABRIELA organizers, and are resisted. This chapter begins to unpack
some consequences of GABRIELA’s more recent involvement in parliamentary struggle and
legislative reform, for its on-the-ground organizing responses to interpersonal gendered violence.
In grappling with GABRIELA’s legislative work, I pose tensions between scales of social
change, and how ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches of state-taking and state-making
interact. I argue for the importance of ground-up, community-based social movements responses
to interpersonal gendered violence, to be explored more fully in Part 3.
In this chapter, I first discuss GABRIELA’s changing relationship to electoral politics,
and the rise of Gabriela Women’s Party since the start of the ‘party-list’ system, which reserved
Congressional seats for historically marginalized sectors. I examine GWP’s closely symbiotic
relationship with GABRIELA’s grassroots movement-building, practices of accountability to this
larger movement, and headway despite severe state repression. Next, I look at GWP’s legislative
record, paying special attention to the 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, the 2004 Anti-
VAWC Act, and 2009 Magna Carta of Women. I contextualize these laws in relation to
neoliberal imperial and especially carceral feminisms, noting both overlaps and deviations. I
consider their uses for state capacity-building, as well as implementation problems. Then, I
focus on GABRIELA’s stance towards the Anti-VAWC Act in particular; and how it has utilized
the reform as a springboard for community-based organizing against interpersonal gendered
violence. Finally, I return to some contradictions of how law enforcement and gendered violence
have played out in urban poor women’s lives, drawing from my interviews with GABRIELA

209
members. Their positionalities point towards limitations of building neoliberal imperial state
capacity for criminalization.

2. Shifting Approaches to Post-1986 Electoral Politics
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, GABRIELA expressed a cautious skepticism
towards electoral politics. It took part in voter education, endorsed candidates, and worked in
coalition with other women’s groups to advance a “women’s electoral agenda.”
1
However,
analysis in its newsletter, GABRIELA Women’s Update, recognized that beyond engaging in
political education, the movement in 1992 did not yet have the strength to bring out a “women’s
vote” (Jose 1992). Furthermore, Perlita Soriano of GABRIELA’s National Coordinating
Committee said, “GABRIELA did not carry any illusions that the election is the solution to the
Philippine crisis;” organizers stressed the “‘traditional’ character of elections,” using the
opportunity to raise women’s issues and point out other means of social change (Jose 1992, 6).
Similarly, a 1992 editorial in Laya on “Elections 1992: Shoring up the status quo,” criticized the
continued lack of meaningful democracy and urged readers to be “WISE – Walang Ilusyon sa
Eleksyon” (“without illusions in elections”) (Laya 1992a, 5).
2

Before the formation of GWP, GABRIELA took a hands-off approach to legislative
advocacy, focusing more on grassroots organizing in support (Reyes 2004). As ‘gender-
mainstreaming’ reforms were debated in legislature, a 1994 issue of Piglas-Diwa
3
critiqued
limits of the 1992 Women in Development and Nation-Building Act, and analyzed pending

1
E.g., GABRIELA’s 1992 electoral agenda included implementing CEDAW; women’s land rights; paid parental
leave; a conversion plan for former U.S. bases serving displaced women workers inside and out; VAW legislation;
public funds for women’s crisis centers, free maternal healthcare, daycare; reproductive choice; ‘gender-fair’
education; as well as solidarity with ND movement demands including indigenous rights (GWU 1992a).
2
GABRIELA leaders helped found and edit Laya.
3
A publication of the GABRIELA-affiliated Center for Women’s Resources (CWR).

210
proposals for rape, sexual harassment, and wife cruelty laws (CWR 1994).
4
It argued many
policymakers resorted to ‘gender mainstreaming’ to pacify the women’s movement’s growing
militancy: “women themselves are coopted because they are led to believe that the law is finally
on their side, and that there is hope for change through legislative reforms” (21). However,
while noting “genuine women’s liberation” would not be attained through legislative reforms but
rather a systemic overhaul, it recognized “we are still working within the parameters of the very
system we need to change” (23). The zine advocated using the law instrumentally, as a “means,
rather than an end itself” to support spaces for organizing and politicization (24).

3. Gabriela Women’s Party and the ‘Party-List’ System
The implementation of the ‘party-list’ system in 1998 provided a new opening for
GABRIELA to directly field its own candidates to Congress. Post-1986 ‘democratization’ had
largely reinstituted fraud-ridden and oligarchal elections, which preserved the grip of a small
circle of elite clans over government positions.
5
However, the 1987 Constitution included
provisions to reserve 20 percent of Congressional seats for nationally elected, ‘party-list’
representatives of ‘disadvantaged’ groups, including workers, peasants, women, and indigenous
people. Due to Congressional stalling, the first ‘party-list’ elections did not take place until over
ten years after the Constitutional mandate (Manalansan, Jr. 2011). Moreover, despite offering
excluded groups electoral representation, the party-list system has built-in impediments to
actually dismantling oligarchal hegemony in Congress; no matter how many votes a party-list
might secure, it can only attain a maximum of three seats. Because of this cap, as of 2009, over

4
A lobby group and women’s coalition, SIBOL (Sama-samang Inisyatiba Para sa Pagbabago ng Batas at Lipunan),
established in 1992, was instrumental in helping pass the 1997 Anti-Rape Act. SIBOL originally included
GABRIELA, CWR, UKP, and others, but GABRIELA later withdrew from being active to focus on organizing.
5
See Chapter 1.

211
half of reserved party-list seats still sat empty (Tuazon 2011a).
6

GABRIELA established its own political party, Gabriela Women’s Party (GWP), in
2000. GWP followed in the footsteps of the first women’s party, KAIBA, founded in 1987, and
joined several contemporary women’s party-lists such as Abanse! Pinay
7
– but has grown to be
the most successful. In 2001, longtime GABRIELA leader Liza Maza first ran on the ticket of
Bayan Muna (BM),
8
the coalition party-list for national democratic (ND) movement groups; that
year BM won the most votes of any party-list to date, so that Maza as well as two other BM
candidates secured Congressional seats (Libres and Largoza-Maza 2005). Subsequently, Maza
co-sponsored the 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Law (RA 9208), long advocated for by
women’s organizations and passed after years of stalling. She also co-authored the 2004 Anti-
VAWC Act (RA 9262), passed after nine years of campaigning by a broad spectrum of women’s
groups (Roces 2012, 112; De la Cruz and Domingo 2014; Libres and Largoza-Maza 2005, 140).
In 2004, GWP and other ND party-lists fielded their own candidates in addition to BM’s,
coordinating to increase the number of ND movement Congressional representatives, despite the
three-seat cap per party-list. GWP won one Congressional seat, while BM maintained three
more. While campaigning, GWP and other ND part-lists faced government harassment and
severe repression; the state took out ads claiming they were communist fronts, a disinformation
campaign falsely announced they had been disqualified on election eve, and military personnel
intimidated voters while ballot boxes were burned (Libres and Largoza-Maza 2005, 146;

6
Arguably, the party-list system offers party-lists a starting point for eventually vaulting into ‘mainstream’ politics.
As of 2015, only the Akbayan party-list had achieved something akin to this; through alliance with President
Benigno Aquino III’s Liberal Party, Akbayan leaders secured various government appointments, but a study noted
its criticisms of the ruling administration’s policy grew tempered in the process (Cay and Nonato 2014).
7
Abanse! Pinay was led by PILIPINA members (Roces 2012, 10). Partly due to BM’s advocacy against
certification of party-lists that do not actually represent marginalized groups, Abanse! Pinay narrowly secured a
Congressional seat in 2001 when the former were eliminated; but lost it in 2004 (Libres and Largoza-Maza 2005).
8
GABRIELA helped co-found BM in 2000 (GWU 1992b, 140)

212
Manalansan, Jr. 2011). Moreover, in a continuation of patterns of violence against challenges to
‘traditional’ politics, between 2001 and 2005, two GWP and 50 BM members were murdered
(Libres and Largoza-Maza 2005, 147). Even so, GWP won the most votes of any women’s
party-list organization.
9
During the 13
th
Congress from 2004 to 2007, Maza would be
responsible for filing 15 out of 38 pro-women bills and resolutions (Veneracion-Rallonza 2008,
240). In 2007, GWP secured an even higher number of votes, winning two Congressional seats
for Maza and Luzviminda Ilagan, and rising to rank as the fourth most popular party-list overall.
For this term, Maza was recognized as Minority Floor Leader (Manglalan et al. 2010, 7). GWP
co-sponsored and helped pass the 2009 Magna Carta of Women. In 2010 and 2013, GWP
maintained two seats in Congress.
10

Meanwhile, counter to the party-list system’s original Constitutional mandate, non-
marginalized groups have managed to gain party-list certification and win reserved seats,
including by fraud (Manalansan, Jr. 2011). By 2010, rather than representing oppositional
voices of the historically marginalized, 79 percent of the 57 party-list officeholders had ties to
‘traditional’ political clans, the ruling administration, big business, or religious dynasties – an
affront to explicit legal protections supposedly banning these groups from party-list elections
(Tuazon 2011b). BUHAY, a pro-life party-list, replaced BM as the party-list with the most votes
in 2007 and 2013. Worse, in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that party-lists no longer have to
represent marginalized or underrepresented sectors at all, reversing prior law and effectively
nullifying the founding bases of the party-list system.
Vote-buying by ‘traditional’ politicians, as well as violent repression of oppositional
electoral organizing continues. For example, before elections in 2007, the military was deployed

9
GWP ranked 7
th
out of 66 party-lists in 2004.
10
Held by Reps. Emmi De Jesus and Ilagan. GWP won over 1 million votes in 2010, ranking 3
rd
of all party-lists.

213
to occupy urban poor neighborhoods in Tondo. ND party-lists continue to be targeted for red-
baiting
11
and political killings
12
(Holden 2009). Unfortunately, the party-list system’s
implementation, and progressive groups’ increasingly coordinated capacity to make use of it,
were quickly met with militarization under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as well as legal reforms to
change the rules. Still, grassroots GABRIELA chapters in Metro Manila continue to spend
significant time and energy on election campaigning, despite this increasingly difficult terrain.

4. Electoral Politics and Grassroots Movement
Early on, GWP’s strategies for electoral success were rooted in grassroots organizing.
GWP and other ND party-list representatives were among the poorest of party-list
representatives, let alone in Congress as a whole, when they took office in 2004 (Manalansan, Jr.
2011, 52–3). GWP’s election campaigns have largely operated on a shoestring, tapping into
GABRIELA’s mass base to help with voter outreach. Voter campaigns built upon GABRIELA
chapters’ community-based political education discussions, combining these with outreach by
jeepney and foot, medical relief missions, and other means. Unlike traditional parties which
have stressed personality politics, patronage links, and handed out money with campaign leaflets,
GWP’s campaign materials and jingles focus on issues and its political platform (see Fig. 4.1).
Voter education has actively urged community members to be discerning about vote-buying and
consequences of elitist, patronage politics. On election day and after, GABRIELA and GWP

11
Programmatically, ND movement organizations and the underground NDF share aspects of political analysis and
goals. However, the CPP regularly releases publicity materials decrying engagement with the electoral process.
Regarding armed struggle, GABRIELA, ND movement party-lists, and other ND movement organizations have
focused on calling for a peace process that honors the need for structural solutions to the Philippines’ economic
crisis and inequalities, demanding human rights are upheld, and opposing militarization.
12
From 2001 to 2008, 202 progressive party-list members were killed, two thirds of whom belonged to BM
(Karapatan 2008); from 2010 to 2013, another 56 ND party-list members were assassinated, including 1 GWP
member (Karapatan 2014a, 17). BM offices have been raided by the military, fired upon, and razed (Holden 2009,
383).

214

Fig. 4.1: A 2013 campaign flyer for Gabriela Women’s Party, bearing the slogan “Labka ng Gabriela”
(“Gabriela Loves You”). Key issues highlighted include “land, work, living wage, and livelihood;”
“affordable food, water, and electricity;” “basic health, education, and housing services;” “sovereignty
and freedom;” “anti-discrimination and anti-violence against women, children and LGBTs.”
organizers lead grassroots poll-monitoring and follow-up campaigns against fraud.
13

In turn, GWP serves as a platform for GABRIELA to broaden its community organizing
reach. GWP itself began to establish its own grassroots chapters in urban poor neighborhoods of

13
At the same time, GWP has placed paid radio and newspaper ads, including by donation from an all-women’s
advertising agency. In 2004, its banner and poster were included in a TV ad with a woman senate candidate whom
GWP endorsed. For more on grassroots fundraising strategies, see Libres and Largoza-Maza (2005, 141–5).

215
Metro Manila and beyond; by 2004, it had over 38 chapters nationally and has since grown
(Libres and Largoza-Maza 2005, 141). Local GABRIELA organizers use election season to
outreach to new communities, and consolidate chapters where GWP won many votes. While
accompanying local organizers in Metro Manila during 2013, I observed GWP to potentially
have broader appeal in urban poor communities where GABRIELA was not yet established,
especially to men, due to its reputation in parliamentary struggle; in comparison, GABRIELA is
often perceived as a militant organization known for opposing the government, and hence, more
risky for men to let partners get involved in. In recent years, GABRIELA and ND movement
organizations have embraced electoral politics through the party-list system as a means of
engaging a wider audience.
Congressional representatives each have an allocation of ‘pork-barrel’ funds for projects
they personally wish to support. GWP funds have provided a system of medical assistance for
care at hospitals throughout Metro Manila. The disbursement of these funds directly supports
GABRIELA’s community-based organizing, because they are allocated at the grassroots by local
chapters, depending on need.
14
Poor constituents have typically relied on traditional politicians
for ‘pork-barrel’ medical assistance, requiring visits to their offices; GWP’s system makes aid
more accessible since the local officers responsible for its distribution are right in recipients’
communities. Furthermore, by placing urban poor women in charge of distribution, GWP’s
medical funds project influences networks of power and respectability within poor
communities.
15
Ideally, it potentially subverts traditional patronage and personality politics
somewhat, by attempting to shift relations of allegiance to GWP’s political platform, while

14
GABRIELA membership affects the amount allocated, but purportedly no one in need is turned away. My survey
data corroborated a lack of favoritism in disbursements for members, organizers, and officers; see Chapter 7.
15
This has much to do with who and what qualities GABRIELA organizers look for, when recruiting local leaders;
as I will discuss in Chapter 5, GABRIELA creates alternative social networks that challenge existing hierarchies.

216
building local chapters’ collective power. Meanwhile, in GWP strongholds throughout Metro
Manila, GWP has donated public utility vehicles to local barangays for serving constituents;
often they are used for medical emergencies, and occasionally to assist VAW victims.
In 2005, the Department of Budget and Management ceased releasing ‘pork-barrel’ funds
to party-list representatives and others critical of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
(Manalansan, Jr. 2011, 58–60). GWP was forced to stretch its funds from previous years.
Nevertheless, while seeking to direct their ‘pork’ towards movement-building, GWP and ND
party-lists have also long recognized the ‘pork-barrel’ system as a tool of elitist politics, both for
politicians to manipulate votes and patronage relations, as well as for the executive branch of
government to secure legislators’ loyalty. When the 2013 ‘pork-barrel’ corruption scandal
16

prompted widespread outcry and protests across class, GWP and the ND party-lists authored
legislation to abolish all pork, including at the executive level, demanding transparent budget
allocations for social services instead.
GABRIELA and other ND movement organizations have cultivated a culture of
accountability from their party-list candidates to the larger movement. In discussing her role as a
legislator, Liza Maza emphasized,
I represent GWP. I am not just an individual here. I represent a Party with a definite
program and platform for women, and that’s the only reason why I’m here… Discipline
is a must to keep one’s commitment to the organization… The Party principles should be
one’s guiding principles… I did not spend more than twenty years of my life in the
progressive movement only to be corrupted. (GWU 1992b, 138)

GWP may replace its representatives at any time given cause (Libres and Largoza-Maza 2005,
151). ND party-list representatives operate as part of a larger social movement not just because

16
Over 28 Congresspersons were caught embezzling their pork-barrel allocations through businesswoman Janet Lim
Napoles’ ghost NGOs; they had defrauded the government of ₱10 billion over ten years, roughly equivalent to half
the national housing budget (Carvajal 2013; Manasan 2013). Progressive party-lists point out, however, that
corruption in how ‘pork’ funds are spent is systemic and exceeds the Napoles scandal.

217
of their collective alliances as a political bloc around a shared agenda in Congress – but because
they recognize grassroots movement as the ultimate engine of meaningful political change.
Representatives have taken on roles as spokespeople and strategic partners to movement on-the-
ground, viewing their Congressional work in this light. They closely coordinate with ND
movement groups about ongoing struggles and political issues, making frequent public
appearances in support.
Collective practices of accountability have been influenced by ND movement debates
about the relation between professional NGOs and advocates to ‘people’s organizations;’ as well
as by GABRIELA’s own experiences as a women’s organization.
17
Reportedly, Maza’s office
aspired to run more like a “women’s collective” than a government office (Libres and Largoza-
Maza 2005, 151). Reflecting practices developed by ND-affiliated NGOs, GWP staff aids spend
significant time on extended ‘exposures’ immersed in the conditions of low-income
communities. The compensation of GWP personnel is ‘socialized’ based on need.
18

5. Legislative Advocacy and VAWC
GWP participates in ‘gender mainstreaming’ from a nationalist position, even while
oriented by the premise that gender mainstreaming is not enough. I now explore the relation of
GWP’s overall legislative activity to ND movement agendas; and then focus on examples of how
it has enacted gender mainstreaming.
GWP Congresswomen have been prolific in writing and co-sponsoring legislation and
resolutions on a broad range of issues, even if they are most well-known for the aforementioned

17
E.g., in the 1990s, GABRIELA leaders discussed institutionalizing “principles of feminist collectivity” (GWU
1992b, 15–6).
18
Such practices for financial accountability parallel those throughout GABRIELA and other ND groups; see
Chapter 3.

218
anti-trafficking and anti-VAWC bills. Yet the vast majority of bills they authored were not
enacted into law.
19
Often in alliance with other ND party-lists, GWP has repeatedly initiated
Congressional inquiries into political killings and repression of activists, journalists, and church-
people; filed bills to repeal neoliberal economic policies such as electricity privatization and oil
deregulation; opposed regressive sales taxes; supported an increased minimum wage; and more
(e.g., GWU 2005; Manalansan, Jr. 2011, 54–5, 61). GWP co-authored and helped pass the 2009
Rent Control Act, which applies to lower-income housing stock. Its representatives continue to
push legislation on indigenous people’s rights, environmental degradation, militarization, OFW
concerns, price hikes, land reform, and workers rights including sex discrimination and maternity
leave (e.g., GWP 2011b; Manglalan et al. 2010, 7). GWP and ND party-lists helped lead House
impeachment proceedings against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, when evidence of massive election
fraud emerged (Manalansan, Jr. 2011, 61); they vocally challenged the legitimacy of President
Benigno Aquino III’s regime.
As a bloc, ND party-lists including GWP have opposed state violence, including
criminalization, as a matter of upholding human and civil rights. GWP co-authored and helped
pass an act abolishing the death penalty in 2006; as well as the 2008 Anti-Torture Act applying
to police and military. It opposed but was unable to stop Macapagal-Arroyo’s 2007 Anti-
Terrorism Bill (Manalansan, Jr. 2011, 60). Numerous GWP bills promote demilitarization in
government, educational institutions, and society. For instance, since 2001, GWP
representatives have sponsored a bill to bar all former or active military and police personnel
from appointment to government positions (still not advanced beyond the committee level).
Other GWP resolutions have urged investigations into abuse of women and children in custody;

19
From 2004 to 2007, Maza filed 26 bills of so-called ‘national significance,’ but only two were signed into law
(Manalansan, Jr. 2011, 55). A search of Congressional records shows similar patterns in enactment rates since.

219
as well as into military and police killings and abuse of women, children, and indigenous people.
In terms of legislation originated or sponsored by GWP itself, the party-list has arguably
been most successful with its bills related to gender mainstreaming and children’s rights. For
instance, of the nine bills actually passed into law between 2001 and 2015 that GWP
representatives helped originate as a principal author, four involved gender-mainstreaming
legislation;
20
another two were the 2006 Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act,
21
and an act allowing
the legitimation of children.
22
As noted, GWP’s success in gender mainstreaming builds on
years of advocacy work by a broader spectrum of women’s organizations. Nevertheless, given
the large proportion of ‘pro-women’ bills it is responsible for filing, GWP now plays a prominent
role leading ‘gender mainstreaming.’ Indeed, GWP representatives have prioritized advancing
legislation on women’s concerns and gendered violence; a majority of bills that GWP originated
explicitly mention women, VAW, or gendered violence.
Initial evidence suggests GWP has been the most successful of ND movement party-lists
in securing support for its bills. During Maza’s second term from 2004 to 2007, twenty-three
GWP bills, mostly on women’s and children’s issues, advanced the farthest of ND party-list
bills, with five eventually transmitted to the Senate (Manalansan, Jr. 2011, 55). Party-list
representatives have voted unanimously as a bloc in support of GWP’s gender-mainstreaming
reforms (60). Nevertheless, GWP was not able to secure wide Congressional support for other
facets of its agenda focused on women workers, indigenous rights, and more – especially when

20
The anti-trafficking act; the 2009 Magna Carta for Women; an act recognizing November 25 as a National
Consciousness Day for the Elimination of VAW; and the Reproductive Health Law.
21
Maza’s original bill stressed restorative justice as a mechanism to better protect criminalized children; limited
language on restorative justice was incorporated into the final law (Philippine House of Representatives 2015).
22
The other bills enacted were: two bills regulating prices of basic necessities; and a bill Maza originally drafted to
abolish ROTC in schools, but that eventually passed as legislation establishing the National Service Training
Program (NSTP) in tertiary schools and making ROTC voluntary.

220
these were not attached to a larger ‘gender-mainstreaming’ measure.
23

Still, the legislation actually enacted is a small slice of not just GWP’s overall agenda,
but even its ‘gender-mainstreaming’ goals. Since at least 2005, GWP has unsuccessfully tried to
legalize divorce, and amend existing sexual harassment and rape laws to expand their coverage.
It has long advocated full implementation of the 5 percent government budget set aside for
‘gender and development.’ In 2010, it proposed an alternative reproductive health bill for ‘pro-
poor’ and ‘rights-based’ health services and contraception, while eschewing population control
(GWP 2011a). Its bill was partially incorporated into the 2012 Reproductive Health Law;
however, GWP’s proposed legislation was more expansive regarding access to reproductive
healthcare and education, whereas the enacted law focuses on state-subsidized contraceptives
(Ilagan 2010; Lagman 2012). (GABRIELA warned the state might use its measures to target
poor women for population control, under the guise of poverty alleviation.)
24

5.1 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act
GABRIELA has credited the passage of the 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act to
nearly a decade of Filipino women’s organizing, including its own ‘Purple Rose Campaign’
against sex trafficking (Torres 2004, 21; De Jesus 2004, 82). Precursors to the law were the
1990 Anti-Mail Order Bride Act, which made mail order bride businesses illegal in the
Philippines;
25
and the Ramos administration’s declaring 1997 “Anti-Trafficking of Migrants
Year” (Ruiz-Austria 2006, 99). The trafficking bill was one of the few women’s rights proposals

23
Over a third of bills sponsored by GWP from 2004 to the present touched on concerns involving economic,
environmental, OFW, and indigenous issues, as well as state violence; these bills did not necessarily name women
or VAW in their titles, even if they were concerned with problems disproportionately impacting women.
Interestingly, almost none of such bills, except some measures on price monitoring, were enacted into law.
24
It was unsatisfied with portions of the law that integrated family planning with anti-poverty programs, and placed
Congressional oversight under the population committee (rather than the Women and Gender Equality Committee).
25
This law was largely ineffective because mail order bride business based outside the Philippines were exempt. As
of 2006, not one case was successfully prosecuted (Ruiz-Austria 2006, 103).

221
that did not attract the Catholic Church’s opposition; nor was it as controversial in Congress as
the 1997 anti-rape law (106). At the same time, the bill’s passage coincided with the George W.
Bush regime’s opportunistic use of trafficking and women’s rights, to advance U.S. military
aggression and justify sanctions against its political enemies globally. Feminist scholars have
pointed out that the U.S.-led ‘War on Trafficking,’ allegedly to protect women migrants from
gendered violence, has primarily resulted in the criminalization of sex work and women’s
migration, rather than stopping such violence (e.g., see Parrenas 2008; Kempadoo et al. 2005).
In the late 1990s, the U.S. spurred heightened international concern with trafficking. It
led the way in proposing and urging countries to sign the first legally binding international anti-
trafficking instruments (Fresnido 2012, 72). Yet these agreements advanced carceral responses
that failed to expand supports for victims or prevent interpersonal gendered violence in the first
place. For instance, under the 2000 Palermo Protocol, aggressively promoted by the U.S. State
Department and signed by over 100 countries, only measures to prosecute and criminalize
trafficking, as well as to tighten border security, were legally binding; suggestions for providing
victims assistance were discretionary. Meanwhile, the U.S. ranks states in an annual report, to
direct sanctions against those it deems to be insufficient in addressing trafficking.
26
Influenced
by U.S. pressure, over half of the world’s countries passed new anti-trafficking laws by 2011
(Lagon 2011, 90), overwhelmingly focused on criminalization, rather than prevention or support.
A former director of the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Office, Mark
Lagon, argued that the U.S has political interests in the campaign against trafficking, because “it
is immensely important to the U.S. economy to sustain the legitimacy of globalization as the
largely positive force for broader prosperity” (2011, 92). Cracking down on trafficking would

26
Needless to say, its rankings have been criticized as highly politicized.

222
demonstrate the “rule of law can tame globalization’s excesses,” and “slavery is not [its]
inexorable product” (92). However, it is precisely anti-trafficking laws’ inability to
preventatively address issues of inequality, poverty, and development, that limits their
effectiveness. As feminist scholars have argued, ‘trafficking’ is fueled by growing demand in
the First World countries for cheap labor; lack of livelihood in sending countries like the
Philippines; as well as restrictive immigration policies, particularly under neoliberal austerity
(e.g., Ruiz-Austria 2006, 100). Restrictive borders, combined with strong push and pull factors
fueling migration, have only increased the market for irregular or undocumented migration.
Furthermore, Robyn Rodriguez asserts that as a ‘labor brokerage’ state, the Philippine
government essentially engages in ‘legal human trafficking,’ selling off its own population for
exploitation abroad because it is unwilling to prioritize domestic economic opportunities (2010).
In fact, Philippine legislation on trafficking has gone hand-in-hand with overall policies of
deregulating labor standards, including for overseas migrants (Ruiz-Austria 2006, 104). Labor
trafficking prosecutions remain minimal, accounting for just 432 out of 5,506 prosecutions
globally in 2009 (Lagon 2011, 91). ‘Carceral feminist’ anti-trafficking initiatives dovetail with
state responses to gender inequality that perpetuate neoliberal globalization and imperialism.
In the Philippines, Abanse! Pinay first sponsored an anti-trafficking bill in 1998; but
when it lost its party-list seat, GWP saw through the 2003 law’s passage. A weakness of my
analysis of the anti-trafficking law below is I was unable to get hold of GWP’s original
legislative proposal. However, like other women’s organizations in the Philippine social
movement field, GABRIELA has long advocated for legally recognizing VAW as a crime on par
with other crimes; even as it challenges neoliberal imperial feminisms in terms of vocally
opposing militarization, and calling for adequate public supports and livelihood domestically.

223
Adopting a ‘human rights’ framework, the Philippine anti-trafficking law is not narrowly
restricted to sex trafficking, but includes labor trafficking and debt bondage.
27
The law increases
criminal penalties for traffickers, and considers the consent of the victim irrelevant.
Significantly, deviating from carceral feminists who would support criminalizing sex workers,
the act introduced the decriminalization of prostitutes for the first time in the Philippine context.
Whereas previously, the penal code named ‘prostitutes’ as a category of criminal, the act defines
prostitution to stress they are ‘victims.’
28
It mandates rehabilitation, medical, livelihood training
and other services for trafficked persons.
However, while supposedly not seeking to criminalize prostitutes, the act has still
resulted in the unwanted and punitive detention of ‘rescued’ sex workers in government social
welfare facilities (e.g., see Ruiz-Austria 2006, 110). Clients – whom the law penalized for the
first time
29
– have proven hard to prosecute, especially when they include military personnel,
politicians, and government officials (Abocejo and Gubalane 2013). As of 2011, there were only
13 convictions under the act (Ambito and Banzon 2011, 13). Overall, labor exploitation
continues unchecked, particularly through licensed (and thus legal) recruiters or state-sanctioned
OFW programs. On top of the law’s lack of effectiveness, along carceral feminist lines,
prosecution has been the focus of its implementation, while mandated services and programs
have gone unfunded (Ruiz-Austria 2006, 108).
Recently, GWP’s own legislation against trafficking has been used to harass GABRIELA
organizers and others struggling for indigenous people’s rights. In 2015, the Philippine police

27
It reaffirmed the Anti-Mail Order Bride law, criminalizing the mail order bride industry and sex tourism when
they result in prostitution, sexual, or labor exploitation.
28
Mina Roces has argued the Philippine women’s movement deployed the ‘victim narrative’ in a manner that sought
to counter the standard of the ‘ideal victim’ (2012, 63–4).
29
Previously, only customers of child prostitution could be penalized under a 1992 law (Sanchez 2008, 113–4).

224
and army filed charges of kidnapping, trafficking, and ‘illegal detention’ against GABRIELA
Southern Mindanao leader Mary Ann Sapar, as well as organizers of GABRIELA-affiliated
children’s rights groups,
30
indigenous leaders, human rights workers, and clergy (Umil 2015a).
The charges were in retaliation for marches and lobbying sessions which indigenous people from
Mindanao held in Metro Manila, as part of a campaign again the military occupation of their
schools. It was military harassment, torture, and killings that the indigenous groups, driven by
such violence to evacuate their lands, were protesting. GWP and GABRIELA leaders publicly
decried the trumped up charges, framing these as state repression against indigenous people’s
organizing.
GABRIELA’s positionality demonstrates the uneasy complexities and tensions of
opposing state violence, while also building state capacity to criminalize. Recognizing the
government will never do away with racialized, gendered, and anti-poor state violence without
being radically reconstituted, GABRIELA organizers continue to organize against militarization
and repression without expecting legislation to be a magic bullet. Such vigilance attempts to
counter ‘gender mainstreaming’ being wielded as a wedge issue, against those targeted by state
violence. Further underscoring the limits of legal reform, while the state invests in its repressive
capacity with U.S. support, both extralegal lawlessness and the law are tools used by state agents
to perpetrate violence. Still, I suggest it is vital for GABRIELA to critique ‘gender-
mainstreaming’ legislation’s focus on criminalization.

5.2 2004 Anti-Violence Against Women and Children Act
The 2004 Anti-VAWC Act (RA 9262) recognized a fuller range of intimate partner
violence as a public crime rather than private matter. It provides recourses for victims, such as

30
Salinlahi Alliance for Children’s Concerns and Children’s Rehabilitation Center.

225
protection orders; mandates services for both victims and perpetrators; and requires government
agencies to conduct awareness-raising. However, its implementation has been weak, with
budget especially lacking on the services and prevention side. Rather, women’s organizations,
including GABRIELA, have shouldered primary responsibility for educating local government
officials about the law’s existence, and ensuring enforcement. In fact, educational activities
about RA 9262 would become a central component of GABRIELA’s community-based
organizing against VAW in Metro Manila.
Women’s groups pushed for domestic violence bills, starting in 1996, long before GWP
representatives took office (De la Cruz and Domingo 2014). GABRIELA supported an early
version known as the Anti-AWIR (Abuse of Women in Intimate Relationships) bill, which did
not include men as potential victims.
31
Intending to focus specifically on addressing gendered
inequality, the final Anti-VAWC Act similarly applies only to women victims, as well as their
children (in contrast, the pre-existing Penal Code already criminalizes severe physical violence
within the family from a gender-neutral perspective). Thus, the Anti-VAWC Act protects
women who are or were in lesbian relationships – but not men in same-sex relationships.
32
It
covers violence committed by current or former intimate partners, whether in a legal or common-
law marriage, dating, or sexual relationship. Technically, the law should cover prostituted
women or rape victims filing charges for a single act of abuse (Guanzon and Calleja 2015, 2).
The forms of intimate partner violence RA 9262 recognizes closely parallel those defined
by GABRIELA: it criminalizes physical; sexual; psychological (i.e., “causing mental or
emotional anguish, public ridicule or humiliation”); and economic abuse in terms of both control

31
A contending proposal authored by Abanse! Pinay was gender neutral, in hopes of easier passage (De la Cruz and
Domingo 2014).
32
Men in same-sex relationships are also excluded from domestic abuse protections in the Family and Penal Codes
since they cannot be recognized as married. However, local GABRIELA interventions at times exceed the law.

226
and neglect (RA09262 2004, 2–5). Marital infidelity, causing someone to witness family
violence, threats to deprive women of child custody, and more,
33
are all included as forms of
psychological violence. (RA 9262’s recognition of marital infidelity should be understood in the
context of the Penal Code, which continues to define ‘adultery’ as a crime only wives but not
husbands may commit; RA 9262 thus gives women a legal recourse against infidelity, when
previously they had little.)
34
RA 9262 classified emotional and financial abuse as crimes for the
first time, and penalizes forms of stalking and harassment previously overlooked.
RA 9262 provides for protections orders that can be issued both by courts (‘temporary
protection orders’ or TPOs and ‘permanent protection orders’ or PPOs) as well as at the
barangay level (‘barangay protection orders’ or BPOs). BPOs were intended to be more
accessible for poor women who cannot afford to file a court case. Local barangay officials may
issue BPOs, good for 15 days, to order perpetrators to desist from physical violence, threats, and
optionally communication.
35
In contrast, besides the above, TPOs
36
and PPOs may additionally
order the perpetrator to leave the house where the victim lives, as well as address custody and
financial support (Guanzon and Sercado 2008, 319–321). However, as I discuss in Chapter 5,
the appropriate scope for BPOs has been contested by GABRIELA members on the ground,
especially given the inaccessibility of court proceedings for urban poor women.
As part of making intimate partner violence a public rather than private issue, concerned
citizens
37
can file for a protection order or complaint on behalf of victims (Guanzon and Sercado

33
Also included are causing the victim to “witness pornography in any form” or witness injury to pets (3).
34
Legal scholars point out prior laws privileged protecting husband’s property rights and authority (supposedly
‘adultery’ should be a crime because of potentially bastard children); while in contrast, RA 9262 focuses on
protecting emotional relations (Pangalangan and Jardeleza 2005, 21–2).
35
Violations are punishable by 30 days imprisonment (Guanzon and Sercado 2008, 321)
36
Good for 30 days.
37
Two or more concerned citizens who have ‘personal knowledge’ of the offense; or a family member, government
official, police, lawyer, counselor, or service provider, can seek a protection order on the victim’s behalf. Any
citizen can file a complaint (RA09262 2004, 13).

227
2008, 319–20; WWTSVAW 2009, 8). ‘Meddling’ in others’ family affairs was previously an
offense under the Civil Code; RA 9262 now protects interveners seeking to ensure victims’
safety, from liability as long as they do not use excessive force (Pangalangan and Jardeleza 2005,
38). This clause would become an important part of GABRIELA’s advocacy for collective
interventions against VAW; it would argue community members have a ‘legal right’ to respond.
Implementation is an uphill battle, as features of RA 9262 have been disregarded on a
widespread basis at every level, from the barangay and police to the courts, government
agencies, and social services (Guanzon and Sercado 2008; WWTSVAW 2009; Hadap 2014).
The law mandated that the state launch trainings and awareness campaigns, but in fact, women’s
organizations and NGOs were saddled with educating officials and pushing for enforcement. A
2006 survey of 77 barangays found 58 percent said their knowledge of RA 9262 came from
seminars conducted by NGOs, not government-sponsored trainings; several state officials
interviewed were unaware VAWC is a public crime (WWTSVAW 2009, 30, 22). Abusers who
are friends of local or higher authorities are regularly excused and protected by officials, police,
and the courts (e.g., 18–9, 40–1). RA 9262 explicitly prohibits mediation for intimate partner
abuse, or trying to dissuade victims from pursuing legal cases, but this occurs regularly.
While protection orders are to be issued the same day they are requested, in actuality it
takes days or even months (WWTSVAW 2009, 37). Women are required to prove physical
injuries before qualifying for a protection order, although the law allows such orders regardless
of injury, for threats and other forms of abuse. Furthermore, GABRIELA reports over half of the
legal cases it files are dismissed at the stage of preliminary investigation, even before a warrant
for arrest is issued. Judges blatantly misapply the law by refusing to recognize economic abuse;
and in some cases illegally issue protection orders against women (Guanzon and Sercado 2008,

228
366–8).
38
Even after a court order, in one case the Department of Education refused to deduct
support from a teacher’s salary (369–70).
Some legal scholars argue that despite RA 9262’s expanded definitions of crime, most
felonies under its provisions have much lighter penalties than under the Penal Code
(Pangalangan and Jardeleza 2005, 35). At the same time, others have called it the most punitive
domestic violence law in the Asia-Pacific (Guanzon and Sercado 2008, 364). The law expands
police power by allowing officers to arrest perpetrators in the act or immediately after, without a
warrant, including when violating protection orders. However, police typically do not arrive in a
timely enough manner,
39
and rarely make such arrests (e.g., WWTSVAW 2009, 35). After
arrest, police often release abusers at their own discretion due to personal ties. Only 18 percent
of official VAWC complaints in the aforementioned 2006 survey of 77 barangays resulted in a
BPO; and one officer estimated that only two to three percent of VAWC complaints he received
were followed up on by police (30, 35). Police often tell women to go to the barangay first,
though this is not legally required. For their part, women victims tend to treat BPOs as a ‘last
resort;’ not wishing to ‘send their children’s father to jail,’ they might seek a BPO only after
mediation fails. Others might wish the barangay to hold the perpetrator in custody overnight, but
not pursue a criminal case after (30–4).
Evidence suggests that as in the case of the anti-trafficking law, the state has tended to
harness VAWC-related reforms to increase its prosecution and enforcement capacity, prioritized
over prevention and services. For example, after a 1998 law mandated the establishment of rape
crisis centers in hospitals, the Department of Health created several Women’s and Children’s
Protection Units; however, it lacked its own budget to do so, and rather, each unit was

38
One judge quoted from a movie to rule that the wife should reconcile with her violent husband (364).
39
For instance, they may take several hours to arrive at the scene (WWTSVAW 35).

229
established with foreign donor assistance (WWTSVAW 2009, 26). Meanwhile, the National
Bureau of Investigation (NBI) accessed donor funds set aside for ‘gender and development’
projects to purchase equipment and improve facilities (22). Partly due to women’s
organizations’ advocacy, 98 percent of police stations have women’s desks as mandated by a
1998 police reorganization law; but in contrast, only 75 percent of barangays had VAW desks by
March 2014, as required by the 2009 Magna Carta of Women (WWTSVAW 2009, 34; CWR
2015, 23).
40
Thus, ‘gender-mainstreaming’ is a mode of state capacity-building – but even
enforcement capacity is hardly systematically applied to cases of VAW.

5.3 2009 Magna Carta of Women
GWP representatives co-sponsored the 2009 Magna Carta of Women, the Philippine
state’s application of CEDAW according to the principle that ‘women’s rights are human rights.’
The Magna Carta outlines rights to non-discrimination and gender equality in political, social,
and economic spheres. Key provisions include affirmative action in government bodies;
promoting ‘non-discriminatory’ and ‘non-derogatory’ portrayals of women in media and film;
41

as well as language on rights to housing, “decent work,” food security, and “protection and
security in situations of armed conflict and militarization” (PCW 2010, 20, 10). Going further
than CEDAW which does not explicitly mention indigenous women, the Magna Carta declares
the state “shall not force women, especially indigenous people, to abandon their lands, territories,
and means of subsistence” (a provision nevertheless widely disregarded in the military’s
incursions throughout Mindanao, the Cordilleras, and elsewhere) (PCW 2010, 10; Tugendhat and
Dictaan-Bang-oa 2013, 42). The Magna Carta reaffirmed state commitment to address VAW, as

40
Interestingly, Philippine feminists were inspired to advocate for women’s desks partly after observing these and
domestic violence shelters in the U.K. and U.S. (private communication with Carolyn Sobritchea, July 18, 2012).
41
This provision on media was originally proposed and sponsored by GWP.

230
noted above, mandating VAW desks in every barangay to assist with BPOs and documentation
(PCW 2010, 51). Meanwhile, it required recruitment and training of female police.
Despite language regarding economic rights, the Magna Carta lacks strong proposals to
actually ensure these. Regarding housing the Magna Carta largely reaffirms pre-existing laws
which have failed to carry through land reform, address the housing shortage, or provide security
of tenure; it is weak in preventing gentrification and displacement, focusing instead on women’s
input in relocation. While recognizing women’s lack of livelihood options, its implementing
rules offer no concrete plan except prioritizing supports for overseas migrant workers (PCW
2010, 20, 91–2). Finally, the Magna Carta required the state to repeal or amend laws
discriminatory to women within three years; but to date, many such laws slated for reform
remain on the books. Funds to carry out the above projects are to be taken from the state’s
mandatory five percent ‘gender and development’ budget, which while chronically underspent, is
arguably insufficient.
Maza hailed the Magna Carta as a “gateway in support of women’s legitimate concerns”
(Burgonio 2009). Yet the Magna Carta is a compromise law on numerous levels.
42
It often
reflects UN and neoliberal imperial feminist frameworks that emphasize women’s participation
in decision-making, without systematically questioning premises of the decision-making
institutions they are entering. GABRIELA has critiqued such approaches to gender equity.

6. Springboard for Organizing
Immediately after the passage of the Anti-VAWC Act, GABRIELA stressed legal
reforms alone were not sufficient for countering inequalities. A 2004 article in GABRIELA

42
Maza and other women’s leaders did not attend the Magna Carta’s signing, because the Catholic Church inserted
language not in the bill passed by Congress, regarding “ethical” reproductive health (Gamolo 2009; Burgonio 2009).

231
Women’s Update about organizing against VAW reported the legal victory – but emphasized the
latter’s limitations given victim-blaming attitudes held by police and authorities, as well as the
impunity of powerful perpetrators. The article highlighted a VAW case involving a state agent
to draw attention to failures of legal protections and the complicity of the state:
GABRIELA’s test case of the law is the case of Cathy Songco, the common-law wife of
a Philippine diplomatic envoy. She filed Anti-VAWC and rape cases against her former
partner but the court dismissed both… the wealth and power of the envoy prevailed. He
himself is a media and motel magnate and has powerful connections in the judiciary and
even in the executive branch of government. (Torres 2004, 20)

While mainstream media ignored GABRIELA’s efforts to make this case public, it later
published stories about the dismissal of charges against the perpetrator. By continually drawing
attention to the abuses perpetrated by government agents and excused, GABRIELA suggests the
necessity for different kind of state that can truly serve people’s interests, beyond legal reforms.
43

Furthermore, the same GABRIELA Women’s Update article continued to link the
incidence of VAW with political economic conditions. It argued, “with the worsening economic
crisis that the country faces today, it is expected that the number of women victims of violence
will also escalate” (Torres 2004, 21). Similarly, a 2005 piece on GWP’s legislative gains
contended these could easily be eroded by the “worsening situation of women as the country’s
economic and political crisis continues” (GWU 2005, 7). GABRIELA asserted that, although
legal protections could serve as a useful tool, lack of economic and political power were
ultimately more determinant of poor women’s experiences of VAW.
Still, GABRIELA (and other women’s movement organizations) would subsequently
utilize the passage of the Anti-VAWC Act as an opportunity to launch educational campaigns

43
Likewise, after the Magna Carta’s passage, GWP representatives decried the impunity granted Deputy National
Security Advisor Luis Chavit Singson, found to have battered his live-in partner. Maza argued this violated the
Magna Carta and RA 9262; but Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo protected Singson, issuing a statement the ‘private’ matter
had nothing to do with his Cabinet job (Gamolo 2009; Salamat 2009a).

232
about the new law, among local officials and community members. In Tondo, Muntinlupa, and
Quezon City, as elsewhere throughout the Philippines, GABRIELA organizers partnered with
barangay officials to train local government staff and continue establishing women’s desks, to
help ensure the law’s proper implementation. The National Office helped push the City of
Manila to issue a 2011 memorandum for local government units to receive trainings on RA 9262
from GABRIELA; as a result, local organizers from Tondo conducted these at various
barangays. Often, they met with resistance: Gert Libang, then a deputy secretary general of
GABRIELA, recounts how officials would leave the room when GABRIELA started talking
about violence in intimate relationships, as many had mistresses themselves or battered their
partners (2013b). At the same time, local organizers used the trainings as a springboard to form
new GABRIELA chapters.
The passage of RA 9262 contributed to a greater emphasis on legal tools in
GABRIELA’s VAWC trainings on how to respond to abuse, compared to a prior focus on
counseling (Libang 2013b).
44
Nevertheless, in Part 3, I explore how Metro Manila chapters have
in practice combined a range of collective and legal responses – at times exceeding the letter of
the law. Although officially the Anti-VAWC Act does not cover trans women or men in same-
sex relationships, a local organizer reported helping a feminine-presenting trans (bakla) victim of
domestic abuse, who was in a relationship with a man, secure government services and
protection.
45
Moreover, some organizers conceptualize a reliance on legal methods as indicating
a relative weakness of organizing; they suggest that in contrast, a community with strong

44
Previously, local organizers focused more on giving counseling to survivors and their families, than on helping
them navigate the legal process; e.g., they would strategize how to collectively approach the perpetrator, and if
desired, make plans for the victim’s safety (Libang 2013a).
45
The organizer helped the victim file a complaint at the barangay, and have a medical exam. The barangay
officials acted to jail the perpetrator; he begged to be allowed to move away instead, and did. According to the
GABRIELA member who intervened, they are now separated (Andy 2013b).

233
organized power can create its own extralegal systems. As I explore in Chapter 6, several local
organizers were able to implement an expanded form of BPO not strictly provided for by law. I
continue to consider how legal frameworks influence organizers’ ideas of the possible, alongside
collective tactics for support and transformation beyond legal mandates.
In recent years, GABRIELA has complemented GWP’s national party-list campaigning
by helping local allies run for barangay office.
46
Local officials who are GABRIELA members
have helped facilitate gender-mainstreaming policies like women’s desks, and VAWC
workshops for other officials and community members. In one Metro Manila barangay, where a
GABRIELA member was elected barangay captain in 2010, GABRIELA volunteers staff the
local ‘women’s desk’ and respond to cases of VAW, as a collective. Interestingly, this woman
barangay captain’s campaign opponents were wealthy businessmen who had married local
residents. She herself was a working-class, long-time community volunteer, born in the
neighborhood.
47
She initially joined GABRIELA because her niece was sexually assaulted by a
relative.
48
GABRIELA’s organized assistance in campaigning was crucial for her election.
As a local official, the GABRIELA-affiliated barangay captain prided herself in her
supportive and efficient responses to VAW survivors. Furthermore, she reported VAWC cases
had decreased from around ten per month in 2007, to just three per month after her election in
2010. She attributed this to her greater diligence in taking cases seriously. In one situation she
was closely familiar with, where a woman wanted her husband jailed for a week, she reported he
is no longer physically abusive. The barangay captain felt her leadership and GWP’s activities

46
LGU elections are technically nonpartisan but officials informally collaborate with various political machineries.
47
Her husband worked for public transit but was fired for union activity; she then earned vending and doing
laundry.
48
See Chapter 6; GABRIELA organizers provided the teen counseling several times a week. They filed a criminal
case against the perpetrator who was later jailed.

234
have had a deterrent effect. (At the same time, in her opinion the most important impacts of
GABRIELA locally were its awareness-raising on economic justice issues, relief work after
floods, and providing GWP service vehicles.)
I was unable to investigate whether intimate partner violence was simply driven further
underground: for instance, if women were afraid to report because of a greater chance of punitive
action. However, the barangay captain made clear their policy was to respect survivors’
decisions about the extent they wished to pursue legal cases or jail perpetrators; for example,
women might file for a BPO or receive medical assistance, but ask for the perpetrator not to be
held in temporary custody.
49
I did not follow the extent of residents’ grassroots organized
activity in this barangay, and so was unable to fully explore the relation between such organizing
and the captain’s leadership; or questions of top-down versus bottom-up responses to VAWC
within the barangay level, and how they might reinforce each other. However, such issues
deserve further attention. When discussing this situation with Libang, she stressed the crucial
questions were how many cases get handled at the community level by organized women
themselves; and what level of awareness-raising activities are held among men so they also
intervene. For her, GABRIELA’s strategy should remain geared at grassroots organized power.

7. Limitations of Criminalization
In the Philippines, racialized state violence particularly takes the form of U.S.-backed
militarization against indigenous, Moro, and poor populations. The Armed Forces of the
Philippines perpetrates grave human rights violations and killings domestically, often working

49
Thus, she herself didn’t believe women were deterred from reporting out of fear their husbands might be jailed.

235
with paramilitary groups according to counterinsurgency methods propagated by the U.S.;
50

these operations are closely connected with political repression and land-grabbing (e.g.,
Karapatan 2014a; Amnesty International 2011). The Philippine National Police (PNP),
mandated by executive order to assist with counterinsurgency, participates in military exercises.
A carceral complex of criminalization operates both through targeting certain
populations, and granting systematic impunity to others. While law enforcement is extremely
uneven, so that the prison system is not as grotesquely expanded as in the U.S., Dylan Rodriguez
notes incarceration has accelerated in the Philippines since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s
administration launched a Reagan-styled ‘war on drugs’ in 2002; racialized carceral violence
includes the PNP’s 2005 massacre of 22 Muslims held in Bagong Diwa Prison
51
(2007). A 2004
U.S. State Department report named the PNP the nation’s “worst abuser of human rights,”
although arguably, many killings by the military or paramilitaries go unreported; in 2014, PNP
personnel accounted for largest number of known suspects of political killings investigated by
the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (U.S. Department of State 2005; 2014).
Sexual violence perpetrated by armed forces and police is carried out with impunity.
Between 1995 and 2000, Amnesty International collected dozens of reports of sexual abuse of
women and girls in custody, from political prisoners to those arrested for petty theft or
prostitution; it noted the tendency of judges to dismiss these cases, including on the grounds of
the victims’ sexual immorality, if they ever made it to court in the first place (2001). In Metro
Manila, one study documented that women and girls arrested for ‘vagrancy’ or sex work are
routinely raped by police (Amnesty International 2001, 13). Meanwhile, Karapatan asserted that

50
The U.S.-funded and -trained Philippine military and police coordinate closely with U.S. armed forces regarding
‘counterinsurgency’ and ‘counterterrorism’ (e.g., Beaudette 2012; Villanueva 2015; Holden 2009; Holden 2012).
51
The prisoners were simply calling for quick and fair trials; as well as a moratorium on the government’s military
operations against Muslim sovereignty fighters in Sulu (D. Rodriguez 2007, 39)

236
the majority of reported rapes perpetrated by the armed forces under Benigno Aquino III’s
administration were against children (2015). Between 2010 and June 2014, the services
department at GABRIELA’s National Office recorded 77 cases of VAW committed by persons
in authority; the vast majority, 63 cases, were perpetrated by police and military, and did not
result in conviction (Umil 2015b).
Urban poor women live at the intersections of interpersonal gendered and state violence,
including ‘law enforcement’ violence. Incomplete snapshots of how the latter has affected
GABRIELA members’ lives crept into my interviews. The state’s apparatuses of criminalization
have added to violence in their lives. For instance, one urban poor organizer, Clear, and her
children’s already precarious economic condition drastically worsened after her husband was
imprisoned; she recounted, he was caught and forced to take responsibility for a murder that was
actually carried out by his brother. Afterwards, Clear’s five children had to resort to begging
from jeepney passengers to simply stay alive; at age 15, her eldest daughter married a much
older man to escape this hardship.
GABRIELA members’ husbands and sons faced jail and police violence for petty theft.
In one case, an interviewee reported that the woman stolen from took pity on the arrestee after he
was held in jail for a week, and did not press charges so he was released; reportedly, the women
saw his three children visit him in jail and sympathized with the economic pressures they were
under. The arrestee provided for his family by earning income as a trash scavenger. Organizers
used such incidents to draw attention to the state’s biases against the poor, and lack of policies to
provide genuine jobs. Meanwhile, especially given their lack of economic power, women were
traded as commodities in negotiations over incarceration. In Chapter 2, I detailed how one
GABRIELA organizer was coerced into marrying her employers’ son, since they paid for her

237
brother’s release on bail after he was imprisoned for petty theft.
As street vendors, urban poor women themselves suffered government crackdowns on
their livelihood operations, to ‘clean up’ the city’s image. Vendors feared confiscation of their
goods, and had to bribe police regularly. Sometimes, they lost their livelihoods and were forced
to find other means of income. Furthermore, as discussed in Chapter 1, urban poor women are
regularly injured during militarized demolitions of informal settlements.
Several of my urban poor survey respondents reported sexual abuse or assault by military
or police, as well as by teachers and authority figures. In Muntinlupa, GABRIELA organizers
assisted a child raped by a military serviceman in 2012. Throughout Metro Manila, barangay
officials and authorities are regularly implicated in child sexual abuse; in a 2007 case in my area
of fieldwork in Quezon City, a policeman relative bailed the perpetrator, a barangay official, out
of jail and he then eluded prosecution.
52

For many urban poor women, sending intimate partners to jail was a threat, but not a real
option. In Chapter 2, I explored why this is so, both due to government negligence, and because
criminalization does not address women’s limited economic options or the impact of losing a
breadwinner. As in other studies discussed in this chapter, organizers recounted that reporting
VAW to the barangay was rare, and among those who reported, securing a BPO was even rarer –
let alone pursuing a criminal case. Most simply accepted mediation in the barangay.
53

Additionally, though the Anti-VAWC Act includes provisions for services, survivors face
serious barriers accessing these; for instance, a Muntinlupa organizer reported that while police
referred survivors to receive counseling, the counselors said they must get a BPO first.
54

52
See also Chapter 6.
53
Meanwhile, given deplorable jail conditions, some VAW survivors might even bring imprisoned partners food.
54
Brenda Yasay, private communication, June 22, 2012.

238
Organizers reported women’s desks were often unresponsive, and even hostile. In
Muntinlupa, an organizer described the case of a mother who tried to report the sexual abuse of
her 13-year-old daughter by her brother-in-law, a military serviceman. The mother discovered
the girl was pregnant, and took her to the police. The social worker at the women’s desk
declined to accompany them, and police insisted on questioning the child alone, behind closed
doors. Their case was later dismissed when the perpetrator’s superior in the military sent the
court an alibi. Afterwards, the organizer reported that allegedly, the social worker gloated,
“Congratulations,” to the mother, when informing her of the dismissal. In Tondo, an organizer
described difficulties regarding a 2009 gang rape case, recalling the barangay women’s desk
insisted on questioning the child victim and her mother without GABRIELA advocates present;
the police stalled in taking action and the family lost heart in pursuing the case (Gabby 2013a).
Grassroots GABRIELA members have taken definitions of VAWC, including those
codified by law, and adapted them to their own lives. For several urban poor women,
intervening against abuse includes challenging local police. For example, Clear proudly
recounted how around 2012, her Quezon City chapter curbed a policeman’s habit of threatening
residents with his gun:
There’s a police in our area who points his gun… When [we] brought him to the
barangay… [he said] ‘Oh okay, you’re right after all, I was wrong,’ because he points his
gun right away… Thanks to GABRIELA.
55

In Tondo, Darna, an urban poor GABRIELA member, said another local organizer confronted
barangay tanods who were abusive towards children, reporting them to the barangay chairman:
Tanods… should talk to the child or go to the parents. They shouldn’t harm the child…
You shouldn’t be arrogant because you’re a tanod, right?

55
“Meron dyan sa amin banda pulis din na nanunutok rin ng baril... pag dinala mo sa baranggay... ‘ay sige tama pala
kayo mali na ako,’ kasi nanunutok siya basta basta. Ayun, salamat sa GABRIELA” (Clear 2013a).

239
She said, this tanod is abusive… please tell your tanods… isn’t there a policy those who
are drunk can’t be on duty? ... How can the children respect you, if you’re first to curse?
... If [April] wasn’t there, he might have already hit the kid.
56

Darna said in her neighborhood, complaints against tanods are not uncommon. I told her how
non-white communities in the U.S. are often afraid to involve police in responding to domestic
abuse, because of state violence.
Translator: They don’t want to involve the police because they are afraid… it’s more
violent when the police are involved.
Darna: Ahh... Kinda like in our place.
57

8. Closing
‘Gender-mainstreaming’ reforms such as the anti-trafficking and anti-VAWC acts reflect
neoliberal imperial feminist frameworks that prioritize criminalization – rather than addressing
root causes of gendered violence, such as by channeling resources to build poor women’s
economic and sociopolitical power in a broader sense. Although the laws include clauses aimed
at awareness-raising and services, this hardly begins to take on prevention (even while
implementation of those limited measures included is seriously lacking). The reforms are a
compromise, what GWP representatives were able to help pass in a largely hostile Congress, and
only a small portion of their legislative agenda.
GWP’s legacy is not only in the letter of the laws passed, but in the active leadership
party-list representatives provide in using their Congressional seats as a platform to publicly
decry gendered state and economic violence; as well as in the relation between legal tools and

56
“Tanod… Pagsabihan yung bata o kaya puntahan yung magulang. Wag nilang sasaktan yung bata… Wag mong
ipaggmalaki na tanod ka di ba?... Sabi niya, kasi itong tanod na to abuso eh… pakisabi sa mga tanod mo na… di ba
may policy na bawal mag-duty ang lasing? … paano ka gagalangin… ng bata kasi, ikaw mismo ang nangunang
magmura?... kung wala nga si [April] eh baka napalo nga yun ng ano, batuta” (Darna 2013).
57
“Ayaw na nilang ma-involve pa yung pulis kasi yung takot nilang… mas violent pa nga daw pag na-iinvolve yung
police;” “Aah –... parang sa atin” (Darna 2013).

240
on-the-ground organizing. One crucial contribution of the Anti-VAWC Act to grassroots
organizing has been its aid in legitimizing VAWC as a public issue, so that local organizers
argue they now have a legal right to intervene. They have invoked these rights when launching
awareness-raising campaigns and collective responses to abuse.
In the next chapters, I highlight how organizers’ interventions exceed the scope of the
law. Still, in most cases, the legal framework continues to serve as a reference point delineating
the course of responses in Metro Manila. On the ground, GABRIELA organizers assist with
state capacity-building, pushing local officials and police departments to implement the Anti-
VAWC Act. Some of GABRIELA’s grassroots strategies towards domestic violence transcend
shortfalls of relying on state intervention. Yet local organizers often viewed their options for
intervening in terms of collective action to help survivors access the legal recourses available.
“The law” shapes the imaginations of survivors, as well; for instance, National Office staff Obeth
Montes reported that in recent years, fewer women approach the central services department
desiring counseling, and an increasing number email simply wishing to know their legal options.
Many of the same urban poor organizers who challenged instances of law enforcement abuse,
also invoked criminalization as a threat against those perpetrating domestic abuse; they negotiate
both state violence and state neglect.
Nevertheless, as discussed in Chapter 2 and above, incarceration as a tool for women
suffering intimate partner violence has practical limitations. Flexibility in the extent to which
survivors can choose to involve the state’s repressive apparatus each step of the way can allow
for a more survivor-centered, harm reduction approach, especially in the absence of structural
remedies to the constraints on survivors’ options.
58
As I explore in Part 3, in Metro Manila

58
To the extent the Anti-VAWC Act does not include provisions such as mandatory arrest, it has some of this
survivor-centered decision-making built it.

241
urban poor neighborhoods I learned of survivors using the Anti-VAWC Act and BPOs as
leverage; in the vast majority of cases, the law has not resulted in convictions and long-term
incarceration, though perpetrators might be held temporarily in local jails. Legal recourses did
not necessarily correct the power imbalances maintaining abusive relationships; but were one
form of clout in cycles of violence, that GABRIELA organizers argued sometimes effectively
sent a message.
A full proposal for a legislative agenda geared at responding to VAWC more holistically,
in terms of prevention as well as giving survivors the material supports they need, remains absent
– and perhaps would be helpful for articulating an alternative political vision. GABRIELA
organizers strongly critique militarization and neoliberal economic reforms, but have overlapped
with carceral feminist agendas for criminalization; the impacts of the latter on urban poor,
peasant, and indigenous women demand further exploration. At the same time, GABRIELA
organizers have their sights set on meaningful social change built from grassroots organized
power. They remind that instituting the perfect law alone will not reconfigure an oligarchal,
neocolonial state that operates through both law as well as lawlessness.

242
CHAPTER 5

‘Serving the People:’

A Social Movements Approach to Interpersonal Gendered Violence

1. Opening
“For there to be a GABRIELA, we women must be ‘Gabrielas,’” Niel says.
She means ‘Gabrielas’ like Gabriela Silang – the namesake of the women’s federation
GABRIELA – a warrior heroine and revolutionary who led an uprising against the Spanish in the
late 18
th
century. Gabriela Silang’s reputation, invoked by urban poor organizers and well-
known to their communities, connotes both decolonization and defiance of gender roles.
I’m sitting with Niel on the floor of the GABRIELA women’s center in her
neighborhood. A tiny structure of new plywood and corrugated iron on the upper floors,
sandwiched between other homes in this formalized ‘informal settlement,’
1
and its dank, narrow
alleyways. She’s catching me up on the local news. Who is nursing a heartbreak because her
husband cheated, who is ‘lying low’ from organizing because of his ultimatums. Who has a new
job as a masseuse, and who is pushing her vegetable cart on foot to sell produce several
kilometers away. She tells me about GABRIELA’s meetings to help organize contractualized
workers. About the young girl who recently drowned after school, trying to pick trash floating
on the stream, to resell for recycling. To help her family, says Niel. The 10-year-old couldn’t
swim and was found hours later, trapped under a styrofoam.
Niel’s comment – about becoming ‘Gabrielas’ – sums up lifetimes of struggle and
resistance, against the constant toll of unlivable circumstances. Against domination within the

1
Historically an informal settlement, residents have rented housing in the neighborhood for decades.

243
family and without. Her words affirm the struggle to even wage a collective struggle, while
urging its necessity.
With her pointed remark, I can’t help but remember words from past conversations. Niel
had ended our marathon interview with relief, joyfully chanting, “Abante, babae! Palaban,
militante!” (‘Advance, woman! Fight, militant!’). She had then proclaimed, “Take that chant
and apply it how you will to your own life.”
The remaining chapters of this dissertation offer stories of how urban poor women are
applying that chant to their own, private lives – as they connect personal, interpersonal, and
political struggles. I recount how they are necessarily doing so not individually, but collectively.
I continue to chronicle how this resistance against interpersonal gendered violence – especially
in the forms of intimate partner and sexual abuse – both supports and is supported by
GABRIELA’s larger movement-building.
This chapter begins to delve into concrete practices local GABRIELA organizers have
used to respond to intimate partner and sexual violence at three sites in Metro Manila.
Organizers’ tactics vary in terms of how they involve the state, and I suggest such variations
partly index the strength of community-based organizing. Furthermore, I choose to highlight
social movements practices that have fostered long-term transformations surpassing possibilities
offered by relying on law enforcement or service provision alone. In this chapter and the next, I
focus on how organizers collectivize mutual support and foster community engagement.
As noted in the Introduction to this dissertation, GABRIELA’s tactics span reformist,
prefigurative, and revolutionary politics, each of which suggest distinct approaches towards the
state (and state-sanctioned violence); I continue to illustrate some contradictions and
implications arising from how GABRIELA pursues the spectrum of these political projects

244
simultaneously. Organizers regularly facilitated law enforcement and government intervention;
the threat of these often undergirded their challenges to abuse (they also connected survivors to
service agencies). Yet, despite engaging with neoliberal imperial feminist frameworks for
punitive state action, I argue organizers’ social movements approaches to VAW exceeded these,
particularly in neighborhoods where community-based organizing in response to VAW was
strong. After all, most urban poor women experiencing intimate partner abuse did not wish to
file legal cases against perpetrators or imprison them, especially for a lengthy period; organizers
adapted their strategies to these survivors’ needs and positionalities. I foreground how strategies
have been effective in part because they have transcended aspects of carceral and mere service
approaches, to nevertheless shift balances of power and offer survivors support.
Local organizers combine political attention to VAW with community-based organizing
methods. In this chapter, I begin tracing how urban poor women have operationalized principles
of empowerment and collectivity for themselves. Organizers’ adaptations of Marxist-Leninism-
Maoist ideologies and traditions, including the call to ‘serve the people,’ have fostered accessible
solidarity and what I term ‘survivor-centered’ support strategies. ‘Survivor-centered’ decision-
making enables those directly suffering interpersonal gendered violence to have a voice in, and
lead, the shape of support. Through collective aid and alternative kinships, survivors create
partially hidden spaces where it becomes possible to share the unspeakable; to coordinate
escapes and subterfuge. But also, recognizing that individually, most urban poor women cannot
just ‘vote with their feet’ and easily go shopping for a better relationship – particularly in the
context of economic and social constraints – organizers offer collective leverage in trying to
mitigate abuse and create breathing room. Collectives form the infrastructure to mobilize both
social and material resources to assist survivors. As I continue to elaborate in Chapters 6 and 7,

245
they have taken a ‘harm reduction’
2
approach to cycles of intimate partner violence, assisting
survivors even as they remain inside abusive relationships, while encouraging long-term
transformations that begin within survivors themselves, but potentially ripple out as organizers
mobilize to affect power relations.
I first present three case studies that introduce possibilities and challenges in local
organizers’ responses to VAW, while sampling an array of diverse tactics they have wielded.
Next, I give a brief overview of expanding local capacity to address VAW in the areas where I
conducted fieldwork, profiling my research sites in the process. In the second part of this
chapter, I discuss how local organizers have applied the principles of empowerment and
collectivity to address interpersonal gendered violence. I end by noting how VAWC trainings,
organizing principles, and hands-on practice combine to influence local organizers’ tactics.

2. Three Case Studies
Below, I offer three case studies of urban poor women whom GABRIELA has supported
through situations of domestic abuse, at the same time that they became local organizers. Their
stories illustrate how GABRIELA engages with VAW survivors as potential organizers; and
introduce what I characterize as local collectives’ ‘survivor-centered,’ ‘harm reduction’ practices
that support processes of transformation spanning years. Collectives of local members and
organizers assisted survivors, challenged those perpetrating abuse, and involved the larger
community against interpersonal gendered violence. I highlight a range of tactics invoking
varying degrees of state involvement; challenges exerting influence; and transformative impacts.

2
‘Harm reduction’ focuses on intermediate steps to place survivors in a better position, rather than drastic measurs
that might drive abuse further undereground. See Introduction.

246
Niel
Niel ran away from home at age eleven. As recounted in Chapter 2, in childhood she
experienced abuse from caretakers and later employers, including as a live-in domestic worker.
When her brother was imprisoned for petty theft, Niel was pressured into marrying the son of her
then-bosses, because they paid for her brother’s release. She hoped marriage would bring her
more stability; but instead, her husband was extremely violent. She attempted to separate
repeatedly, but each time her husband Jim tracked her down with brutal retaliation.
Niel joined GABRIELA in 2004, because she was curious about an organization for
women. Like others suffering intimate partner abuse, she found the supportive community vital:
Though my husband opposed me, I knew… there’s a GABRIELA that can defend us…
I’m always holding their telephone number, in case…
I became strong inside because I knew there’s an organization I can turn to… I have a
collective.
3

She continued, “GABRIELA played a large part… for me to change myself. Because… I
always just lived in fear. Without a voice.”
4
Niel soon became an adept workshop facilitator
and organizer: “I don’t tremble anymore when I teach… I learn from [the participants]. If they
learn something from me, I can say it’s because there’s interaction as part of teaching.”
5
She
recruited her neighbors and former co-workers to the organization.
With the support of her collective and fellow organizers in GABRIELA over the years,
Niel left the abusive relationship with her husband. Around 2008, she was among local
organizers who attended a VAWC training with National Office staff. During these

3
“Kahit pipigilan ako ng asawa ko, alam ko na… may GABRIELAng nakadepensa sa amin… lagi kong hawak
number ng telepono nila, in case… malakas ang loob ko kasi yung, alam ko may organisasyon akong matatakbuhan,
yung ganon. May collective ako” (Niel 2013a).
4
“Malaking parte ng GABRIELA… para baguhin ko rin ang sarili ko. Kasi … lagi lang nabubuhay sa takot. Walang
boses” (Niel 2013a).
5
“Hindi na ako nanginginig sa harapan na magturo eh… may natutunan ako sa kanila. Kung may natutunan man
sila sa akin…masasabi ko na … kasi nagkakaroon ng interaction naman yung bahagian ng pagtuturo” (Niel 2013b).

247
transformative discussions, she spoke out about her past of childhood abuse. National Office
staff followed up with one-on-one counseling sessions. Niel’s collective then continued to offer
a listening ear through painful cycles of violence with her husband. They presided over several
mediations between Niel and Jim, although these ultimately failed to stop the abuse.
Niel reached another breaking point when Jim publicly humiliated her as she tried to lead
a workshop. In 2011, she resolved to run away again, and this time, her collective interceded to
provide assistance. In an example of GABRIELA’s efforts to offer alternatives to institutional
domestic violence shelters,
6
Niel spent several months organizing in other neighborhoods before
returning to her home community. Her collective not only hid her whereabouts. Niel’s
community reacted strongly to her disappearance, and the collective interceded to defend the
separation to Jim, her in-laws, neighbors, and even their own husbands while she was away; they
countered sentiment that blamed GABRIELA for ‘breaking up families.’ They reached out to
Niel’s children, securing their support, as well.
After some months of ‘hiding,’ but expanding her own political horizons as she traveled
to different areas, Niel said she was ready to come back to her Quezon City neighborhood, only
with a separation from her husband. Her collective set up a meeting with Jim before local
barangay officials, where she more formally demanded this arrangement. The local organizers
helped pressure Jim to relunctantly accede to separate living quarters; even as divorce is illegal
under Philippine law, and legal separation elusive due to court costs.
Niel discussed the wider support she feels she has access to, because of her GABRIELA
involvement:
I was afraid before, I had no one to run to. But now… there are many offices, even
institutions…CWR [Center for Women’s Resources]
7
… the headquarters… I can also

6
See also Chapter 3.
7
A member organization of GABRIELA.

248
run to any [local chapter’s] area… I’m confident now… I’m not lost anymore…
Wherever, I can be absorbed in other chapters or areas united with us, they are our same
organization.
8

Niel and her youngest daughter, Xian, continue to be GABRIELA organizers. Their housing is
provided through the local GABRIELA chapter, so that they live in their same neighborhood, but
apart from Jim. Meanwhile, Jim himself has become active in a local men’s group, DIEGO,
which local GABRIELA organizers helped start; he has gone from opposing Niel’s involvement,
to volunteering to assist GABRIELA’s organizing. His family does not necessarily consider his
abusive behaviors fundamentally changed, and in fact Niel views his volunteerism as simply
another ploy to win her back. But the balance of power is shifted, and she controls her own
activities. At various times, Niel’s collective has avoided tasking her to handle VAWC
situations, to avoid re-traumatization. However, Niel and Xian often share their experiences
when offering support to other urban poor women facing domestic and sexual abuse.
Niel observed, “Before, my view was just, believe in God – whatever is written on your
palm, that there is fate. But that’s not the case... Change is in our hands – in our actions, if we
want to change for ourselves.”
9

Andy
Andy was among the initial families to move into the housing projects of Vitas, Tondo in
the early 2000s. By then, she had been struggling in a physically abusive relationship for over
12 years. In her teens, Andy came to Manila to work as a maid in the late 1980s; like Niel, her

8
“Dati natatakot ako wala akong matakbuhan. Pero ngayon… maraming opisina, kahit saang institutsyon… CWR…
sa headquarters… Kahit saang area puwede pa rin akong tumakbo. Yun yung kalakasan ng loob ko ngayon… hindi
na ako napapariwara… saan man ako na-absorb ng ibang chapter o area kaisa natin. Parehas lang ng organisasyon
natin” (Niel 2013b).
9
“Kaya, puro ano lang ang tingin ko, paniniwala sa Diyos, kung ano ang nakaguhit sa palad, yun yung ano ang
nasasaad. Na hindi naman… Nasa kamay natin ang pagababago, nasa paggawa natin, kung gusto nating magbago
para sa sarili” (Niel 2013a).

249
parents were landless farmers in Leyte. After marrying her husband, a pedicab driver, she
continued to earn income washing clothes, cleaning, and giving manicures; her partner was
frequently violent and refused to contribute money for their growing family. Like Niel, she tried
to run away several times.
When the informal settlement where she had lived for over a decade was demolished
under Ramos, dispossessed residents were offered a relocation in Bulacan. Andy rejected this as
too far for her children’s schooling. Later, she was among those accepted to the public housing
project of Katuparan (although she was unable to move in at first because the quarters were
unfinished and unlivable). There, she soon became involved in SAMAKANA’s organizing
against unaffordable housing costs. SAMAKANA, a member organization of GABRIELA,
10

formed a rice cooperative and community pharmacy with discounted medicines.
Andy’s situation of domestic violence became one of the first that SAMAKANA
organizers took on. A neighbor, also a SAMAKANA member in an abusive relationship, urged
her to leave her husband, Dean. Soon after, Dean tried to kill Andy. While she was working, he
had been beating their kids and taking their food money to support an addiction; when she
confronted him, they fought and he drew a knife. Andy fled to the barangay hall.
Two SAMAKANA members heard from the neighbors what happened and immediately
went to back Andy up at the barangay, and help her advocate to the officials:
They introduced themselves as SAMAKANA, as GABRIELA. ‘In this kind of case, we
are here, standing as women.’ They explained to the [barangay] chairperson. She was
able to get it right away because she’s also a woman… [She said,] ‘She’s a woman and
you still beat her up’… It felt like we had more power there.
11

10
SAMAKANA is an organization for urban poor women and co-founder of GABRIELA.
11
“Nagpapakilala sila SAMAKANA, GABRIELA kami. ‘Eh yung ganito pong kaso, nandito po kami, tumatayo
bilang kababaihan.’ Pinaliwanag nila kay Chairman… babae kaya nagegets agad ni [Chair], babae rin siya tapos
‘Babae yan binubugbog mo pa’… Mas parang may power kami doon.” (Andy 2013b)

250
Andy welcomed the support, feeling a bit isolated in her new neighborhood, where some were
urging her to reconcile. She had already registered complaints regarding domestic and child
abuse at the barangay before, and this time she wanted to separate. The Anti-VAWC Act was
recently passed, so she secured a barangay protection order (although the officials first asked if
she and her husband could instead make up). The barangay tanods accompanied her husband to
get his things, and he left for the provinces. She paid his fare. Andy continued to work as a
laundrywoman, with several paid gigs amounting to ₱400 per day.
12

In the weeks that followed, SAMAKANA organizers reached out to actively involve
Andy, inviting her to workshops and events. If she couldn’t make it, they held one-on-one
educational discussions at her house, including on VAWC and Philippine history. Andy had not
heard of the ‘cycle of abuse’ in domestic violence before. She described their support as life-
changing:
It was a big lesson to me when I attended discussions like that… If not… maybe I would
even get beaten up and die… and still nothing [would change]… That’s why I’m here
now. I became brave…
When it was so hard, I was very confused… They were here every day. They
explained… many things… on VAWC immediately…
We had a discussion immediately… on what’s happening.
That I’m not the only victim, there’s many women… It was true. Even my neighbor was
like that, but they didn’t decide to separate. Afterwards, I was thinking if I did not decide
to, our lives would be for no use. It would still be chaotic.
13

Andy added that on a practical level, “I was also thankful that I became a member. Because if
not… nobody would support me. I’d decide [to separate], then later he would wait for me and

12
An unusually high earnings rate compared to other urban poor women interviewees; more than daily minimum
wage in the NCR during the 2000s.
13
“Malaking aral na rin sa akin yun na nakapag-attend ako ng mga ganun na mga discussion kasi kung hindi…
siguro bubugbugin man ako't mamamatay… wala pa rin… Kaya't eto ako ngayon, matapang ako… Yun, yung, ang
hirap, nalilito na ko… araw-araw silang nandito. Pinapaliwanag nila sa akin na marami… ng VAWC agad…
nagdiscussion kami agad. Nag-ano ng nangyayari. Mas hindi lang pala ako ang biktima. Marami pang kababaihan.
Totoo nga naman. Kahit kapitbahay ko ganun. Pero… hindi sila nagdesisyon ng maghihiwalay. Tapos iniisip ko yun
kung hindi ako nagdedesisyon, wala ring saysay yung buhay namin. Magulo pa rin” (Andy 2013b).

251
kill me. It would be better [otherwise], right?”
14

Noting how educational discussions impacted on her, Andy says she realized,
Something should change… Women shouldn’t just be for the home… Other men… want
women to only stay at home, cook, do laundry, things like that. But it doesn’t have to be.
We need to go out so… men and women are equal. And you have to broaden
understanding for each other…
Before I just cry… Now, I don’t want to return to the past.
15

Andy named housing issues and VAW as the interrelated, “connected” (dugtong-dugtong)
reasons for her involvement in GABRIELA. In subsequent years, she became an adept and
passionate organizer in local housing struggles, as well as a ready resource in VAWC situations.
She is still often called on to jump in and deescalate domestic conflicts as they are happening.
Youth who are now GABRIELA organizers told me of her influence on them as a mentor.
In the early 2010s, Andy stepped back from serving as a full-time organizer for childcare
reasons, but continues to assist with VAWC incidents: “The view I have of myself hasn’t
changed. If someone’s in need, I’ll still help.”
16

April
April started working at age 12 to help her mother, a single parent, support her younger
siblings. She was pulled out of school after grade six, to street-vend snacks. She and her mother
migrated to Manila from the Visayas during the early 1970s, where previously April’s parents
had been landless farmers. At age 16, April ran away from her mother, who often beat her
harshly. As recounted in Chapter 2, at this time, a man four years older began to pursue April

14
“Nagpasalamat din ako nagiging member ako. Kasi kung hindi… wala ding magsusuporta sa akin.
Magdedesisyon ako, mamaya abangan ako dun, papatayin ako. Di ba mas maganda na rin yun” (Andy 2013b).
15
“Yung sa ano…na dapat pala nagbago, bale… ay dapat pala yung babae ‘di lang bahay… yung ibang lalaki, gusto
nila, ang babae sa bahay lang. Magluto, maglaba, ganun. Eh hindi pala. Kailangan din pala na lumabas tayo para...
pantay ang lalaki at babae. Tapos, yun yung kailangan malawak lang yung pag-unawa mo sa isa't isa... Dati umiiyak
lang ako… ngayon kasi, ayaw ko nang balikan yung nakaraan” (Andy 2013b).
16
“Hindi naman nagbabago yung tingin ko sa sarili ko, pag may nangangailangan tutulong pa rin ako” (Andy
2013b).

252
aggressively. At his birthday party, he sexually assaulted her. She tried to resist but was too
mortified to make noise. Afterwards, he pressured April into becoming his girlfriend. Without
resources or family support, April felt she had nowhere else to go, and eventually acquiesced to
living together. Her socioeconomic status colluded with victim-blaming and sexual assault-
excusing attitudes.
17
The man, Joel, became her husband.
Over the years, Joel subjected April to emotional abuse, financial neglect, and occasional
physical violence. They would have ten children. In the early 2000s, the family’s informal
housing along the piers was demolished. After Joel got laid-off from his job as a mover at the
ports, the family spent his severance of ₱50,000 on an apartment in Katuparan – only to find
afterwards they still owed ₱35,000 plus monthly rent.
April joined GABRIELA in 2003, because she heard about its organizing around
housing. The family was unable to afford staying in the projects, and soon sold their unit,
moving to a nearby informal settlement. Still, April became active in GABRIELA again, serving
as a volunteer organizer after 2007; she explained she felt motivated to, since
There’s really a lot of violence happening to women and children… I also had that
experience. In my family, there’s harassment…
Wherever I move, I’m still a GABRIELA. I want to continue serving… my fellow
women… with problems like that… to invite them to get out on the street and share their
problems, and also address the authorities.
18

Besides economic issues, GABRIELA’s agenda of politicizing VAWC personally resonated.
Joel reacted to April’s growing involvement with jealous rage, so that around 2004, her
collective decided to intervene. At one point, he showed up at the local GABRIELA center,

17
See Chapter 2.
18
“Marami talagang violence na nangyayari sa mga kababaihan at bata... may karanasan din akong ganon. Sa
pamilya ko kasi, may mga harrassment… kahit na lumipat ako, kahit saan, GABRIELA pa rin ako. Gusto ko ituluy-
tuloy ko yun para makapagbigay din naman ng serbisyo… sa kapwa ko mga babae… may mga ganong problema…
mayaya sila na lumabas sa kalye at mai-share yung mga problema nila at maipaabot din sa kinauukulan” (April
2013c).

253
threatening to ‘kill’ the organizers for meddling in his personal affairs. After waiting for him to
sober up, the organizers dropped by to talk with him one by one, deliberately involving a young
gay organizer, one of first males working with GABRIELA in the area; they listened to Joel’s
excuses but tried to challenge his behavior. For her part, April threatened to separate. Joel’s
emotional abuse let up temporarily, but soon reverted. This time, April kept it to herself – which
she now considers a mistake. She became seriously ill for several weeks and bedridden, trying to
make ends meet by peeling garlic (for ₱70 per day) while Joel only drank. April’s collective
made the emergency plan to visit and speak to Joel. While April says she appreciated the
solidarity, she felt the conversation had little effect. A year later, Joel found another job, but
when drunk, he continued to emotionally abuse her, opposing her GABRIELA activity and
accusing her of cheating.
One day, April’s teen daughter Mary reported her father had hugged her inappropriately
while he was drunk. When April confronted Joel, he angrily denied it and hit Mary; his relatives
took his side. Mary ran away several times, and started skipping school. Later, she found a
boyfriend and became pregnant at 16. During this difficult period, April’s collective spoke with
Mary. As is common for abuse survivors, Mary changed her mind several times, but ultimately
decided she did not want to file a legal case against her father that might result in his
imprisonment. April acknowledged she herself was concerned about others’ opinions, and being
shamed by those who might assume more had happened; she considered the difficulties of losing
a breadwinner, as well. Nevertheless, she was no longer comfortable with Joel around Mary.
April told her collective she just wanted Joel to move out of their house. They
strategized how they could pressure him. But when the collective spoke with Joel, he simply
denied the incident and refused to leave. His relatives continued to side with him and blame

254
April for supporting her daughter. The collective did what they could to improve April and her
children’s security by talking with April’s relatives and encouraging them to look out for them.
Only after these incidents, April participated in formal VAWC discussions with
GABRIELA organizers. These reinforced to her how sexual violence is a social problem and
widespread pattern, rather than isolated occurrence. She says in retrospect, “Maybe I would
have warned my child or whoever, things like that really happen even if it’s your own family.”
19

Furthermore, like other interviewees who described how VAWC discussions impacted them, she
began to reject less acknowledged forms of violence, including marital rape.
April said other GABRIELA organizers are the only ones she has confided her family
problems to; she remained relunctant to talk with other friends because of “gossip.”
20
She
explained, “If the problem really burdens me and affects my work, my kasamas [comrades] and
the organizers notice, so we discuss it… so it can be resolved.”
21
She spoke of her appreciation
for their moral support: “If you’re just by yourself… you will think, ‘I can’t handle it,’ maybe it
can lead to death… or becoming crazy and wandering places. But in a collective discussion… It
gives yourself relief, right? It lightens the problem.”
22

As an organizer, April has found supporting other women who face VAWC fulfilling.
She plays a lead role confronting child abuse in her community, by talking with perpetrators and
their families. She has also challenged police who abuse local children.
* * *

19
“Baka na, yung parang na-warningan ko na yung anak ko, o kung sinuman, na may ganyan talagang nangyayari
kahit pamilya mo pa” (April 2013c).
20
“Ichi-chismis” (April 2013c).
21
“Kapag mabigat na talaga yung problema ko at umaapekto na sa mga gawain ko, napapansin naman ng mga
kasama din na mga organizer, kaya inuupuan yun… para maresolba” (April 2013c).
22
“Kung ikaw lang mag-isa… iisipin mo, ‘hindi ko kaya ito,’ parang yung nauuwi sa magpapakamatay… yung
iba… nababaliw, kung saan-saan na nagpupupunta. Pero kung sa ganoong collective na pag-uusap… Nakakaluwag
sa sarili, di ba? Nakakagaan sa problema” (April 2013c).

255
The above case studies illustrate the potential of a social movements approach to affect
transformations beyond those available through the legal process or service provision alone.
Through coordinated direct actions, Niel’s collective successfully shifted the balance of power in
her relationship with Jim, to achieve a separation not guaranteed by the courts. Collectives
advocated for survivors at the barangay, but also interceded with families and the larger
community. They created their own supports like shelter, counseling, and political education
where none existed. Moreover, for the above survivors, GABRIELA’s organizing effected long-
term shifts in their political understandings and social roles, activating them to lead grassroots
movement-building. Collectives simultaneously sought to neutralize the opposition of abusive
partners, and at best, incorporate them as allies.
Organizers engage in ongoing contestations over how to involve the state’s coercive
clout. They have sought to treat domestic abuse as a matter worthy of public sanction, but this
does not mean they have narrowly focused on pursuing incarceration. In both Niel’s and Andy’s
cases, organizers engaged the barangay, invoking the ‘law’ and state authority as sources of
leverage. Yet interestingly, the measures they ultimately helped impose, while at times
‘punitive,’ diverged somewhat from carceral feminist solutions in terms of not involving jail:
Niel’s husband finally acquiesced to her freedom, while Andy’s left for the provinces.
Organizers draw on the law’s criminalizing power, implementing tools like protection orders, but
also deviate from carceral agendas (I continue to explore why). Additionally, organizers’
strategies potentially shift power relations and offer survivors support more broadly conceived.
Still, organizers’ attempts to harness state power to their side did not fully resolve the
conundrum of how to impose clout, when the state monopolizes such authority. April’s situation
in particular underscores challenges of her collective’s limited influence on Joel; tensions

256
between the limits of criminalization, and still urgent need to shift power. On the one hand,
April voiced the limited appeal of a legal process ending in incarceration. But unfortunately, her
collective lacked the clout to achieve her demand of safe housing free from the threat of abuse.
Her story raises unanswered questions: could they have accrued such clout through more
organized community pressure? Furthermore, material resources including housing and
adequate livelihood are crucial in undergirding successful separations: for Niel, the organization
provided housing, while Andy was fortunate to have unusually high earnings.
In this and subsequent chapters, I return to the above stories to elaborate on
GABRIELA’s strategies and impact. I continue to tease out how organizers’ approaches are
irreducible to a carceral feminist agenda, even as ‘harm reduction’ begs the necessity of
structural change to meet survivors’ needs for land and livelihood. Collective social movements
tactics are sustained in part because of the scale and vitality of the community-based organizing,
and larger movement-building, they are embedded within.

3. Variations in Strategies, Growing Local Leadership to Address VAW, and the State
Over the years, the GABRIELA chapters where I conducted fieldwork have expanded
their capacity to address local VAWC incidents. In Chapter 3, I discussed the National Office’s
role in supporting this, such as by holding VAWC trainings for local organizers through the
2000s. My research sites had varying histories and lengths of GABRIELA involvement. I
observed the duration of GABRIELA’s local organizing to be directly related to the extent local
leadership had developed collective capacity to respond to VAW. Furthermore, tactics varied
depending on the strength of grassroots organizing.
Local organizers’ tactics depended on state involvement to different degrees. Strategies

257
spanned those geared at law enforcement and encouraging state intervention; as well as those
focused on building material and social support for survivors, intervening with perpetrators
without involving the state directly, and changing community attitudes. The former group of
strategies could be characterized as a ‘reform’ politics focused on influencing the state; and the
latter, as a ‘prefigurative’ politics invested in building sources of power in parallel to, and to
some extent alternative to, the state.
23
In GABRIELA’s on-the-ground interventions, though,
reformist and prefigurative strategies are intertwined. Tactics aimed at involving the state have
influenced the course of potentially ‘prefigurative’ politics; they are often mutually reinforcing.
Since the 2004 Anti-VAWC Act’s passage, local organizers in Metro Manila have tended
to initially rely on intervention strategies geared at invoking the law and pushing the state to
enforce it – both for practical clout, and because these are tools GABRIELA’s trainings have
stressed. I argue that in areas where GABRIELA’s community organizing around VAW is
weaker and less established, organizers are often more restricted to helping survivors access law
enforcement and services (provided by state agencies or NGOs), even as they seek to foster
community engagement.
24
However, when local organizing and collective supports are strong,
GABRIELA members have exceeded the former tactics over time. While drawing on the power
of the law, organizers accrued community-based social and material leverage to support
survivors in leaving abusive relationships in the long-run; they secured remedies not provided for
by law. In this chapter and the next, I trace how their collective strategies became community
engaged in part because of GABRIELA’s survivor-centered, social movements vision.
In some cases, the collectivized support arranged by organizers offers instances of
‘prefigurative’ politics. While not completely independent of state apparatuses, collectives

23
See also Introduction.
24
For instance, see Ann’s story in Chapter 2.

258
successfully met survivors’ needs and changed power relations with less dependence on state
intervention (i.e., the state exercising its coercive force). Such social movement strategies are
important because of their potential to have a deeper community impact without activating state
violence (or bolstering the state’s capacity to reify class, race, and gender hierarchies).
Moreover, they offer more relevant avenues for serving survivors’ long-term needs, especially
when most urban poor survivors do not wish to pursue legal cases or send perpetrators to jail.
At the same time, local organizers still endeavored to wield ‘the law’ and state policy as
clout (while taking what I term a ‘survivor-centered’ approach). The influence of state policy,
which serves as a container for power dynamics where it exercises dominion, cannot simply be
wished away by those desiring other worlds. Rather, I contend any strategies with
‘prefigurative’ potential are constantly in dialectical relation to, not independent of, state power –
and its attempted monopoly on legitimate violence. In interpersonal abuse, resistance arguably
may require coercion in some form. Local organizers sought to influence the state’s coercive
power from the ground up, partly because they found their own tools of coercion against
interpersonal violence insufficient. Additionally, they demanded a state that treats VAWC as a
public concern. Still, their political visions ended neither simply at reforms, nor ‘prefigurative’
strategies bounded by current power relations. Organizers supported survivors in joining
together to struggle for larger structural change – the ‘revolutionary’ goals of remaking a
fundamentally different kind of state.
I now profile my research sites, and provide an overview of variations in growing local
capacity to respond to VAW.
25
In wake of the VAWC Act’s passage, new Metro Manila
chapters’ knowledge of the law has often come first. Organized power to engage in deeper

25
See Chapter 7 for quantitative data on differences between sites regarding VAW activity participation rates.

259
collective support practices and influence community opinion has tended to develop with time.

Quezon City
My research site in Quezon City was a large barangay whose urban poor residents
numbered in the tens of thousands. The area was at the outskirts of Metro Manila when informal
settlers first arrived from the Visayas, especially Leyte, in the 1950s. Initial families brought
extended kin in chains of migration; often subsequent migrants depended on those more
established for board and help securing livelihood. The urban poor community is geographically
arranged so that its alleyways contain dozens of families who are kin. Neighborhoods where I
conducted research often felt closely knit. Day-to-day, residents people-watch and socialize with
one another out on the streets as children play. Spectators rush to witness fights that break out,
and the tightly packed homes allow little sound privacy.
During Martial Law, student organizers from the First Quarter Storm were active in the
area. In the early 1980s, mobilizations for land tenure resulted in a massacre of local residents.
Partly due to community involvement against his dictatorship, Marcos awarded government-
owned land to some residents. Currently, some families are legal lot-owners while others rent on
parcels where tenure remains insecure; urban poor families are threatened by a road-widening
project, and plans to displace them from privately-owned plots. Most residents who earn income
do so in the informal sector: men are vendors, construction workers, or tricycle and jeepney
drivers. Mothers, when earning, usually vend, scavenge, or take in laundry.
26
Vendors are
regularly harassed by the police and fined when their goods are confiscated. Many families get
by on a combined income of ₱100 to ₱200 per day (less than US$3-5), for an average

26
The barangay’s few small factories usually do not hire local residents. Before the 2000s, some women worked in
food factories or did home-based, outsourced piecework, but this ended with deindustrialization; see Chapter 1.

260
household size of five; this does not suffice to meet daily needs.
Today, numerous GABRIELA chapters are active and coordinate closely. The barangay
as a whole is a political stronghold for Gabriela Women’s Party (GWP), which ranked first of all
party-lists here for the 2010 and 2013 national elections. GABRIELA-affiliated organizing dates
back to the early 1980s, when SAMAKANA established chapters and maintained a daycare.
However, GABRIELA’s current organizational strength and local leadership is due to a wave of
renewed activity since 2002.
27
Young urban poor residents became organizers and, together with
an external organizer from outside the community, helped recruit and train the mothers who are
currently the chapters’ backbone, officers, and stalwart leaders. Over the past decade, the area
has developed a strong local leadership of urban poor organizers who spearhead operations.
As introductory VAWC orientations were held for these new organizers since 2003, the
homegrown leadership increasingly intervened against incidents of domestic and sexual
violence. Rosa, who joined SAMAKANA as a youth during a struggle against demolition, was
one of the first to help abuse survivors avail protection orders and emergency shelter; she
attended a VAWC training in 2006. In time, mothers who used to call her to help became her
partners. Their efforts were further enhanced by VAWC trainings from the National Office after
2008. More local organizers and members initiated advocacy for survivors in the local barangay
hall. They engaged the larger community, particularly partners, relatives, and neighbors, to
defend implementation of the Anti-VAWC Act and their active assistance to survivors.
While local organizers gained skills and confidence from VAWC trainings, their response
strategies exceeded the trainings’ focus on offering counseling and legal advice. Organizers
combined tools to address VAWC with community organizing practices of collective support

27
The membership of local chapters has ranged in the thousands since this period.

261
and direct action. Rather than merely approaching service provision with an aim to ‘counter
dependency,’
28
they created forms of mutual aid to meet the needs of survivors like Niel.
29

Actively engaging in power struggles on the ground sometimes required a more proactive
approach than leaving survivors to their own limited resources. In years after the trainings, local
organizers involved community residents in collectively enforcing protection orders, and
facilitated Niel’s separation; as I feature in Chapter 6, they achieved measures beyond those
offered under the law.
Local organizers helped found groups for male allies, as well as chapters of youth groups,
which collaborate with GABRIELA at the neighborhood level and in the ND movement as a
whole.
30
Besides responding to VAWC, they have engaged in relief work, electoral politics, and
demolition struggles, providing solidarity to neighboring communities.
31

Tondo, Manila
In the government housing projects of Vitas, Tondo, and its adjacent communities,
GABRIELA has established a history of militant struggle against eviction since the early 2000s.
At projects
32
flanking the Estero de Vitas, SAMAKANA led tenant organizing which became a
community-wide mass struggle, peaking between 2008 and 2010; residents won an eviction
moratorium and rent rationalization study. Over 4,100 units involved in the campaign house at
least as many families. GABRIELA organizers based in Vitas closely coordinate with other
local organizers in surrounding neighborhoods that include informal settlements, as well as

28
E.g., as framed by some National Office staff and organizers.
29
Collectives are especially poised to help meet long-term needs of survivors who are also organizers, already
involved in their webs of activity; see Chapter 6.
30
See Chapter 6.
31
Local projects have included a community pharmacy offering discounted medicines; health services; and
fundraising to build a community lavatory.
32
The Katuparan and Permanent housing projects.

262
‘Aroma’ – a dilapidated government relocation site just across the highway, where for roughly
14,000 residents, livelihood revolves around scavenging and preparing trash for recycling. This
cluster of neighborhoods served as my second research site.
The government projects and ‘temporary’ relocation warehouses bear names that are
reminders of deferred dreams: titles such as ‘Happy Land,’ ‘Permanent,’ and ‘Katuparan’
(‘Fulfillment,’ as of a promise or hope), besides ‘Aroma.’ Residents often have already been
through multiple demolitions, evictions, and relocations. Informal settlers whose homes were
destroyed by government development projects under Cory Aquino and Ramos were given
priority to apply for socialized housing in Katuparan,
33
and later Permanent. Requirements
included proof of income and marriage. Yet many qualified families who lost their homes in the
1990s would wait ten years before they could move into still unfinished projects. In the
meantime, thousands of families were first shuttled to the Aroma and Happy Land relocations,
where large numbers continue to stay.
When families were finally able to move into Katuparan and Permanent, they often found
their units unlivable (they spent additional savings to buy latrines and doors). Moreover, their
tenure continued to be precarious due to unaffordable rent. Those evicted from Katuparan would
often set up shacks on its tenement rooftops: livelihoods in vending, transportation, or packing
revolved around the port. Since project residents were awarded housing through a government
application process, they were less likely to be kin with neighbors. However, over the years,
generations of children, grandchildren, and more have grown up and continue to reside here.
These government projects and relocation sites were among the more difficult living
environments I visited. The state has literally abandoned families here, avoiding basic repairs on

33
Its construction began in 1990.

263
increasingly dilapidated buildings. Katuparan and Permanent are surrounded by a former
landfill, polluted and brackish waters, as well as a slaughterhouse, which emit foul odors.
Staircases lack steps, replaced with makeshift bars so children treat the precarious structures as
jungle gyms (which have collapsed, causing injury). The refuse-laden ground floods regularly to
the shins due to inadequate drainage. Meanwhile, the concrete structures in Aroma are giant
warehouses with communal toilets, where residents have partitioned shacks out of scavenged
material. Aroma has no outdoor open spaces for children to play; its grounds are literally
covered in layers of decaying trash, swarming with flies and soaking in floodwater. Yet families
choose to stay at the ‘temporary’ relocation, because they cannot afford rent in Permanent and
Katuparan. And one woman reported her husband could make better earnings from scavenging
trash (e.g., ₱400 per day) than at his previous job as a salesperson at a store in Divisoria.
In recent years, GABRIELA has continued to wage and win struggles against eviction of
Katuparan’s rooftop dwellers; and against environmental hazards, like a coal dust dump beside
Aroma. Since the state now seeks to condemn the projects and again dispose of its residents,
they have organized to demand rehabilitation of buildings rather than demolition, winning
repairs in 15 tenements. In the 2013 elections, GWP ranked second in Aroma (after Buhay, a
pro-life party-list). During my fieldwork, local organizers in the projects were a mix of older
women residents originally drawn in by housing struggles as well as other issues; a younger
generation of homegrown organizers engaged through GABRIELA-affiliated youth programs;
34

and two committed organizers from other neighborhoods who had lived full-time at the projects
for years, in its rooftop GABRIELA center. Together, they led the chapters’ activities.
(Additionally, over the years, young men from GABRIELA-affiliated groups such as

34
Through Anakbayan, an ND youth organization which GABRIELA helped form local chapters of.

264
Anakbayan, focused on youth, and Progay, for gay men and baklas,
35
have been based at the
GABRIELA center and volunteered to assist its organizing.)
GABRIELA’s VAWC interventions in the projects began in the early 2000s, though its
presence in Aroma and surrounding informal settlements is newer. Organizers integrated
VAWC orientations with political education activities, and in 2006, received additional VAWC
trainings at the National Office. As in my Quezon City site, Tondo organizers’ practices of
collectively responding to VAW cases date from the mid-2000s.
Likewise, Tondo organizers have developed collective approaches to intervention that
include and exceed helping survivors avail of protection orders and legal remedies. Organizers
attempt to confront those perpetrating harm, as well as to safety plan with survivors and their
support networks, especially when survivors do not leave abusive relationships. Collectives
reinforce an ethic of survivor-centered decision-making and continued support, despite the
frustrations of cycles of violence. They followed up with survivors, especially those who were
also organizers, over the long-term.
In 2011, GABRIELA organizers from Tondo began conducting VAWC orientations for
government officials in nearby barangays,
36
taking the opportunity to establish new chapters.
These were often in somewhat more affluent, lower middle-class areas; and tended to be active
mostly around VAWC rather than other issues. Their VAW Response Teams first focused on
advocacy with barangays and helping file for protection orders.

Muntinlupa
Muntinlupa is a southward expansion of Metro Manila that rapidly urbanized in the

35
A Tagalog term for gender non-conforming, feminine-identified persons.
36
The City of Manila issued a memorandum telling barangays GABRIELA would hold trainings on the VAWC law.

265
1990s, when it became the location of several business and industrial parks. GABRIELA’s
community organizing here was relatively newer than in my other research sites. Unlike the
other areas, where neighborhood-based SAMAKANA chapters had an initial presence,
Muntinlupa was not one of SAMAKANA’s organizing regions. Rather, in the early 2000s,
GABRIELA targeted Muntinlupa for worker organizing because of its garment factories; a
Gabriela Silang Displaced Workers Center operated until 2006. Several regional-level
organizers in Muntinlupa were previously union officers or labor organizers in factories and the
retail megastore, SM. GABRIELA began to establish the Muntinlupa chapters where I
conducted fieldwork after 2007.
The chapters I focused on included long-standing informal settlements in the process of
getting regularized through the Community Mortgage Program (CMP), and neighboring stilt
communities out on Laguna lake.
37
Lake-side residents have been slated for demolition under a
1995 Laguna Lake Development Authority masterplan for medium rise condos. Additionally, I
conducted interviews in other nearby informal settlements, such as along railroad tracks where
residents experienced demolition in 2009, only to return and rebuild yards away. GABRIELA
members were often migrants from Mindanao, and less frequently Visayas, who came to Metro
Manila in the 1990s and early 2000s. They were more likely to have had college educations
compared to GABRIELA members at my other sites. Some had worked in garment, electronics
and other factories during the 2000s, but such employment became increasingly scarce, shutting
down or relocating south to Cavite and beyond. Local economies, even in CMP areas, were
extremely depressed with high unemployment. Many women participate in microcredit

37
Many lake-top families were former residents of CMP areas, displaced when they could not keep up with
payments; see Chapter 2.

266
schemes, or are recipients of government ‘conditional cash transfers.’
38

Local struggles are not as developed in Muntinlupa, but GABRIELA members have
begun organizing around demolition, housing, and health issues. In several chapters,
GABRIELA officers and organizers were previously, and continue to be, officers of their
neighborhood Homeowners Associations.
39
VAWC orientations have been integrated with
chapter formation since 2008. Many local organizers have not yet had a VAWC training on
paracounseling and the law, but some attended one held at the National Office in 2008; a few
only underwent VAWC trainings after 2010. In contrast, regional-level organizers received
training earlier, and still played a strong role leading VAWC activities.
Even so, organizers reported that since 2010, more local leaders were able to offer
survivors counseling, and over a dozen VAW Response Teams were active in local chapters,
with others continuing to be formed. The Teams tended to assist survivors with advocacy at the
barangay or securing medical check-ups. Regional-level organizers support their operations
through a central GABRIELA Muntinlupa office. Organizers approached instances of VAWC as
inroads for capacity-building; for instance, in Tunasan, GABRIELA organizers were called to
help reactivate a VAW Response Team after a child was sexually assaulted and murdered.
Greta, a regional-level organizer, observed that in Muntinlupa, members’ awareness of legal
processes has often preceded chapters’ capabilities providing counseling.
40
Chapters have grown
more knowledgeable about steps necessary for enabling legal action (e.g., that a complaint must
be filed within the day of a crime, to allow for the perpetrator’s arrest). Area-wide organizers
have begun to accompany survivors to court.

38
See Chapter 1.
39
HOAs are required by the CMP to achieve legalized tenure.
40
In contrast, historically, local organizers’ counseling activities preceded their legal advising; see Chapters 3 and 4.

267
I observed that Muntinlupa external or region-wide organizers often seemed to play more
of a leadership role, compared to local organizers, in initiating advocacy against victim-blaming
and strengthening social support for survivors in their communities.
41
(Instead, local organizers I
interviewed appeared to focus more narrowly on direct assistance to survivors.) In contrast to
Quezon City and Tondo, a minority of GABRIELA members in Muntinlupa had participated in a
VAWC orientation by the time of my fieldwork;
42
the few who had attended VAWC trainings
were more thinly stretched, with less local collective practice and support to back them up.
* * *
In all areas, organizers have tried to increase local capacity to respond to VAW, including
by training and involving urban poor women in interventions. Collectives to assist survivors,
and VAW Response Teams, have formed in new chapters. At all my sites, local GABRIELA
facilities doubled as domestic violence shelters; and several chapters experimented with
alternative sheltering in the community. Survivors are called on to support other VAW
survivors. The National Office has helped coordinate between regions regarding emergency
shelter, as survivors flee from one area to another; as the experience of Metro Manila chapters
grows, it is considering future exchanges and lesson-sharing between them.
Organizers have made barangays more aware of how to comply with the Anti-VAWC
Act. At the same time, urban poor members are actively involved in GABRIELA’s campaigns
against state violence, militarization, and political repression (such as military attacks on schools
in indigenous communities through Oplan Bayanihan in Mindanao, and the plight of women
political prisoners). Even as organizationally, GABRIELA continually seeks to direct political

41
For instance, in 2012, when a local child was sexually assaulted by a member of the military, National Office staff
held a VAWC workshop. External organizers encouraged local members to challenge gossip about the survivor and
extend support to her family; they continued to followup over subsequent months.
42
See Chapter 7 for quantitative data.

268
attention at government abuses, organizers throughout Quezon City and Tondo described
challenging police violence towards local children.

4. Empowerment and Collectivity Applied
Social movements principles underpinning local organizers’ approach to VAW have
helped enable community-based tactics beyond mere law enforcement and service provision. In
Chapter 3, I considered how empowerment and collectivity are principles characterizing
GABRIELA’s organizing methods, in general. Below, I explore how local organizers have
actualized these in on-the-ground responses to interpersonal gendered violence – recreating their
own adaptations of movement-building traditions among urban poor women. First, I trace how
organizers apply an ethic of ‘serving the people’ – a paradigm for organizing shared in the
national democratic (ND) movement
43
– towards offering VAW survivors what I call ‘survivor-
centered’ support, which takes leadership from persons harmed. Next, I consider how strategies
for care build upon existing movement practices of collectivization.

4.1 ‘Serving the People’ and Survivor-Centeredness: Taking Guidance from the Oppressed
‘Serving the people’ refers to dedicating oneself to the interests of the oppressed. It
names the daily life of organizers, as well as an ideal for how to approach the labor of
movement-building. It connotes the necessity of choosing a side in an ongoing power struggle.
And it implies ‘empowerment’ cannot merely be an individual matter, but must involve
collective struggle for societal change on a structural scale. As local organizers sought to
cultivate grassroots leadership, they drew upon practices of ‘serving the people’ circulating in the
ND movement. I argue their adaptations of the latter have reinforced ‘survivor-centered’

43
See Chapter 3 for a historical discussion of the relationship between GABRIELA and the ND movement.

269
responses to VAW; this strengthens movement-building while empowering survivors as leaders.
‘Survivor-centeredness’ typically refers to taking one’s cue for how to provide support
from the survivor’s desires, needs, and decisions. ‘Survivor-centeredness’ reflects an
understanding that violence has involved taking away the victim’s power, control, and agency.
An integral part of beginning to repair harm is thus to restore the survivor’s sense of power by
respecting her voice, as expert of her own needs. Not every action taken by those in GABRIELA
was ‘survivor-centered,’ in terms of fostering survivors’ decision-making and leadership.
44

Nevertheless, overall, GABRIELA’s organizing aspires to and is built upon survivor-centered
decisions. How does this actually look in practice, as part of organizing which balances
movement-building goals, political values, and collective needs?

Cultivating Accessibility to VAW Survivors
In organizers’ daily rounds and in activities with urban poor women, issues of domestic
and sexual abuse inevitably arose as part of communities’ social reality. GABRIELA’s political
attention to VAW, combined with local organizers’ grassroots organizing principles, poised them
to become confidantes, and attend to such abuse rather than ignore it. Organizers’ strategies
adapt to the rhythms and obligations of poor women’s lives – including their reproductive
workloads, and the frequent control or opposition of their husbands to them leaving these duties.
Furthermore, the latter dynamics have added urgency to the organization’s interventions against
domestic abuse.
Local organizers cultivate a relationship of accessibility to urban poor women that has
thoroughly shaped their responses to interpersonal gendered violence. ‘Serving the people’ is
not only a matter of taking political stances that side with the oppressed, but day-to-day praxis: a

44
I observed occasional exceptions explored in my discussion of strategies towards perpetrators; see Chapter 6.

270
process of both building relationships, and actively making choices about one’s communication,
behavior, and positionality that inform dynamics of these relationships. Organizers repeatedly
spoke to me about learning to be approachable and in particular, patient (when engaging the
victimized, or persons they sought to win over as members or allies).
45
Only as they gained
urban poor women’s trust, did the latter seek their assistance on ‘private’ experiences of VAW.
Organizers described accessibility not only in terms of adapting one’s conversation style
to match others, and seeking to deeply understand others’ attitudes or motives. They also raised
issues of class positionality and shared experience. For instance, Niel’s daughter Xian, herself
an urban poor organizer, discussed class presentation and the importance of integrating with
local material conditions, as follows:
As an organizer… we don’t want to burden those in the community…
We live by ‘simple living, simple struggle’…
If you’re somewhat posh, no one will approach you. They’ll feel estranged. If you dress
like that when you go to the community… you won’t persuade anyone ‘this is what you
want to do to in their place.’ Nothing…
But if you follow the flow, how they live, how the community looks. That’s how you can
go along. So they think of you as their family member, too.
46

When Xian spoke of trying to avoid ‘burdening’ people, she perhaps referred to how given their
minimal stipends, organizers often depend on the community’s goodwill and donations for their
sustenance. Local organizers match their day-to-day material status with communities’
conditions. Granted, politicians and philanthropists with conspicuous class markers might visit
urban poor neighborhoods and influence residents, especially along patronage lines. But as an
organizer seeking to support residents in taking oppositional stances that potentially involve risk,

45
I observed organizers maintain a practiced, humble calm to deescalate conflicts with politically hostile residents.
46
“Bilang isang organizer... Ayaw natin pahirapang yung mga nasa komunidad…Tayo ay namumuhay na ‘simpleng
pamumuhay, simpleng pakikibaka’... kung ikaw ay magsususyal-susyalan dyan, walang lalapit sa’yo. Maiilang sila.
Kung ang porma mo ay ganyan at sa community ka lang pupunta… wala kang mahihikayat para ‘ito ang gusto
mong gawin sa lugar nila.’ Wala… Pero kung ang agos ay susundan mo, paano sila mamuhay, paano ang itsura ng
komunidad. Ganun ka makikisabay. Para isipin nila na ikaw ay kapamilya din nila” (Xian 2013).

271
Xian suggested the need to cultivate respect based on a different kind of relations.
Organizers’ practices of maximizing shared positionality, to counteract urban poor
women’s shame and docility regarding their class status, paralleled their approaches regarding
gendered violence. Experiences of gendered and classed circumstances in common mattered
with regard to creating openness and accessibility. Ella, a Tondo organizer who had herself
grown up in the projects, commented that becoming a mother increased her connection to other
mothers. Other urban poor women went from ignoring her, to asking advice and in turn giving
support about their children. As I explore further in Chapter 7, organizers repeatedly suggested
how giving and receiving support could be mutually reinforcing; as well as how personal
experiences of violence increased their empathy and motivation to support others.
Day-to-day activities of many local organizers I met typically revolved around
connecting with community residents by going to them. Organizers often reach out to women
who are unable to attend meetings and events by foot, one-on-one, to update them about what
has transpired and solicit their feedback.
47
For instance, when not herself at meetings or actions,
as an organizer in Tondo, Gabby’s days were regularly spent walking around the neighborhood,
chatting with mothers about their lives and problems. She took on such a grassroots role, as well
as a lifestyle of living in the community with extremely minimal finances, despite also serving as
a regional-level officer of GABRIELA.
As I accompanied Gabby, her pace was leisurely, allowing time to sit and mingle even if
she also sought to promote upcoming activities. Gabby started conversations with women in
distress or crisis, sending a friendly greeting towards those who look embattled, asking why they
seemed sad. One afternoon, a mother confided her son had been jailed and abused by local

47
My survey results corroborated face-to-face communication was the most common way for members to be in
contact with GABRIELA, and on average, they conferred three times per week; see Chapter 7.

272
police for petty theft; Gabby gave suggestions on filing a formal complaint. She commented on
the state’s failure to provide adequate livelihood, expressing solidarity with the son. Another
day, we paid a house visit to a gender non-conforming teen who had physically assaulted the
daughter of another GABRIELA member. Gabby had already arranged for GABRIELA to cover
the girl’s medical fees,
48
since the other youth’s family could not afford to. She had also
negotiated with police for the teen to be sent a juvenile rehabilitation program rather than jail;
and now met with the family to arrange counseling with a child psychologist. She explained to
me that the teen who commited the assault, a bakla or gender non-conforming gay youth, had
previously also been abused. Gabby strategically applied a principle of non-judgement towards
marginalized persons, first considering reasons behind actions in larger structural context.
Only as organizers gain their trust, women begin to open up about domestic and sexual
violence. Ella noted the prevalence of shame: “Especially on family matters… those battered
women, they don’t admit they’re victims… They can’t even tell it to their neighbors.”
49
Gabby
remarked, “Being an organizer is like being a psychologist.” She continued, “When the mothers
tell their stories in a normal conversation, just ask what the problem is,” as a start.
50
You know
have the right approach when “you cannot stop them from talking.”
51

The repeated refrain of organizers was first to listen, listen, and listen to survivors.
52

After all, local organizers emphasized the majority of urban poor women experiencing intimate
partner violence do not want to file a legal case; so they considered listening, discussing desires,
and following up as important supports in themselves. Only after listening, organizers ask the

48
Through GWP’s medical assistance funds, discussed in Chapter 4.
49
“Lalo na yung usapin sa pamilya… yung mga battered women naman hindi naman umaamin na… sila’y biktima
eh… hindi naman nila makwento naman sa kapitbahay nila” (Ella 2013).
50
“Kung nagkukwento ang mga nanay… sa normal na usapan, tanunging mo lang kung ano ang problema” (2013c).
51
“Nagtutuloy-tuloy sila ng pagkukwento na… hindi mo sila maawat” (Gabby 2013c).
52
True to the message of the National Office training discussed in Chapter 3.

273
survivor what she or he wants to do, and take their cue from there. Such ‘counseling’ is a long-
standing organizing practice geared at survivors of violence in all forms, predating
GABRIELA’s attention to legal remedies since the 2004 Anti-VAWC Act.
Organizers emphasized the importance of avoiding judgement. Gabby explained,
Primarily, you must not be judgmental, right? … We were brought up like that, we judge
everybody. But... you should be friendly… When a person tells you their problems,
don’t quickly blurt out, ‘It’s because of this and that’… Let them share.
53

Gabby continued, “You must grasp that people aren’t always the same… So be ready for…
whatever you would encounter.”
54
She emphasized, people’s “characteristics are different, but
your approach should be the same: don’t judge.”
55
Her framework of survivor-centeredness
allowed for a diversity of possible responses by survivors, which organizers should be prepared
to react supportively towards.
Organizers were attentive to respecting confidentiality, as well. Interviewees repeatedly
told me the only persons they had shared experiences of sexual and intimate partner violence
with were one or two other GABRIELA organizers.
56
Confiding in a GABRIELA organizer
might be a survivor’s first step in reaching out; they were often be relunctant for others to know.
In Ella’s words, “Of course I also respect not to tell others, it’s enough [shared] with me.”
57
At
the same time, GABRIELA’s long-term engagement with survivors to become organizers has
helped break isolation and nurture their own motivations to share, over time.
Even alongside the above practices, organizers described constantly helping urban poor

53
“Una, hindi ka dapat nanghuhusga, di ba? ... kinalakakihan natin ‘yun e, mapanghusga tayo sa lahat e. Pero…
nand’un ‘yung friendly ka… Nagsasabi sa iyo ‘yung tao ng problema, huwag mo agad pasukan… ng kasi ganito
‘yun e, kasi ganyan ‘yan e… Hayaan mo siya na magkwento nang magkwento” (Gabby 2013c).
54
“Dapat naiintindihan mo… na hindi sa lahat ng oras pare-pareho ang mga tao… kaya… maging ready ka sa kung
ano ang… Mai-encounter mo” (Gabby 2013c).
55
“Iba-iba ang katangian, pero isa lang ‘yung approach mo: huwag kang manghuhusga” (Gabby 2013c).
56
In Chapter 7, I present survey data underscoring the centrality of GABRIELA’s support for VAW survivors.
57
“Syempre yung pagrespeto ko rin na wag nang sabihin sa iba, tama na itong sa’tin” (Ella 2013).

274
women to recognize interpersonal gendered violence, through their day-to-day conversations.
Supporting survivors meant not only non-judgement, but denaturalizing VAW and prevalent
victim-blaming attitudes. Gabby asserted, “What you’re doing when you talk with them, is
already giving a VAW orientation.”
58
She explained, “You would know a woman is a victim
when they share stories, even if they’re not aware they’re victims... Others will say they were
beaten up… but that was before.”
59
They don’t admit if they are still experiencing physical or
other forms of abuse. Similarly, Ella asserted, “Sometimes… while talking… we end up with
another mother sharing about VAWC, like she sees it as ‘natural’… That’s what we’re trying to
destroy… it’s not ‘natural.’”
60
Organizers’ interpretation of empowerment meant they were
willing to take sides against abuse, within an analysis of power relations.
61

For instance, marital rape was often an accepted condition that Gabby sought to raise
awareness about:
The culture [is].. if you got married, the husband has the power to own you…
I told them… we have our own decision… society should look [at] us equally…
Sometimes… they realize… ‘We’re already a victim? … Oh – we’re already raped by
our husband...’ You’re going to process. (2013b)

Gabby recounted some GABRIELA members even told her they were pressured into offering
their partners sexual favors – in exchange for being allowed to participate in GABRIELA. She
encouraged urban poor women to resist such treatment:
I said, ‘Oh, you’re already a victim,’ and she said, ‘Yeah’…
Everyday, I'm talking to her. Telling her that you should really resist… I think… she did
already, eh. Once, when her husband wanted [sex]… she said, ‘No, I don’t’… they're
fighting…
She said… ‘You’re not going to sleep inside the house… just outside the door!’…

58
“Ang ginagawa mo kapag kinakausap mo sila, para ka na ring nagbibigay ng VAW orientation” (Gabby 2013c).
59
“Nalalaman mong biktima ang isang babae kapag nagkukwento sila, kahit hindi nila alam na victim sila e…May
iba kasing nagkukwento na sila ay binugbog... Pero dati pa” (Gabby 2013c).
60
“Minsan… yung kwentuhan kasi, yung nagiging ending kasi yung pag-s-share ng nanay ng VAWC parang
syempre yung pagtingin pa rin na natural ‘yan, yun naman yung binabasag natin, na hindi yan ‘natural’” (Ella 2013).
61
My survey results trace impacts of these one-on-one conversations; see Chapter 7.

275
Her husband was sleeping outside till morning. And… she didn't talk to him… [for]
three days… [Afterwards] her husband said, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again’…
Ate [sister] said, ‘No, don’t tell it, just do it’…
Right now, her husband doesn’t really want Ate to come in GABRIELA anymore because
Ate… already knows how to fight him. (2013b)

As Gabby suggests, GABRIELA’s interventions in the interpersonal realm have solidified some
husbands’ opposition to women’s involvement. But as I continue to unpack, the reverse is also
at work: husbands’ resistance to their wives’ participation, manifested through jealousy and
control, is one reason addressing domestic abuse became unavoidable for GABRIELA as it
sought to engage urban poor women.
GABRIELA organizers were forced – and inspired – to respond to interpersonal violence
not only because survivors approached them, but because controlling husbands regularly prevent
members from participating in the organization. Sharon, an urban poor resident and organizer in
Muntinlupa, explained:
Many women… can’t go outside when their husbands say… stay here, do laundry, watch
the kids… tend to them... It’s good to explain [VAW] to women, because if you don’t…
they are… just there inside the house. If you invite them, they will seek permission from
their husbands first… When their husbands don’t allow them, they are stuck.
62

Some face physical violence, and are reluctant to assert themselves against their husbands’
wishes. Sharon said, “That’s why I was convinced to organize, to explain to women about
VAWC.”
63
Even as GABRIELA’s challenge to this status quo of gender relations has captured
the imaginations of urban poor women, GABRIELA has had to navigate addressing domestic
violence in order to retain its members. As April’s and others’ stories illustrate, GABRIELA’s
political agenda can threaten their husbands, at times spurring hostility and even violence.

62
“Marami… na mga kababaihan… hindi sila lumalabas kapag sabi ng asawa nila na o dito ka lang maglalaba
magbabantay ng mga bata tapos mag-asikaso sa kanila… maganda pala magpapaliwanag sa mga kababaihan kasi …
kung hindi mo… sila… hanggang doon lang sa bahay… kung niyaya mo magpaalam muna sa asawa… kapag hindi
mapapyagan ng asawa… nakatali lang doon” (Sharon 2013).
63
“Kaya nakumbinsi akong mag-organize, magpapapliwanag sa mga kababaihan, sa VAWC” (Sharon 2013).

276
Women organizers suffer much pressure to continue juggling their domestic labor and make
sure, in the words of one organizer, things are “perfect” at home (Jona 2013b).

Standing With the Oppressed, Countering Victim-Blaming
“Filipinos aren’t poor because we’re ‘lazy.’ We work so hard! And we aren’t poor just
because we didn’t study!” Isabel, an urban poor resident and GABRIELA organizer,
passionately asserted these points as she led a workshop on Philippine history with local mothers
in Quezon City. The event doubled as a service project for distributing donated school supplies
to local children. Nevertheless, Isabel sought to make the point that structural forces –
specifically the workings of imperialism, feudal inequality, and capitalism – keep Filipinos poor
despite the natural wealth of their land. Just as organizers offered other explanations for poverty
besides blaming the poor, they chose to challenge victim-blaming of VAW survivors.
Countering victim-blaming is intimately tied with GABRIELA’s stance the oppressed –
in general – have the right to resist. For instance, Shey, a local GABRIELA officer in
Muntinlupa, described how the organization changed her self-perceptions:
You’ll learn in education given by GABRIELA [you] shouldn’t be ignored. You cannot
look at yourself like you’re trash... You have the right to fight… those who are abusing
you... It’s only here in GABRIELA [I learned]...
The government won’t do that for you, right? Sometimes, the government will even tell
you… ‘Just talk… how much do you want?’… But here in GABRIELA, no… They are
really asserting you have the right to fight, you should defend yourself.
64

Shey connected this with countering victim-blaming: “Before, when someone got abused, many
think, ‘Ah, she got abused because she’s like this’
65
… she’s [at] fault… But now, no. We have

64
“Sa education ng GABRIELA doon mo malalaman na hindi pala kumbaga pwedeng baliwalaan. Hindi mo
pwedeng ilagaya ang sarili mo na basura ka na lang… you have the right to fight… those who are abusing you... dito
lang kumbaga sa GABRIELA… Ang government hindi mo naman nag ano sayo diba? Minsan sasabihin pa nga
sayo sa government… ‘just talk… how much you want?’… But here in Gabriela, no… talaga nila na, ipinagigiitan
na ikaw may karapatan ka na lumaban, ipagtanggol mo ang sarili mo” (Shey 2013).
65
“Kasi dati… pag once may naaubuso ang tingin sa karamihan, ‘ah kaya naabuso yan kasi ganito ganyan’” (2013).

277
the right to fight against [abuses].” Organizers challenge dominant ideology and ‘common
knowledge’ in part because of whom they support; and because GABRIELA takes the ‘radical’
stance urban poor women have the right not only to complain, but demand a different order.
For their part, urban poor survivors discussed shame they felt about sexual and domestic
abuse, alongside blame they felt for being poor. A survivor who was forced into sex work
shared,
[Before] I'm shy with my experiences, like I'm a rape victim… I hide it for many years…
Now… I know… there is nothing to hide… It’s not my fault… I didn’t want those
things that happened to me
66
… I want to have a new life.
Because the poverty… in our society… it’s not our fault… The government… [should]
know how to... give… each and everyone… work, a job… equal rights.
67

Economic, state, and interpersonal gendered violence were interconnected experiences in
survivors’ lives.
68
The above survivor interwove coming to a different consciousness about past
sexual abuse with her changed consciousness regarding class exploitation. GABRIELA’s
analysis of state responsibility resonated, helping her reinterpret her experiences of VAW
differently. Meanwhile, freeing herself from victim-blaming included countering blame across
these realms. In Chapter 6, I elaborate further on collectives’ concrete strategies to challenge the
victim-blaming of VAW survivors.

‘Survivor-Centered’ Decision-Making
Organizers repeatedly stressed the importance of allowing VAW survivors to guide
support strategies. Their reasons were connected to movement-building ideals of empowerment,
and pragmatics. They wished to establish relations of trust and respect, not conflict with the very
persons they sought to assist. Such ‘survivor-centered’ decision-making meant organizers

66
“Hindi ko kagustuhan yung mga the things that happened to me.”
67
“The government… [should] know how to… give… each and everyone… work, a job… pantay na karapatan.”
68
See also Chapter 2.

278
avoided ‘rescue’ operations carried out against survivors’ desires, or without the latter’s input in
planning. Furthermore, as I explore in Chapter 6, ‘survivor-centered’ decision-making helps
organizers maintain supportive connections despite draining cycles of violence in intimate
partner abuse.
Organizers explained how they applied ‘survivor-centered’ decision-making when
engaging urban poor women. In Muntinlupa, Greta shared:
We as counselors are… only there to listen… The solution to their problem is still their
decision… We can’t really push them to do something they don’t want… The decision
is entirely theirs to make… We can only give advice. But in the end, it’s really them
doing something to solve their problem, whatever that is. (2013)

Carlos was one of the first male organizers to work with GABRIELA in Tondo, while
volunteering for Pro-Gay, an allied organization for gay men, after college. He explained,
At first… when you encounter a VAWC victim you discuss it with her… You are going
to entertain her feelings, her emotions, her insights or her stories.
But at the end of the discussion you are going to ask her what’s her plan… The group
will just see to it that her plan is gonna work…
The first thing that we consider is the decision of the victim… we don’t encourage them
to take steps… not welcome to them… We just… ensure… her security. (2013b)

I return to the issue of ‘ensuring security’ and safety planning in Chapter 6, when I discuss
organizers’ ‘harm reduction’ tactics towards domestic violence.
Pragmatically, organizers found that fostering survivors’ decision-making and control
over support was necessary for maintaining their trust and communication in the long-term.
Particularly in cases of intimate partner violence, organizers stressed actions seeking to ‘rescue’
survivors against their wishes are likely to backfire. Ella asserted,
The one who should be deciding about it is still the woman… the victim... Though we
encourage [things] she should do, in the end, I still go with her [decision].
Because even if we still want to imprison [him]… you have cases where, when he’s being

279
jailed already, the woman stops them saying, ‘Don’t, Don’t!’
69

Likewise, Carlos observed, “If you encourage the victim to do things that she doesn’t agree with
– like for example… to go to the province and leave her husband… She’ll eventually come back,
right?” (2013b). He stressed the importance of survivors owning their decisions, given risks and
vagaries of securing desired outcomes:
Sometimes if you encourage her to put him in jail, file a case… You consider what other
people might think… There are ‘what if’s… What if the court finds out that there is no
evidence to prove? ...
[Organizers] always think what would happen if something’s not went right. (2013b)

He concluded, “The good thing to do is to ask her. So whatever happens after her decision, she
can’t blame us, that we forced her… If you impose your decision… it might turn out not good,
[then] she will blame you” (2013b). In part, survivor-centered decision-making was a method of
navigating both cycles of violence, and criminalization’s lack of appeal or shortcomings.
Organizers noted survivor-centered decision-making helps GABRIELA avoid blame not
only from survivors, but from the larger community as well. As organizers defended
GABRIELA’s interventions in people’s ‘private lives,’ some deflected blame from the
organization by stressing the agency of survivors. Claudine, a local GABRIELA leader in
Quezon City, recounted how Niel’s separation from her ex-husband Jim was controversial
among men in the community. Claudine received harassing texts, and constantly had to explain
GABRIELA’s positions to Niel’s in-laws, and husbands in general. Local organizers walked a
fine line between shielding GABRIELA from criticism for ‘breaking up families,’ and
potentially isolating Niel. Claudine says they argued GABRIELA was only supporting Niel’s

69
“Ang mapagpasya pa rin sa ano eh, yung babae… yung parang biktima... Bagamat nag-eencourage tayo ng
gagawin niya pero, ako dumudulo pa rin sa… saan ko, siya kasi kahit, gusto pa naman nating ipakulong eh… may
mga cases ka na ano eh, pinapakulong na, yung babae naglulupasay na ‘wag, wag!’” (Ella 2013).

280
own decision, made under unbearable circumstances.
70
Organizers challenged domestic violence
within a context of widespread stigma against ‘broken families.’ In the absence of survivors
owning their action plans, and agreeing with organizers’ steps, it would be harder for the latter to
defend intervention and challenge community opposition.
A similar pragmatics informs GABRIELA’s organizing principle in general, that those
directly affected must ultimately decide if they will struggle, and for what. Likewise, in
community-based organizing around housing and other issues, organizers expressed you cannot
simply force people to stand up, because ultimately the risks are theirs to own. Even as
organizers sought to raise consciousness, suggest options, and politicize, they recognized that
manipulating people to struggle for something they did not take ownership of would undermine
movement goals. While this places the ‘burden’ on oppressed people to drive and hopefully lead
resistance, arguably their empowerment cannot occur without such initiative. (In Chapter 6, I
continue to grapple with tensions between offering support, versus requiring survivors’ own
determination in order for collectives to throw in their weight.)
Organizers rooted survivor-centered decision-making in overall principles of organizing.
For example, Greta framed survivor-led responses to VAWC in terms of needing “to trust the
capacity of the victims to solve their problems” (2013). She continued,
That’s a principle in organizing… really having a ‘close connection with the masses’
71
…
When you apply that… it teaches you to… develop any mechanisms to address other
problems… You don’t have to ask GABRIELA what’s to be done, if you are guided by
principle. (2013)

For Greta, trusting survivors was part of aligning and maintaining close relations with those she

70
In Chapter 6, I detail Niel’s collective’s efforts in responding to community backlash. They positioned
GABRIELA as acting in the better interests of all parties, Jim included; separation was necessary or Niel might
harm herself or Jim. Secondarily, Claudine allowed GABRIELA to take credit for its education work on the anti-
VAWC law, and strengthening Niel’s resolve; but she insistently differentiated this from ‘causing’ the separation.
71
“Prinsipyo naman kasi yun ng organizing… na talagang yung mahigpit na pag-ugnay sa masa.”

281
sought to organize, rather than putting oneself above by deciding what is right for them. While
she added it “develops through practice,” GABRIELA’s formal and informal discussions as well
as mentorship reinforce the importance of coordinating closely with the oppressed – to have a
pulse on their needs, and to take guidance from their leadership.
Similar to National Office staff’s discussion of countering ‘dependency’ as a part of
empowerment, Greta linked survivor-centered decision-making to challenging feudal relations of
hierarchical obligation. She explained the importance of nurturing oppressed people’s leadership
to change their conditions, to “become accountable and responsible for decisions:”
72

You want to change the culture… that feeling of indebtedness to a person when they
solve your problem
73
… It’s in Filipino culture… your utang na loob, debt of gratitude…
for helping you change your situation…
They shouldn’t look at things like that… They should own their own action.
So the responsibility and accountability when something goes wrong or when something
is successful, it’s up to them.
74
(2013)

Greta sought to counter clientelism widely accepted in mainstream culture. She connected
attendant attitudes to systemic social injustice; utang na loob can be used to justify inequality, as
when those dependent on the more powerful accept they should be thankful towards the latter, or
are demonized for being ‘ungrateful’ if they protest exploitation. As illustration, Greta invoked
the Philippines’ lack of genuine democracy; she observed, people vote for politicians “because
they feel they owe something” to patrons, for simply giving the public what “should have been
theirs”
75
to begin with. Instead of ‘rescuing’ VAW survivors, organizers should support their
realizations of their own capacity to transform their situations.
In terms of what the above meant for her involvement in service provision, as a region-

72
“Pagiging accountable saka responsible sa desisyon.”
73
“Gusto mong baguhin na kultura… yung... utang na loob mo sa isang tao yung paglutas sa isang problema.”
74
“Hindi dapat ganun yung pagtingin... they should own their own action. Para yung responsibilidad din tsaka yung
accountability when something goes wrong or when something is successful… sila yung aani nun.”
75
“Dapat lang naman sa kanila” (Greta 2013).

282
wide organizer Greta advocated “not spoon-feeding” or “almost accompanying”
76
victims “door-
to-door.” She reflected, “When I was just starting as an organizer... I felt like it was… not
enough… [Now] I remember… that’s really the most that we can do
77
… because we don’t have
the resources… It’s the government’s responsibility.” She placed the often heartbreaking
position of witnessing incessant violence in structural context – including that of state failure.
Even if not being able to ‘fix’ survivors’ situations felt unfulfilling, in the long-term, she
emphasized trusting and fostering their own initiative would ultimately be more transformative.
Nevertheless, various organizers applied ‘countering dependency,’ or having survivors
‘take ownership’ of addressing their conditions, differently – often according to their level of
organized capacity. In contrast to Greta’s standards, other local organizers helped ‘hand-hold’
more; those who lived in communities where they organized often described going with
survivors to government offices, service organizations, and hospitals. Still, they sought to teach
more local residents how to ‘handle cases’ by bringing them along on these activities.
Organizers at all levels worked to increase the capacity of GABRIELA members to engage in
mutual support (and of communities to challenge violence). When organizers could no longer
handle the volume of cases, stressing the intiative of survivors themselves served as rubric to
rechannel energy into expanding organized capacity, instead of clientelistic service provision.
Organizers sought to affirm urban poor women’s growing confidence and sense of
capability, as part of capacity- and movement-building. Gabby recounted she was unable to
accompany the woman whose son was abused by police to file a complaint; instead, she
encouraged the mother to go herself, asking, ‘What will you do if I’m not here anymore?’ After
the mother handled the complaint, Gabby celebrated her, adding, ‘Good, whenever someone has

76
“Hindi… inii-spoonfeed mo;” “halos ihatid mo na” (Greta 2013).
77
“Yun lang talaga din yung kayang gawin” (Greta 2013).

283
that kind of problem, now I’ll send them to you!’ She observed many urban poor women don’t
consider themselves as able as GABRIELA organizers because of their limited formal education;
so she constantly reminded them some organizers also had only elementary-level education, and
learned through experience.
Organizers’ insistence on survivor-centered decision-making has guided their support
efforts through repeated cycles of violence in intimate partner abuse. Ella explained a workshop
on VAWC helped her understand, “It’s more the woman’s decision that [matters]… since VAW
is a cycle, but for it to end, the woman should take a position.”
78
As a result, Ella says the
approach she takes is, “for the woman to be stronger inside, come, let’s have EDs [educational
discussions] to deepen our [understanding] on what is possible.”
79
Survivor-centered decision-
making remained a compass for organizers despite cycles of violence, paired with encouraging
opposition to VAW, and bolstering survivors’ confidence as well as connections to others. In
Chapter 6, I explore this ‘harm reduction’ approach to cycles of abuse in detail.
GABRIELA’s survivor-centered strategies have succeeded in breaking cycles of violence
not only because of their pragmatics and proclaimed principles. Concrete structures, tools, and
processes make survivors’ input and leadership a reality, rather than merely abstract aspiration.
As I elaborate in the next section, collectives which actively include and solicit survivors’
feedback were key for implementing survivor-centeredness in practice.

4.2 Collectives: From Shame to Community
The collective strategies organizers employ to intervene against interpersonal gendered

78
“Ang mas yung pagpapasya nung babae… cycle kasi yung VAW eh, pero, pano siya mae-end is, dapat yung,
pumusisyon yung babae” (Ella 2013).
79
“Para… magkaron ng lakas ng loob yung babae, parang, sige mag-ED tayo, palalimin na natin, ano yung mga
pwedeng” (Ella 2013).

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violence are an extension of collective forms of organization and support that structure
GABRIELA’s operations generally. Not only is collectivity is an overall principle of
GABRIELA’s work; but furthermore, tight collectives, usually of five to 15 persons, are the
basic operating unit of GABRIELA and other ND movement organizations. Collectives help
establish chapters and new collectives, as chapters grow. From the local to national level,
organizers and officers, National Office staff, and even GABRIELA-affiliated NGO personnel
all belong to collectives, which tend to be geographically specific and placed-based.
Organizing practice within the ND movement is for collective members not only to work
together carrying out day-to-day operations – but to provide each other mentorship, community,
and support on the more personal level. As discussed in Chapter 3, collectives serve as
structures for handling interpersonal conflicts, facilitating romantic relationships, and addressing
abuse within the movement. I now discuss their role at the local level in creating social and
material support for VAW survivors, particularly those who already belong to collectives as
more active GABRIELA members. GABRIELA’s structures of support create alternatives to
traditional social networks and kinships.

Mutual Support
In local chapters, collectives are a source of mutual aid for all manner of difficulties.
They might offer assistance for illness, extreme financial hardship, a death in the family,
children’s educational expenses, or childcare needs. Maris, an urban poor organizer in Quezon
City, explained, “We have… collective support for our kasamas, members, officers of the
organization… If someone from the collective has a problem, the collective discusses it… and

285
supports her… in different forms.”
80
She recalled when one organizer had no one to look after
her baby, the collective helped hire another mother to take care of the child so she could continue
her political work. In another instance, Isabel described how when a member’s child died and
she could not handle the funeral expenses, organizers approached local politicians for assistance
since it was election season, and helped secure the funds.
When they get together, organizers may check-in informally about conflicts with
husbands they had the previous night, sometimes soliciting advice on how to deal with a
controlling partner. Even outside scheduled meetings, Isabel discussed how GABRIELA
members frequently talk about their relationships and offer mutual support:
There are instances it’s just the three of us talking, two of us, four – suddenly we’ll
discuss the attitudes of our husbands.
Oh, last night we had fight… we did this, that…
Of course there’s our anger, isn’t it a pain in the neck? That’s our reaction. You’d
mistake us for doing something wrong… We especially get like, resist, get rid of [that]...
That and sometimes what we do is... we’ll just befriend them…
Your husband’s attitude is like that – my husband too… I’ll befriend your husband so
he’ll open up to me, so he’ll allow his wife [to join] when there’s an activity. Like you
will just manipulate them.
81

Women provide each other solidarity in coping with control and reaching out to partners.
82

When organizers are impacted by domestic violence, ideally their collectives serve as a
support, as well. Niel’s collective and other local organizers carried out a variety of
interventions on her behalf. First, National Office staff and an external organizer offered Niel

80
“We… collective support naman yung ginagawa para dun sa mga kasama, mga members, officers… ng
organization… kung halimbawa sa collective, nagkakaroon ng problema, collective din naman siya na… usapan…
siyang sinusuportahan… Iba-iba nga lang porma ng pagsuporta” (Maris 2013b).
81
“Halimbawa, nagkakataon na nakatambay lang kami tatlo, kami dalawa, apat, biglang mag-uusap usap kami yung
mga ugali ng mga asawa, o kagabi ganyan nagtalo kami, nag-ano kami ganyan ganyan… Syempre andun yung galit
namin di ba nakakabwisit. Ganun yung mga reaksyon namin e. Akala mo naman may mga ginagawa tayong
masama… Mas lalo kaming parang, andun yung lalong paglaban, pagkawala sa ano… Yun tapos minsan ang
gagawin na lang naming… pakikisamahan na lang… asawa mo ganun ugali, asawa ko rin… papakisamahan ko
yung asawa mo para umano yung loob niya sa akin para yung asawa niya pag may activity papayagan. Parang andun
yung uuto-utuin mo na lang” (Isabel 2013).
82
See also Chapter 6.

286
individual ‘counseling.’ Then, her collective helped facilitate ‘couples counseling’ between Niel
and Jim. When these sessions failed and Niel decided to leave the relationship, the collective
arranged logistics and housing which became long-term. In fact, several collectives coordinated
Niel’s hiding: one where she was from, and others where she was sent. Finally, the collective in
Niel’s home neighborhood was essential for strengthening support in her social network and
environment after the separation. Throughout, collectives offered Niel and her daughter Xian
crucial emotional backing.
Xian spoke of her appreciation for her collective’s presence through this period:
You’re talked with continuously, given counseling… If there are serious problems or
anything, ‘No matter how busy we are… we’re here to talk and explain what to do, what
that should feel like’… You feel there’s no disregard from the kasamas.
83

Even as the collective assisted with her organizing tasks, Xian said that through her family’s
struggles, “There’s your collective’s warm acceptance… You’re not left alone… That is one of
the... medicines… There is just really this togetherness… your collective’s empathy for you.”
84

Niel described barriers she felt to reaching out: shame regarding abuse, class differences,
as well as embarrassment at burdening others by repeatedly asking for help during cycles of
violence. She recalled,
Sometimes, I’m ashamed to approach them... It’s a long discussion… embarrassing since
it’s part of your relationship… You can’t express it all… like you’re hiding within you
the real reason, but they are still there… probing – ‘You relay it to us. Don’t be ashamed.
Think of us… as… family. Whatever you’re feeling that might ruin your [reputation]’…

Before I told myself, ‘Will they even bother about me, they who have more means?’…
I had an aloofness – ‘They in my collective are better off… what do they care about my
life?’… But that was wrong… They’re not like that… They’re really my support at all

83
“Hindi ka tinitigilan ng pagkausap, counseling… Kung may mabigat na problema o anuman e di ‘kahit gaano pa
kabusy ang ating mga gawain… andito kami para kausapin at ipaliwanag yung mga dapat gawin, ano yung mga
dapat maramdaman’… di ka… ramdam naman na walang pag-iwan ang mga kasama” (Xian 2013).
84
“Andun yung mainit na pagtanggap ng collective mo… hindi ka iniwanan…. Yun yung isa sa mga… gamot eh na
andun lang talaga yung sama-samang... pagdamay sa’yo ng collective mo” (Xian 2013).

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times… They even [discuss], ‘Oh, where can [Niel] stay, here? How about with you?’
85

Despite the difficulties of sharing, she ultimately found her collective “easy to open up with...
You can really depend on them, you can trust.”
86
She called their responsiveness a strength: “At
times I call them, they’re able to respond immediately.”
87
Niel credited their support with her
continued involvement in GABRIELA: “Maybe if they had let me be… probably I would no
longer be in the organization. Since… I had many situations happening… full of problems.”
88

For her part, Claudine, a member of Niel’s collective, emphasized the importance of open
communication about ‘personal’ problems. She encouraged collective members to
Just tell their problem… That’s where it starts… [so] we’ll know what we can advise,
or… do. It’s bad when organizers… don’t tell their collective members.
How can they be advised if they just keep it to themselves? …
Tell your collective so they can help, whatever the problem is.
89

Besides asking members to speak up, Claudine described the importance of the collective’s
active solidarity, as well. For instance, she urged organizers to have patience in tirelessly
explaining and advocating for GABRIELA’s support of survivors, to the rest of the community.
When Niel’s relationship with Jim reached another crisis point, her collective helped plan
out several options. One was for Niel to actually disclose her past of sexual abuse to Jim, in
hopes he would be sympathetic. Painfully, he was not; worse, he used this knowledge to further

85
“Minsan, nahihiya na kong lumapit eh… mahabang usapin… nakakahiya kasi parte ng pagsasama niyo yan…
hindi maisambulat lahat… parang itinatago mo sa sarili mo, yung pinakatotoong dahilan, pero nandun pa rin sila,
para dun sa pag uungkat na ‘irelay mo sa amin, wag kang mahihiya, ituring mo kaming… kapamilya mo, kung ano
man yun pakiramdam mo na baka siraan ka… Sabi ko nga sa isip ko non ‘papansinin ba ko niyan eh may mga may
kaya yan?’… may ganun pa kong asiwa eh. ‘May mga kaya naman yang mga kolektib ko… anong pakialam nila sa
buhay ko?’… pero mali yun … hindi naman ganun ang klase ng ano… kaagapay ko talaga sa lahat ng oras… may
ano nga sila na, ‘o, saan puwede si [Niel], sa ganito? Baka puwede sa inyo?’” (Niel 2013a).
86
“Maluwag yung mai-maiopen… Na masasandalan mo talaga siya, mapagkakatiwalaan mo” (Niel 2013a).
87
“Sa panahon na tinatawagan ko sila nakaresponde naman sila kaagad” (Niel 2013a).
88
“Siguro kung hinayaan ako… sa malamang wala na ako sa organisasyon. Kasi… marami akong pangyayaring…
puro problema eh” (Niel 2013a).
89
“Basta mag-sabi lang sila ng problema nila... do’n magsisimula ‘yun na … malalaman natin ‘yung pwede nating i-
advice o… gawin. Kasi panget ‘yung sa ibang organizer… hindi nila sinasabi sa ka-collective nila. Paano sila
mabibigyan ng advice kung sinasarili lang nila?… magsabi ka do’n sa collective para matulungan ano man ‘yang
problema na ‘yan” (Claudine 2013).

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degrade and publicly humiliate her. Desperate, Niel planned to run away to the provinces
herself, feeling she had become a hindrance to her collective, when they interceded to help make
arrangements. Niel says, their revised plan was, “You won’t go away to leave the organization.
You’ll go so when you return, your separation will be made ready, so he can’t enslave you
again.”
90
While she was in hiding, the collective would assist with laying groundwork for the
couple’s separation in their community’s eyes, and GABRIELA would be able to retain Niel.
Although Niel’s collective helped arrange the logistics of her escape, they hid their
participation from the rest of the community. As she made her exit, some collective members
accompanied her while others covered for her to Jim, who was literally trying to chase her down.
They were her “partners in crime,”
91
in Claudine’s words:
She didn’t say farewell to the organization, to us… ‘Go head, stow away. We’ll pretend
we don’t know where you are, but we’ll put you in an arranged place… so at least, we
have peace of mind’… She agreed… [other organizers] hid her.
92

They would continue to keep the extent of their role secret, both for Niel’s protection and
GABRIELA’s. Claudine said, “That’s what we did for [Niel]… because she wanted to organize
still and movement-build.”
93

The scale and reach of GABRIELA’s organizing facilitated Niel’s mobility, amplifying
local support efforts. While in hiding, she not only traveled to several other GABRIELA
chapters, but also stayed with a peasant organization
94
that allies with GABRIELA in the ND
movement. This group had already housed several urban poor women on exchanges to develop

90
“Hindi ka lalayas dahil aalis ka sa organisasyon, lalayas ka para sa pagbabalik mo, maayos na yung paghihiwalay
niyo, hindi na para alipinin ka uli” (Niel 2013a).
91
“Kinuntsaba namin” (Claudine 2013).
92
“Hindi daw siya magpapaalam sa org, sa amin… ‘Oh sige, lumayas ka. Kunwari hindi namin alam kung nasa’n ka
pero ilalagay ka namin sa maayos na lugar na alam namin para at least, mapayapa ang isip namin’… pumayag
naman siya… nagtago pa nga sila ni ate” (Claudine 2013).
93
“Yun ‘yung tulong na ginawa namin kay [Niel]… dahil gusto niyang mag-organize pa rin at kumilos” (2013).
94
KAGIMONGAN, which belongs to the peasant federation KMP (Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas).

289
their political experience and leadership; moreover, they had prior experience supporting
survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Its organizers were informed about Niel’s
circumstances and glad to help (Juan 2013).
Local organizers have arranged Niel’s and her daughter Xian’s new housing since the
separation. They were forced to move as Niel’s ex-husband Jim refused to be the one to vacate
their home (despite Niel requesting this during their negotiations at the barangay hall). “She has
no [other] house,” Maris noted. Maris pointed out shelter is likewise collectivized for other
organizers, too: “other organizers who live far [from their area of organizing]... stay with the
collectives in that area… near where they organize.”
95
Bills for utilities at Niel’s housing are
simply funded by donations from members. The collective divides fundraising responsibilities;
some months, they are not able to meet payments and the electricity is cut. Meanwhile, Niel’s
allowance from the National Office as a full-time organizer, previously only ₱1000 per month,
was increased to ₱2000 after her separation since she is now a single parent.
The logistics of material support for organizers facing interpersonal gendered violence
adapt upon those for organizers’ needs in general. For instance, at the height of the housing
struggle in Tondo, when the campaign became community-wide, full-time organizers were fed
and housed by ‘the community.’ Carlos recalled, “Residents give their support by giving us rice,
canned goods… Full-timers can come and eat and sleep here for free” (2013a). Ella added,
“Even if you went to the houses of the mothers, they would feed you… it was really that
welcoming.”
96
One external organizer in Quezon City observed that ideally, “What we want to
establish… is let the people provide, let the people’s government provide [for] your necessity. In

95
“Wala siyang bahay… yung ibang organizer kung malayo dito na uuwian nila… ka-kolektib dun sa erya at dun
sila nag-iistay. Mas malapit doon sa eryang pinag-oorganisahan” (Maris 2013b).
96
“Even kung pumunta ka sa bahay ng mga nanay, pakakainin ka, kasi gan’un ka talaga ka-welcome” (Ella 2013).

290
return, [you’re] serving the people. That’s the culture we really want to get;” he clarified, “it
doesn’t mean that Ate [Niel] should be a perfect organizer.”
97

Despite their low capacity for financial support, local chapters try to pool members’
resources to directly assist VAW survivors, including those in need who are not active members.
In Quezon City, Claudine recalled local organizers helped pay for the transportation of a
domestic violence survivor who wished to flee to the provinces; the funds came from GWP’s
dwindling pork-barrel allocation.
98
But unfortunately, they are not able to provide financial
assistance to everyone who wishes to separate. In Muntinlupa, members donate their own
resources to help survivors with food and transportation expenses. Similarly, Tondo organizers
attempt to assist with food and transport, but as Angela, a former officer, explained, “What we
[give] more is really [moral] support, since… we have nothing much financially.”
99

At the national level, GWP has used its limited resources for medical assistance towards
check-ups and medicines for VAWC survivors.
100
GABRIELA has directed some of its funds to
support high profile cases, though its budget is extremely tight. In a case involving a military
gang rape, the survivor became mentally unstable and was in need of medicines; her family lost
their housing due to the expenses, as they were only vendors and farmers. GABRIELA helped to
arrange emergency housing and provide medicines (Katherine 2013a).

Alternative ‘Kinship’
For urban poor women, support systems in GABRIELA become an important source of
alternative kinships.
101
I suggest these webs have potential to shift community dynamics, given

97
Interview on May 22, 2013.
98
See Chapter 4 regarding pork-barrel funds.
99
“Ang mas…nagiging ano naming yung support talaga. Kasi... financially, wala masyado eh” (Angela 2013a).
100
See also Chapter 4.
101
See Chapter 7; my survey data illustrates how GABRIELA participation has bolstered mutual support networks.

291
how they contrast with traditional social networks in urban poor communities that help entrench
patriarchal and class inequalities. Community life in my Quezon City site, where many residents
were blood relations or migrants from common regions, was relatively intermeshed and built
upon mutual support. Yet here and other urban poor neighborhoods, one must have a baseline
standing, in order to be able to transact. Mutual aid can fall along clientelistic patterns. Ties to
those more well-off are courted, perhaps in hopes one may receive generosity in return; in
contrast, those who do not have means to return favors are also less able to seek assistance. I
noticed single mothers I spoke with, who were among the most economically marginal in urban
poor communities, were at risk of being isolated from such networks of support.
102

When external GABRIELA organizers first recruited local Quezon City residents to be
organizers, they chose women not merely because they were from traditionally more influential
or economically prominent families. Most importantly, organizers reported they sought leaders,
regardless of low formal status, with a heart for serving others in the community. Early on,
GABRIELA connected with urban poor women like Niel, an outsider to neighborhood social
networks in terms of blood relations; and Clear, a single mother. Other local officers speculated
their family’s reputation for helping others was a factor leading GABRIELA to identify them as
potential recruits. Likewise, in Tondo and Muntinlupa, initial recruits are often those with a
track record of community service, including in existing organizations like HOAs; as well as
those known to care about the larger community unselfishly.
Organizers likened GABRIELA to an alternative family or kinship network. Isabel
posited,
What’s great in GABRIELA, the association is really like a family, so… it’s like we’re
trained... we should treat each other as siblings... Of course, in a family we should help
with problems…

102
E.g., see account of Ann’s experiences in Chapter 2.

292
When a… kasama has a problem… the care is there… We’re automatically... she’s a
member of GABRIELA, we need to help… Although it’s your neighbor, although
you’re not her kin… your willingness to help her is there.
103

While in practice, GABRIELA members might experience different challenges accessing
support from others in the group, organizers drew on the concept of family as a metaphor for
how they sought to prioritize their relationships in GABRIELA.
Furthermore, GABRIELA offered support networks to women who could not rely on kin,
and participants stressed how this was essential for survivors when other networks failed.
104

Isabel observed, Niel “really asked for GABRIELA’s help, and really no one else will help her
except GABRIELA, since she has no relatives here.”
105
Niel agreed, saying when her collective
helped plan her hiding, “They rescued me… because I had no others to run to here. I had no
relatives, after all. It was really more my collective.”
106
Building upon this, Xian envisioned
GABRIELA as an alternative to, and force to transform, abusive families: “Although you say
even your relatives or neighbors can’t help… there’s the organization to advise them: this is how
we should take action, so no other family copies an event or situation” of abuse.
107

4.3 Theory, Practice, Principles: Community Organizing Meets VAWC Training
During the 2000s, workshop modules incorporating VAWC discussions in GABRIELA’s
general orientations placed the issue on urban poor members’ radars. Before many local

103
“Ang maganda kasi sa GABRIELA, ang samahan talaga parang pamilya kaya… Parang sinasanay tayo… na
dapat magturingan tayo na magkakapatid... Syempre sa isang pamilya dapat nagtutulungan sa mga problema… pag
may problema yung… isang kasama… Andyan yung malasakit... kusa na lang rin namin naano. Member siya ng
GABRIELA kailangan tulungan natin… kahit na kapitbahay mo, kahit parang di mo siya kamag-anak…andun yung
willing mo na tulungan siya” (Isabel 2013).
104
See also survey results discussed in Chapter 7.
105
“Hiningi talaga niya ang tulong ng GABRIELA at wala talagang ibang tutulong sa kaniya kundi ang GABRIELA
kasi wala siyang kamag-anak dito” (Isabel 2013).
106
“Sinagip ako nila e… wala naman kasi akong ibang matakbuhan dito e, wala naman akong ibang kamag-anak,
kung tutuusin. Mas mga collective ko talaga yun” (Niel 2013a).
107
“Kahit na sabihin mo na ultimo kamag-anak o kapitbahay, di ka magawang tulungan… andun naman ang org
para turuan sila. Na ganito ang dapat nating gawing aksyon. Para wala nang ibang pamilya pa ang magaya sa
ganyang pangyayari o sitwasyon” (Xian 2013).

293
organizers could attend formal trainings on how to support survivors, members increasingly
approached them about interpersonal gendered violence. Organizers struggled to respond with
the tools they knew, applying overall principles of organizing to VAWC cases. Such
engagement preceded legal and other trainings on handling VAWC, arising organically through
collective mentorship and organizing traditions. Still, GABRIELA’s systematized and wide-
ranging political education on social issues, organizing, and VAWC supported their efforts.
108

Local organizers emphasized they were informed by both political analysis and concrete
experience. Ella described becoming politicized through “practice and theory.” She explained,
“aside from our actual feeling… the actual hardship, among family, the people you meet, talk
to,” educational discussions and engaging in organizing helped solidify her analysis.
109
Shey, a
local officer and resident in Muntinlupa, noted a dialectic of exchange between organizers, who
bring knowledge from trainings, and grassroots residents who share their desires and conditions.
She emphasized, “You can get lessons from trainings... But you’ll learn more if you go down to
the [organizing] areas. Those areas that really need your help… Talking [to] people who’re
living like me… with the ‘squatters;’”
110
while organizers pass on “what you learn in trainings,”
they get “ideas from the areas we visit” about “what will happen, what’s our situation.”
111

Shey’s valorization of such exchange echoes the Maoist slogan and principle, ‘from the people,
to the people,’ shared at organizers trainings; the phrase encourages rooting knowledge in
interchange with low-income people at the grassroots, to better serve the latter.
Before organizing in Tondo, Gabby served as administrative staff at the National Office,

108
See Chapter 7 for survey data on the impact of VAWC workshops.
109
“Bukod sa yung aktwal naming nararanasan… yung aktwal na… yung hirap, na sa pamilya, sa mga nakikita mo,
kinakausap” (Ella 2013).
110
“Sa training naman, okay nakakuha ka ng lesson. Pero mas more ang lesson doon sa bumababa ka sa area. Na
yung area na… nangangailangan talaga ng tulong mo… pakikipag-usap… through the people who’re living like
me… sa mga squatters” (Shey 2013).
111
“Idea doon sa mga pinupuntahan naming mga areas;” “anong mangyaya, anong katayuan natin” (Shey 2013).

294
where she attended VAWC trainings and learned from the services department how they handled
cases.
112
However, she noted, “It’s different when you’ve experienced [organizing]. That’s
where, especially, it develops – your understanding, your principles… how to look at women…
When you see victims, you know VAW won’t end if you don’t fight.”
113
Still, she found
knowledge from trainings helpful: “It’s hard to change the system… when you lack experience,
and… you only do it as you like. You shouldn’t do it for yourself, but for all.”
114
She returned
to the need for political vision, larger movement-building, and an ethic of serving the oppressed.
Trainings together with concrete experience helped increase some organizers’ confidence
to support survivors. In Muntinlupa, Greta recalled, “Before… whenever they talk about
sensitive things, I was the one who usually… backs out
115
… I wasn’t comfortable… I thought
the victims should be talking… to a psychologist or to people who have more experience in
counseling;” she came to realize that when survivors wanted to talk, “then let them” (2013).
GABRIELA’s trainings both equipped Greta with correct legal knowledge to share, and helped
her realize giving ‘counseling’ need not be professionalized. In time, she added, “Experiences
taught what to do.”
Organizers described mentorship on movement-building as a collective process rooted in
everyday organizing practice. Gabby explained she learned how to be approachable through
experience, observation, and feedback from others in her collective. She says, “Your attitude
will change… because you’re organizing
116
… How can you organize someone… if you’re not

112
Gabby’s parents are vendors, and she was one of her only siblings to complete college; despite family pressure to
find a job, she chose to volunteer with GABRIELA. As an organizer, she has no income except donations.
113
“Pero iba kapag na-experience mo na. D’un mo siya lalong napapaunlad - ‘yung pag-unawa mo, ‘yung prinsipyo
mo, d’un sa kung paano tinitingnan ang kababaihan e… habang may nakikita kang mga biktima, alam mong hindi
matatapos ang VAW kapag hindi ka lalaban” (Gabby 2013c).
114
“Mahirap baguhin ang sistema… Nang kulang ka sa karanasan, at… ginagawa mo lang ito dahil gusto mo lang.
Dapat ginagawa mo ito hindi para sa sarili mo kundi para sa lahat” (Gabby 2013c).
115
“Umaatras” (Greta 2013).
116
“Mababago mo ‘yung gan’ung attitude mo kasi nag-oorganisa ka e” (Gabby 2013c).

295
approachable?” She continued:
Through experience you learn how to behave… and based on watching other kasamas.
You watch… how they talk to the mothers… so others will really talk to you…
At first I appeared standoffish, right? … I didn’t grow up knowing how to interact with
people…
You really observe… their tone, language, choice of words... You’ll see they really don’t
judge people… they are patient. Even if that person is angry… [chuckles] there’s always
a smile.
117

As part of supporting their training and leadership development, organizers frequently described
working in pairs; new organizers partnered with those more experienced. Originally an outsider
to Tondo, Gabby recounted constant and often swift feedback:
Everyday, when some of the kasamas notice you did something wrong, they’ll tell you
immediately… With your friends, just to be close to you, they won’t really tell you your
mistakes much. But… here, you have to change… You’ll see from other kasamas…
when they share their experiences, also for example, when you do something wrong.
118

In the next chapter, I continue to explore how collective mentorship practices and action have
been essential in promoting survivor-centered tactics, countering victim-blaming, and leveraging
social tranformations.

5. Closing
After growing up witnessing her father’s abuse of her mother, and experiencing his
beatings herself, Xian spoke of her elation at their separation. She movingly described
GABRIELA’s impact on Niel and their family, over time:

117
“Sa experience mo… natutunan e, kung paano ka makikitungo e. Tapos base din sa mga nakikita mo sa ilang…
mga kasama, nakikita mo kung … paano nila kinakausap ang mga nanay…para makausap ka din talaga ng iba…
Noong una naiilang sila sa akin, di ba? …. hindi ko talaga kinalakihan ang… sa mga tao, makipag-usap…
tinitingnan mo din talaga… kung… paano ba ‘yung tono, paano ‘yung pananalita, ‘yung mga term nila... makikita
mo na hindi talaga sila nanghuhusga ng mga tao… andun ‘yung pasensiya e. Kahit… galit ‘yung tao… [chuckles]
laging may ngiti” (Gabby 2013c).
118
“Every day… ‘pag may napansin sa’yo ‘yung mga kasama na may mali kang ginawa, sasabihin naman nila agad
‘yun… N’ung may mga kaibigan ka, para lang maging close sa’yo, parang hindi masyadong sasabihin kung ano
‘yung mali mo. Pero… kung dito, kailangan mong baguhin… nakikita mo sa ibang mga kasama… ‘pag nagshi-share
sila ng experience, tapos kapag halimbawa may mali kang nagawa” (Gabby 2013c).

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We lived for many years like… he’s the ‘god’… We had no rights, no minds… That was
my feeling since everything is dictated…

For me, yes we were organized – but why was it, I still felt like that? What I’m seeing is
still like that… It reached the point my mother was already organized but… she’s still
submissive… As long as she could still ‘understand’ and feel for my father, she would.

I’m at the point I’m explaining to her… we should not let him continue his ways forever.
We’re GABRIELA already... We know our rights now, with all the trainings we took…

When they separated... I was so happy for her… She felt so much, that feeling she
deserves, her freedom. She’s not afraid to go home late… to eat whenever she feels
like… She isn’t afraid anymore when other people get near her (since, he’s very
jealous)… She can move as she wants… I can move as I like…

It was such a big leap when my consciousness was awakened, and my mother’s, and my
sister’s. GABRIELA helped so greatly there, on… the truth. What we should
experience… in family matters. We’re just so thankful we’ve achieved this truth…
Because I thought it would stay like that forever.
119

Slowly, their involvement in GABRIELA changed them and offered the support they needed to
change their circumstances; what was originally unthinkable to Xian became possible. They
now feel a sense of freedom they could not yet experience when they first joined GABRIELA,
but Niel had still not separated from her abusive partner.
This chapter has recounted how building a social movement requires and entails
constantly creating new forms of collective support. Local organizers coalesced support systems
against domestic abuse by taking leadership from survivors’ desires, and actively maintaining

119
“Nabuhay kami ng ilang taon na ayun parang… siya ang diyos-diyosan... Wala kaming karapatan, mga wala
kaming utak…. ganun yung pakiramdam ko e, kasi lahat ng bagay ay dinidiktahan… Ako, oo nga naorganize tayo
pero bakit parang ganun pa din yung nararamdaman? Ganun pa din yung nakikita… Andun sa punto na naorganize
na yung nanay ko pero nandun pa din… pagkimi niya na parang hangga’t kaya niya pang intindihin at unawain yung
tatay ko, gagawin niya. Ayun andun ako sa punto na nagpapaliwanang ako sa kaniya… hindi natin dapat hayaan na
ganun lagi yung pamamaraan niya. GABRIELA na tayo… Alam na natin ang ating karapatan, sa dami ng training
na nakuha… Nung time na naghiwalay... sobrang happy ako para sa kaniya na... sobrang ramdam niya kung ano ang
dapat na maramdaman niya, na kalayaan niya, hindi na siya natatakot na umuwi ng gabi… na ano oras niya gusto
kumain… Hindi na siya natatakot kapag may mga ibang taong nadikit sa kaniya. Kasi napakaseloso niya na… kaya
niya nang kumilos nang naaayon sa kagustuhan niya… nakakakilos na ako nang gusto ko… Anlaki nung pag-igpaw
doon sa paggising sa kamulatan ng ako, pati ng nanay ko, pati ng kapatid ko. Anlaki ng tulong ng GABRIELA doon
sa… katotohanan. Na dapat naming maranasan. Sa usapin ng pamilya. Ayun sobrang thankful lang na nakamit na
namin yung katotohanan na ganito. Kasi akala ko habambuhay nang ganun” (Xian 2013).

297
their accessibility. Their strategies draw on organizing traditions preceding the Anti-VAWC
Act, and have reached beyond the law’s focus on criminalization. I have shown how
GABRIELA has promoted survivors’ decisions to separate from abusive relationships by
mobilizing alternative kinship networks and material aid, while influencing community attitudes.
The scale of GABRIELA’s organizing activity bolsters these efforts. Yet it is only able to take
such stands by opening the space for survivors to help pave the way. Whether at the level of
personal relationships or community-wide campaigns, those suffering violence play the crucial
role of choosing resistance.
In the next chapter, I continue to unpack organizers’ strategies towards urban poor
women experiencing cycles of intimate partner abuse; towards perpetrators of harm; and towards
the larger community, highlighting the transformative impact of a social movements approach
that exceeds service provision and law enforcement.

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CHAPTER 6

‘Together at the Same Time:’ Tactics and Community Impacts

1. Opening

This chapter continues to unpack local GABRIELA organizers’ social movement
approach to challenging domestic and sexual abuse in urban poor communities. I delve further
into intensive support strategies towards VAW survivors; consider tactics towards those
perpetrating abuse; and end by looking at community engagement and wider impacts. Moreover,
I explore tensions that can arise from opposing violence at both interpersonal and structural
scales. How do organizers juggle priorities? Combine confronting perpetrators with a
‘comprehensive’ organizing model that seeks to win over the whole community? Involve the
state, while building alternate sources of power? GABRIELA organizers addressed personal
crises while maintaining the sustainability of larger movement-building; confronted perpetrators
while trying to include men in organizing; demanded state intervention while creating
prefigurative power outside it. Their experiences illustrate fascinating struggles to carry out all
these endeavors, rather than choose exclusively between them.
Furthermore, local organizers’ approaches to the above speak to this study’s
preoccupation with how to build responses to abuse that also oppose neoliberal imperial state
violence – both in the form of negligence, as well as narrow emphasis on carceral responses that
are most punitively deployed against the marginalized. ‘Survivor-centered’ tactics towards
abuse do not always reinforce a wider liberatory agenda; how, and to what extent, does
GABRIELA’s organizing manage to combine these? What does centering urban poor women’s
organizing tell us about how they can reclaim the neoliberal imperial state? Urban poor
survivors at the intersections of interpersonal and structural violence gesture towards important

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political critiques that GABRIELA’s organizing can harness.
First, I detail organizers’ ‘harm reduction’ methods for supporting survivors throughout
repeated cycles of intimate partner abuse. In Chapter 5, I discussed organizers’ commitment to
‘survivor-centered’ decision-making, and now examine how this guides them through exhausting
cycles of violence. (Additionally, I consider how they have applied related principles to cases of
child abuse.) Collectives, and mentorship for survivor-centeredness, mitigate tensions arising
when survivors return to abusive relationships repeatedly. Given the demands of providing such
intensive personal support alongside organizing work, I explore how collectives balance
priorities. Organizers’ efforts to ‘juggle it all’ – to respond to both interpersonal and structural
violence – are linked to a refusal to reduce multi-issue lives to single issue struggles.
Next, I examine how, alongside standing with survivors, GABRIELA’s ‘comprehensive’
organizing vision, aimed at including the larger community in movement-building, has shaped
engagement with those who perpetrate domestic abuse. I observed organizers’ strategies to focus
on shifting relations of power, an important practical tactic when the transformation of those
perpetrating harm can be a long-term, often elusive process that efforts cannot always ensure. At
the same time, however, organizers created avenues for including men in movement-building,
such as through allied men’s groups. I consider a variety of methods deployed to exert clout, and
their relation to involving the state to exact consequences; very occasionally, organizers made
threats to report abuse to the state, that complicate their typically survivor-centered ethic. Still,
collectively tackling community backlash and public opinion was a key component of how
organizers changed power dynamics. I reflect on GABRIELA members’ conceptions of justice
as interdependent.
Finally, I discuss wider community impacts of organizers’ on-the-ground contestations

300
over the meanings of interpersonal gendered violence, and highlight examples of increased
grassroots mobilization. As GABRIELA organizers have encouraged the larger community’s
direct action and involvement against VAW, they have changed the circumstances under which
local residents are willing to intervene. Additionally, they have contested limitations of existing
legal frameworks by enforcing protections not strictly guaranteed by law. They continue to shift
the role of local institutions while building grassroots power for structural change.

2. Weathering Cycles of Violence: A ‘Harm Reduction’ Approach

Intimate partner violence typically follows a repeated cycle that involves alternating
violence and reconciliation. Throughout this ‘cycle of violence,’ perpetrators of abuse exert a
range of tactics designed to manipulate, and gain disproportionate power and control over the
other party.
1
Weathering such cycles is one of most challenging aspects of providing support to
survivors of ongoing domestic abuse. Witnessing a survivor repeatedly return to an abusive
relationship is not only painful for those invested in her well-being; but continuing to maintain a
supportive relationship can be incredibly draining.
GABRIELA organizers offer important lessons about how to maintain survivor-
centeredness through these cycles of violence – as well as the power of doing so collectively.
Organizers I spoke with did not use the term ‘harm reduction,’ but I argue they effectively
carried out such a method: they emphasized meeting survivors where they were at, sustaining
support, and encouraging transformations even as survivors usually remained within abusive
relationships. Such tactics provide ‘harm reduction’ on two levels: as incomplete alleviation to
improve survivors’ standing inside abusive relations; and in lieu of the systemic change required
to give survivors alternatives on a large scale. Focusing on best practices, I examine organizers’

1
Intimate partner violence is a strategy that often serves to enforce unequal harm, isolation, and extracted benefits.

301
emphasis on sustaining support over the long haul; safety planning; how organizers approached
survivors’ rage; and how collectives and mentorship reinforce survivor-centeredness.
Afterwards, I analyze how organizers have balanced providing this intense support alongside
movement-building.

2.1 ‘Harm Reduction’ and Maintaining Connection
Organizers did not expect intimate partner violence to be resolved quickly. Nor can
urban poor women easily leave abusive relationships, especially due to both societal pressure and
lack of material options. Since domestic abuse is an ongoing reality for many in GABRIELA,
local organizers took in stride this would not change overnight, but sought ways to continue
offering support, nonetheless. Organizers were not simply neutral; they endeavored to challenge
VAW and foster survivors’ resistance. But rather than expecting to successfully ‘rescue’ women
in the short-term, to truly end cycles of violence, they took a longer view: they focused on
strengthening survivors’ internal resolve, building collective solidarity, and the necessity of
organizing for larger structural change. Interventions helped survivors attain temporary respite,
leverage, and additional security – what I term a ‘harm reduction’ approach that ideally,
constantly took its cue from survivors’ requests and desires. However frustrating survivors’
changing decisions might be, honoring these was a means of respecting their attempts towards
self-determination – and maintaining connection, rather than exacerbating their isolation.
Sustaining open and trusting relationships with survivors despite cycles of violence is
difficult; organizers shared about such challenges. They were not always able to maintain close
connection, sometimes because of their own wariness, and other times because abusive dynamics
pressured survivors to choose isolation. Rosa, a former organizer in Quezon City, described one
attempt to assist a battered woman who sought help around 2007. The woman decided to leave

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her husband, so GABRIELA organizers brought her to an institutional domestic violence shelter.
Unfortunately, Rosa remembers, “She said it’s difficult for her there. Even for her child’s
diapers and milk, she had to fall in line, things like that.”
2
Her husband promised GABRIELA
organizers and the barangay he would no longer hurt her, begging for his wife and child to
return. Rosa herself doubted his words, but the woman went back. Several months later he
assaulted her again. This time, Rosa says, “When we talked to her, she said she could defend
herself… She stayed away from us, she’s embarrassed... After she left the shelter, she’s not so
[open] with us anymore… not like before.”
3
Perhaps the survivor felt she would let them down,
since she was not prepared to leave completely.
Organizers discussed their expectations regarding cycles of violence. Isabel, a local
officer and organizer in Quezon City, explained,
As GABRIELA we get seminars, training – we accept and should know women are really
weak in deciding [to leave]…
Like that case before, where she reported her husband… then all of a sudden, won’t
pursue it… You understand the woman… We know what she’s going through since
we’re going through it, too… Women have considerations... It might be economic,
right? Or… the guy might’ve appeased her and the woman gave in.
4

Isabel continued, “As a public servant and a woman, you should be ready for that… so you
should be tireless in helping her, arousing her – since… we have this culture women are weak,
like that.”
5
As discussed in Chapter 2, organizers shared a common analysis about how
economic pressures force survivors to return to abusive relationships. Gabby elaborated,

2
“Nahirapan siya dun eh sabi niya. Ultimo diaper at gatas ng bata kailangan ipila, basta may ganun” (Rosa 2013).
3
“Nung kinausap na siya ang sabi niya kaya na niyang labanan... lumayo na satin, nahihiya na yun… simula nung
umalis siya dun sa shelter, di na siya ganun ka ano sa atin… di kagaya ng dati” (Rosa 2013).
4
“Bilang GABRIELA nakakuha tayo ng mga seminars, training, tanggap natin at dapat alam natin na ang babae ay
talagang mahina sa mga desisyon… tulad nung case na may asawa niya di ba nireklamo niya tapos… kamukat
mukatan mo biglang di na pala niya itutuloy… naiintintindihan mo yung babae… alam natin yung pinagdaanan niya
kasi pinagdadaanan din natin… may mga isinaalang-alang din yung mga babae... Maaaring di ba economic o... baka
inamo na nung lalaki na bumigay nanaman si babae” (Isabel 2013).
5
“Bilang public servant at babae dapat handa ka sa ganun eh… na dapat hindi ka nagsasawa na tulungan siya, na
imulat siya dahil… may kultura tayo na... na ang babae ay mahina, ganun” (Isabel 2013).

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Every time you talk to her – ‘Okay, I’ll really break up with him already.’ But actually
it’s so hard… Presently the attitude of most of the women is… they don’t want to
separate… they’ll really bear what they at least have…
That’s why organizing isn’t [easy]… When you give advice, the victim doesn’t take it
very quickly… The decision to really stop the violence and give punishment – if
‘punishment’ is what you call that – or to face your problem, would really start
internally… If the victim is not that convinced of her decision, it’s really tough.
6

Gabby’s choice of the term ‘internal’ draws on Marxist-Leninist-Maoist analyses of ‘internal’
versus ‘external’ factors, which GABRIELA organizers are exposed to. Organizers
distinguished ‘internal’ and ‘external’ forces shaping a situation, to consider how ‘internal’ ones
– those potentially under direct control by oppressed parties – can still be decisive in fueling
change despite adversity.
Yet even if organizers viewed a survivor’s own internal conviction as the ultimate
deciding factor of whether she would permanently leave, they emphasized support should not be
contingent on her being unequivocal on ending the abusive relationship. Rosa argued, “You
cannot say next time [we help], we need to be sure she really won’t return… It shouldn’t be like
that since we know it’s rare to get out from that kind of situation.”
7
While survivors should
choose if they want to be ‘rescued’ or taken to a shelter, Rosa asserted they should not be
expected to promise they would not return to their abusers, as a condition of support. She
acknowledged her disappointment when the woman she arranged shelter for soon returned to her
abusive partner, but also put it in context: “Of course although you feel frustrated and annoyed…

6
“Pag lagi’t lagi mo siyang kinakausap: ‘Sige, hiwalayan ko na talaga siya.’ Pero ang hirap talaga… Sa ngayon
talaga gan’un ang katangian ng ibang mga mas maraming kababaihan… na ayaw hiwalayan… tinitiis talaga ‘yung
kung ano ang meron e. Kaya… ‘yung pag-oorganisa hindi siya gan’un e… ‘pag sinabi mo ‘yung advice, hindi
naman agad ‘yan iti-take ng victim e… ang desisyon… para talaga pigilan ang karahasan at handa ka na parusahan--
kung parusahan man ang tawag diyan-- o harapin ‘yung problema mo, ay magmumula yan internally… Kung ‘yung
biktima ay hindi naman gan’un ka-kumbinsido sa magiging desisyon niya, mahirap talaga” (Gabby 2013c).
7
“Di mo naman… pwedeng sabihin na next time kailangan siguraduhin natin na di talaga siya babalik… Hindi
naman siya pwedeng ganun eh. Kasi alam naman natin na bihira ung lumalabas dun sa ganung sitwasyon” (Rosa
2013).

304
you always recall it’s really like that because of the cycle of violence.”
8
Some organizers were
willing to take a patient approach, because their goals in intervening were not restricted to
resolving a particular case, but included sending a message to the larger community. Rosa
thought helping women leave temporarily, even if they went back to their abusers, at least
affected what others considered possible.
Moreover, organizers repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaining connection and
communication, particularly with survivors who remained in (or returned to) abusive
relationships. In Muntinlupa, Greta and Sharon together shared,
In cases of domestic violence, our way of responding
9
… doesn’t end when… they decide
to stay with their husbands… We still connect with them… The organizing work
doesn’t stop when you’ve addressed their [immediate] problem, especially in cases
where… it’s not really resolved yet…
Strengthen that connection to them… Our connection should be tighter in those cases.
10

Doing so is not without tensions and difficulties, including when survivors’ and supporters’
hopes might conflict. Even so, organizers prioritized connection: “We can’t do anything but we
try to still connect” (Greta 2013).
Child abuse presents an especially complicated situation to navigate with regard to
survivor-centered decision-making and harm reduction. On one hand, organizers sought to
prioritize the desires and safety of the child. However, they also recognized the child’s
immediate guardians (usually the parents) had to be taken into account. Unfortunately, in such
cases, the child’s support system is typically unreliable or divided; some guardians, for example,
might be in denial or even side with the abuser. Yet organizers recognized that without the

8
“Di syempre kahit papaano nakaramdam ka ng frustration tapos, ayun inis… lagi mong babalikan na ano ganun
talaga kasi eh cycle of violence eh” (Rosa 2013).
9
“Yung pagresponde natin” (Greta 2013; Sharon 2013).
10
“Hindi pa talaga siya resolved… Yung parang connection sa kanila ay mas paigtingin… Maging mas… mahigpit
yung pag-ugnay sa mga ganung cases” (Greta 2013; Sharon 2013).

305
support of a key guardian willing to take steps to protect the child’s safety, their intervention
could backfire. Because of these difficulties, organizers resorted to an approach of trying to
reach out and maintain communication in such situations, as well.
For example, in Muntinlupa, a former GABRIELA officer described a case of child
molestation where the family was unwilling to confront the perpetrator because he was a family
friend. The officer, Jon, was in communication with the mother. Jon hoped to prevent the abuse
from happening again, but explained she first sought the family’s agreement or assistance:
We’re trying to balance everything. We can’t just move without their authorization
because it might worsen the scenario… We’re still trying to ask for at least their
permission…
What if we approach [the perpetrator] and then [the family] won’t speak?
11
… We’re also
avoiding
12
[the situation] that they don’t want to talk, and then we approach this guy and
then… it will go back to them.

Jon feared if they confronted the perpetrator without the family’s consent, this could continue to
isolate the victim. While she did not directly say so, it might also cause the family to sever their
relationship with GABRIELA organizers, making it harder for them to impact the child’s support
network. Jon describes her approach instead: “Time to time, we are visiting them, making small
talk… Sometimes I try to just give… examples… for her to be aware there’s things she can do,
instead of just keeping quiet about what happened to her child.”
13
Jon would deliberately discuss
other VAWC incidents and how they were resolved:
I just bring up a story… I say, it’s a good thing we brought the child to the [GABRIELA]
office, kept her there… how it helped at least emotionally, to bring her away from the one
who molested her. To avoid it from happening again… I say… it might still really
happen again… Instead… you can have all this.
[The mother] is thinking about it… but her decision isn’t that strong yet. The fear is
there, always… I don’t know if it’s because… it’s her friend’s husband… because of

11
“Di naman sila magsalita” (Jon 2013).
12
“Inaavoid din namin na” (Jon 2013).
13
“Pag minsan sinusubukan ko na ibigay lang yung... examples, para lang malaman niyang meron siyang pwedeng
gawin kaysa manahimik lang siya kung ano pa mangyari sa anak niya” (Jon 2013).

306
embarrassment… They start distracting us from the topic. It needs time,
14
so that’s a
struggle on how to [approach them]…
We have to find a way to reach them, that they will not… think… we’re… getting
annoying. We open ‘natural talks,’
15
only visiting them, only inviting them. Avoiding…
‘They’re just going to ask me again.’

Finding a way to influence the family was difficult, but Jon’s goal was to build her relationship
with the mother, and maintain communication about options for addressing the situation.
When organizers were able to get the agreement of some relatives or guardians, they
connected children to more intensive and specialized services, including through the National
Office or NGOs. They also reached out to community residents about responding supportively.
But if the child’s guardians were reluctant to address the violence, as above, organizers tried to
maintain communication without imposing punitive measures that could backfire and fail to
increase support for the child. Such methods deserve more scrutiny and analysis, considering
critiques of how policies of mandatory intervention, criminalization, and removal of children to
foster care can not only drive child abuse underground – but also increase trauma for children
while continuing to place them in harm’s way.
Illustrating their long-term, ‘harm reduction’ philosophy towards intimate partner abuse,
organizers discussed how weathering such cases can take years, but that even survivors’ gradual
shifts matter. Lisa, a regional-level organizer in Muntinlupa, recounted about one survivor:
[Sophia] freed herself from… her husband. Of course it took long… as they say, it’s
really a cycle… It took year[s]… It doesn’t really end… She’s found another partner.
At least, however it is… she already has ideas… that ‘if this is what he’s doing to me…
this is already violence…’ And also, our connection with her should not be cut.
16

14
“Nagcocome-up na lang ako ng story… Sabi ko buti na lang dinala namin dun sa office, tinago namin yung bata.
Kahit papaano natulungan nila doon kahit sa emotional, mailayo dun sa nang-molestiya. Para maavoid na mangyari
uli yun… sabi kong... baka nga naman maulit pa yun… Instead… you can have all this… Nag-iisip siya… pero
hindi ganun kastrong yung decision… laging nandun ang takot... Di ko alam dahil takot na kaibigan niya yung
asawa... because of kahihiyan… nililigaw na nila yung usapan. Kailangang mahaba” (Jon 2013).
15
“Dun na lumalabas yung natural talks” (Jon 2013).
16
“Pinalaya niya yung sarili niya dun sa… asawa niya. Syempre yung sa kaniya matagal din yun e, yung sinasabi
niya ngang cycle… Taon yung binilang niya… hindi naman din… natatapos yan e… mayron siyang nakitang

307
Like Greta and Sharon, Lisa advocated maintaining support with survivors over the long haul.
Meanwhile, Sophia herself took the initiative to serve on her community’s VAW Response
Team, approaching GABRIELA about doing so; she has offered vital support to other survivors.
Sophia said, “I want to help whoever I can help, from what happened to me. I want to fight,
because I didn’t fight for myself.”
17

2.2 Safety Planning and Alternative Sheltering
‘Harm reduction’ included assisting survivors, especially those continuing in abusive
relationships, with safety planning. Collectives helped safety plan both when survivors fled, and
also when they decided to return to abusive relationships. Even as a survivor chose what steps
she would take and how she wanted a collective to intervene, as one organizer explained, “we
always inform her that the main concern of the group is your security” (Carlos 2013b).
For GABRIELA organizers, a chief part of safety planning was activating the survivor’s
support networks to counter social isolation. They might discuss who she could reach out to
when violence happened again; and who the collective could be in contact with. Safety plans
often included alerting and coordinating with the survivor’s relatives as well as local
GABRIELA members. Carlos, a former organizer in Tondo, gave the following illustration:
Carlos: For example, we confronted your husband, and there’s a possibility that he
might beat you up and ask, ‘Why did you tell GABRIELA?’… So what’s your
plan, [so] you’ll be secured by the time you went home?
Me: What was the plan [for this person]?
Carlos: That she would tell it to her mother. Because at first she doesn’t want her
mother to be involved. (2013b)

Organizers drew on local VAW Response Teams, officers, and GABRIELA members as

makakarelasyon niya at least kahit papaano meron na siyang mga idea… Na kapag ganito na yung ginagawa sa akin,
opps ano na to…violence… Tapos hindi rin dapat maputol din yung ano sa kaniya…ugnay” (Lisa 2013).
17
“Gusto kong kung sino man yung pwede kong tulungan sa nangyari sakin, gusto kong lumaban e, kasi di ko
naipaglaban yung sarili ko” (Sophia 2013).

308
support resources. Carlos described informing the local chapter if a perpetrator made threats:
One thing that’s good if… you have a local chapter, you can always inform the chapter…
‘Look after [her]... Her husband is like that’… You don’t have to go into details on what
happened… The officer[s]… know that that’s a part of their [role] and… confidentiality
is also part of their promise. (2013b)

When there was not an active chapter, collectives fell back on informing the survivor’s relatives
or parents. In cases of serious threats – such as “if… the perpetrator promises he will return and
kill you… bomb your place or kill your family or something like that” – organizers might
additionally alert the barangay, “for them to be aware,” Carlos said (2013b).
As discussed, collectives arranged emergency shelter for survivors wishing to leave or
have respite from violent relationships. Organizers might explore if relatives are an option, but if
not, depending on the wishes of the survivor, they arranged hiding at institutional domestic
violence shelters; GABRIELA’s own National Office; or secret locations in shared housing with
other members. GABRIELA’s local facilities provide emergency shelter, as well: at all three of
my sites, modest centers served as places for women and children to stay. (Children fleeing
physical abuse have spontaneously run to Tondo’s rooftop center for refuge, too.)
Alternative sheltering typically played a temporary harm reduction role. Carlos recalled
one survivor who didn’t want a permanent separation from her husband, but for him “to leave for
a while.” When he refused to go, the organizers “decided to let her stay” with them in the
rooftop center. (The husband informed them he would just wait for her to come back.) Carlos
explained their use of the center as emergency shelter was partly due to the lack of accessible
domestic violence shelters. He elaborated,
If there’s a need for the victim to leave her house and the perpetrator is just near… and
she don’t have relatives [to] support her, or it will take time before the barangay gets in
that place, we… suggest [for] them to stay out of the house. So one thing we propose is
to stay here. (2013b)

309
However, he observed, “Sometimes it’s not too safe, because we don’t have bodyguards… and
some of the members who stay here are too young... In terms of securing you… we just pulled
you out of your place” (2013b).
More secretive alternative sheltering in the community was not without challenges
regarding how to provide a safe and supportive environment. Jona, an organizer and officer in
Muntinlupa, discussed a difficult case involving a battered teen. After the teen gave birth, at her
request organizers sheltered her in members’ homes, transferring her from chapter to chapter,
because they were afraid her partner might take her child. However, they remained fearful he
could track her. Jona recognized the unstable circumstances were not very comfortable for the
new mother and her baby. She reported the partner was later jailed for sexually assaulting
another minor, but managed to escape while receiving treatment at a hospital. The teen they had
assisted reunited with him and subsequently was herself wanted for assisting a criminal. In
contrast, Niel’s collective successfully ensured the secrecy of her whereabouts. But emergency
shelter does not replace the need for secure, permanent housing and long-term support resources.

2.3 Solidarity with Rage, Solidarity with Empowerment
As part of challenging VAW, organizers sided with survivors’ anger and resistance at
being abused. To do so defies victim-blaming tropes, and feudal or patriarchal attitudes that
reinforce acceptance and gratitude towards one’s circumstances. Honoring such emotions
radically reclaims survivors’ humanity by respecting their rejection of what they have
experienced, as injustice.
During my interviews, I observed some organizers not only empathize with but affirm
survivors’ acts of resistance to intimate partner violence. Perhaps controversially, this included
instances when survivors recounted fighting back, even harming their abusers, within recurring

310
cycles of abuse. In mainstream discourses, such acts are often taken out of context to stigmatize
survivors; or when approved of, to support the state’s criminalization of perpetrators. Yet some
organizers affirmed survivors’ moments of rage at how they had been treated – small steps of
fighting back within unequal power relations – in order to reinforce that survivors could exercise
the capacity to reject dominant values about ‘enduring’ (nagtitiis) abuse. They offered survivors
a community of social and emotional support for doing so. Likewise, survivors contrasted the
affirming community and support they found among GABRIELA members with their
experiences in other women’s organizations or church groups.
18
Many experienced these spaces
of confiding in GABRIELA as both deeply resonant and rare.
In the context of cycles of violence, organizers’ affirmations sometimes took the form of
entertaining plots for resistance that survivors did not end up following through on. Other
organizers expressed caution against actions that might jeopardize survivors’ safety. While some
survivors described taking vigilante action – in the context of unequal power dynamics – most
expressed their desired outcome was for domestic abuse to stop. Meanwhile, although survivors
and GABRIELA members regularly invoked the specter of jail as a threat, I did not come across
cases of survivors calling for long-term incarceration in response to intimate partner violence.
19

Some GABRIELA members and local organizers encouraged women to at least resist
their abusers, as part of a harm reduction approach to domestic violence. Angela, a former
GABRIELA officer in Tondo who has been active on her local VAW Response Team, argued
for such measures, given structural barriers to ending abuse, as well as the lack of appeal of
involving the state:
To my neighbor… I said… you’re filing a case, [then] backing down.

18
Explored more in Chapter 7.
19
Survivors and community members were more in favor of incarceration regarding child sexual abuse, although
survivors and their families often ultimately wavered in these cases, as well; see later discussion in this chapter.

311
What I’m telling her, and… told myself, is… in reality, we can’t totally eradicate
domestic violence [now]… [So] at least just… reduce it… If you won’t [file the case],
learn to fight.
Don’t just, if he’s beating you… accept and accept it... Because she’s really like that…
At least, learn to resist… If he punches you, hit back, too
20
…
Educate the victims. Enlighten them. And once that’s there, learn to fight.
21

In spite of her comment about not being able to eliminate domestic violence under current
conditions, Angela actually desired and had visions for structural change and state responsibility
that would truly impact the problem more deeply.
22
Her meaning was not to dismiss domestic
violence as intractable, but to note the limited effectiveness of interventions without systemic
change. As they worked together for such change, organizers could help survivors reject cultural
tropes that normalize sexual and domestic violence as something women should withstand to
preserve their families. While some might caution that encouraging survivors to fight back
might escalate violence and cause more danger, several interviewees reported successfully
detering their husband’s abusive behavior, only after they began to actively resist.
23

For their part, some survivors expressed appreciation for GABRIELA’s support of even
resistance to domestic violence that fell short of leaving their partners. Mercedes, an organizer
in Quezon City, confided, “What you’ll just hear from your friends is ‘leave him already.’ Just
the likes of that. But they don’t teach you what [else] you can do. Will you only separate and
not fight for your rights?”
24
Mercedes explained that in contrast, she found GABRIELA’s

20
“Sa kapitbahay ko... sabi ko nga, fa-file-an mo yan ng kaso, uurong ka. Ang sinasabi ko na lang sa kaniya, at
tsaka… sa sarili ko din na… sa totoo lang hindi naman talaga natin… totally mawawala yung domestic violence. At
least… lang… mabawas-bawasan… kung hindi ka ano, yung matuto man lang lumaban. Hindi na lang yung pag
binubugbog siya… tanggap na lang ng tanggap… kasi ganito na talaga siya… matuto ka man lang lumaban… kung
sinuntok ka di suntukin mo rin, yung mga ganun na lang” (Angela 2013a)
21
“I-educate yung mga biktima. I-enlighten mo sila. At saka kung andiyan na... matutong lumaban” (Angela 2013b).
22
See Conclusion.
23
Such tactics raise possibilities for encouraging resistance and respecting survivors’ decisions, without carceral
outcomes.
24
“Kasi ang maririnig mo lang sa kaibigan mo ‘Hiwalayan mo na yan.’ Yung mga ganun lang ba. Pero hindi
itinuturo sa iyo kung ano ang magagawa mo. Ano hihiwalay ka lang hindi mo ipaglalaban ang karapatan mo?”
(Mercedes 2013).

312
support more relevant, interpreting it in terms of resisting but not separating. She said, “The
same way I got advised by GABRIELA, I told [others] don’t let your husband treat you like
that… make them understand we women have rights.”
25
Since survivors might not be willing to
leave abusive relationships, as part of survivor-centered harm reduction, organizers affirmed the
steps they were willing to take, including standing up for themselves within such relationships.
26

2.4 Handling Frustrations: Collectivity and Mentoring for Survivor-Centeredness
One organizer who had herself separated from a physically abusive partner expressed
frustration at others unable to do the same. Another whose mother had left an abusive
relationship admitted it was hard to relate to those who could not. Still others anticipated a
certain survivor would probably return to her abusive husband – but nevertheless felt let down
when she did so more quickly than hoped, and also betrayed the secret location of her housing
with another member. Even so, many organizers remained oriented by a strong ethic to continue
maintaining open communication and offering support, according to survivors’ decisions,
through these cycles. Organizers, particularly those who had attended VAWC trainings,
27

stressed women should not be blamed for staying in abusive relationships. Below, I discuss how
organizers saw keeping frustrations at bay as a matter of avoiding victim-blaming; and how
collectives and mentorship were crucial for counteracting the tendency for cycles of violence to
cause tensions.

25
“Gaya ko napayuhan ako ng GABRIELA sinabihan ko rin sila na wag mong hahayaang ginaganyan ka ng asawa
mo. Na ipaunawa mo rin sa kanila na may karapatan tayong mga babae” (Mercedes 2013).
26
In Chapter 7, I further explore impacts of GABRIELA involvement on survivors over time, especially in terms of
growing self-confidence, and rejection of abuse in their own lives that they had previously accepted.

27
See also Chapter 7, for survey data.

313
Countering Victim-Blaming
Organizers’ analyses of victim-blaming guided their efforts not to take out frustrations
about cycles of violence on survivors. Regarding women who return to abusers, Isabel argued:
Isabel: The blame should not be addressed to her… Instead… you should show her…
you have rights you should use… to fight… The victim should not be blamed.
You should uplift her morale to fight and take control of her problem.
28

Me: So who is to blame?
Isabel: The men. [laughs] The culture! [laughs]… The one to blame is the culture we
inherited and maybe men are also to blame.
29

Similarly, Angela, a VAW Response Team member in Tondo, urged: “Why will you still blame
the victim, when she’s already hurt? She’s already a victim… it’s like rubbing salt on the
wounded area, right? It’s too much.”
30
An analysis of gendered power dynamics reinforced
organizers’ active practices of solidarity with survivors despite cycles of abuse.
Some organizers related to an ethic of solidarity with survivors, because of their own
experiences of suffering blame. Isabel noted she grew to appreciate the need to counter victim-
blaming through “experience… As a woman, you experienced it. And, at the end you do not
want to be blamed... What you want as a victim, what you want to hear from the people is their
support.”
31
Jon, herself a physical abuse survivor, shared, “I experienced it before, others just
blaming me because, ‘you’re a nagger… you talk too much...’ When I knew that wasn’t the
reason [I was abused];”
32
she appreciated GABRIELA organizers’ notably different attitude.

28
“Dapat di sa kaniya ang sisi… na imbis… dapat mas ipakita mo sa kaniya na... may karapatan ka na dapat gamitin
mo… na ipaglaban… di naman dapat sinisisi ang mga biktima. Dapat, ina-up mo ang morale niya na lumaban na
panghawakan yung problema niya” (Isabel 2013).
29
“Yung lalake [laughs]. Yung kultura! [laughs]… Ang dapat sisihin yung kultura na kinagisnan natin at may sisi
rin sa lalake siguro. [laughs]” (Isabel 2013).
30
“Bakit mo pa sisisihin yung biktima nasaktan na nga siya? Biktima na nga siya sisisihin mo pa… it’s like rubbing
salt on the wounded area di ba? Grabe” (Angela 2013a).
31
“Bilang babae, naranasan mo rin yun eh. At ayaw mo rin na bandang huli sisihin ka... Ang gusto mo bilang
biktima, ang gusto mong marinig sa tao yung support nila” (Isabel 2013).
32
“Eh kasi nung naexperience ko siya, yung iba sinisisi lang ako kasi, ‘madada ka, matalak ka, masyado kang
bungangera,’ samantalang naexperience ko na hindi yun yung dahilan” (Jon 2013).

314
Organizers commented their training tended to reinforce the need for patience and
resilience, rather than victim-blaming. As discussed in Chapter 3, VAWC trainings directly
addressed cycles of violence and shifted participants’ attitudes towards survivors. Jon remarked
sometimes she felt frustrated and powerless regarding intimate partner violence, but, “We
know… it’s going to be a long-term [process].” She continued, “That’s also one part of our
leadership training… You need to be resilient.
33
You have to be tough, you have to be patient.”
Moreover, organizers actively countered community members’ victim-blaming attitudes
towards survivors who returned to their abusers. Rosa asserted,
We discuss it, explaining we shouldn’t blame the victim… Of course we can’t say
everyone’s perspective changed, it depends on their level [of understanding]…
Some were angry because why did she get help and then still go back…
But most, not just in the VAWC committee, understood… the advanced members…
There are still members who criticize her, they don’t understand.
34

Similarly, Jon shared, “Of course there are some who seem to think these visions” of continuing
to support survivors “are impossible… We focus there on how to open their thinking more,
among the members.”
35
Contestations continue, as GABRIELA organizers see changing
community attitudes as part of their work.

Collectivity as Reinforcing Survivor-Centeredness
Collectivity in organizing could help reinforce survivor-centeredness, particularly when
individuals were swayed by victim-blaming biases or felt burned out by recurring cycles of
violence. Collective discussion and implementation of plans carried through decisions to

33
“Isa na rin yun sa leadership na pinag-aralan namin. So kailangan matatag ka” (Jon 2013).
34
“Sinasalo naman siya ng paliwanag, diba ang ano natin wag sisihin ung mga biktima… syempre di natin sinasabi
na lahat eh kaya nating baliin ung ano, depende pa yun sa antas ng kanilang… Yung iba nagalit kasi bakit
tinulungan na nga bumalik pa pero mas… karamihan, di lang siya ung VAWC committee ung nakakaunawa…
abanteng members… may mga members parin na nagbabatikos, di nila naiintindihan” (Rosa 2013).
35
“Syempre merong ibang parang nag-iisip din na imposible yung mga vision… dun kami nakafocus kung paano
mas ioopen ang isip nila sa mga miyembro” (Jon 2013).

315
continue supporting survivors, despite frustrations. In Tondo, Carlos described how several
organizers had disagreements with one survivor’s choices to remain in an abusive relationship,
that they aired privately, within their collective. The consensus as a whole was to support her
decisions; so with the collective’s encouragement, those who were frustrated with the survivor
tried not to show this to her openly:
Carlos: Of course as a collective we talk… [one organizer] showed her position…
She’s relying on her experience eh… [She didn’t] feel comfortable with the
victim’s decision.
Me: Did she actually show that to the victim?
Carlos: No, no, kasi [because] it’s not good, di ba [right]? …
It’s part of understanding your role as part of the group… You believe that the
majority decision is… final… We decided to help the victim… to take her
actions… Though you have a position on that… [the] majority… feels we
should respect the decision of the victim. So she respect[ed] the group’s
decision… despite her opposition to the victim’s side. (2013b)

Carlos affirmed the collective would “consider it” if various members disagreed with the
survivor’s plan, but “what matters most is the victim’s decision, and we don’t encourage them to
show their opposition to the victim’s decision… We don’t want to encourage someone to do
steps not by their own.” At the same time, he sympathized with the organizer who disagreed,
reflecting that perhaps she shares her own experiences of leaving an abusive partner not
necessarily to dictate others must act the same way, “but to encourage women” about
possibilities. Ideally, collectives can provide a place for strengths of various organizers and
survivors to complement each other. On the one hand, several shared that the disagreeing
organizer’s courage and outrage served as an inspiration about rejecting abuse. At the same
time, her collective tried to help buffer survivors from feeling individuals’ resentment.
Organizers pushed each other on internalized biases against survivors, through collective
discussion and case handling. For example, Tondo organizers have helped women in
neighboring chapters file for BPOs (barangay protection orders), temporary restraining orders

316
granted at the barangay level which require perpetrators to desist from threats and physical
aggression. In one case, the husband of a survivor visited the GABRIELA center crying, saying
he had never received a BPO before. Gabby and another local organizer felt sorry for him at
first, but then an organizer who often handled BPOs reminded them abusers would usually try to
gain sympathy. Gabby recounted the local organizer’s thinking changed as she more strongly
realized they shouldn’t side with the perpetrator. Later, I witnessed others in turn gently push the
organizer experienced with BPOs to recognize some past incidents involving relatives as VAW.
‘Criticism self-criticism’ (CSC) is a discussion practice from Maoist organizing traditions
that provides a forum for airing interpersonal concerns and constructive critique. Sessions are
regularly integrated into collective meeting practices, and arranged on a needs basis in response
to tensions. Local organizers I spoke with unanimously said they found CSC helpful for
addressing interpersonal issues. One shared that at first, she didn’t like critiques she received,
but grew to realize they were helpful to organizing; she also learned “to criticize with basis.”
36

Several reported that during CSC, they received feedback on being more approachable and
supportive towards VAWC survivors.
The emotional support collectives offer organizers includes space to process about the
constant stream of violence which urban poor residents share with them. Often present for
organizers on a day-to-day basis to offer feedback, collectives helped organizers cope with
continually being in this difficult role. Gabby said, “Sometimes the mother, when… telling their
stories, they’re crying… If you’re the one who is listening… you need to be strong in front of
them…. If… it was your first experience maybe you will be like, ‘Oh my god.’ You just say,
‘Oh, really?’” in shock. But “if you’re already… used to it… you’re just listening and then…

36
Another contrasted it to a practice called ‘open forum’ among her friends, where peers air out grievances; unlike
‘open forum,’ which she said lends to character assassination, she felt CSC encouraged “constructive” feedback.

317
you ask them, ‘How do you feel? What do you want to do?’” (2013b).

Mentoring for Support
Organizers often were themselves survivors, engaged in mutual support through their
collectives. Their everyday support of each other modeled harm reduction values of patience
and sustained connection through cycles of violence. Moreover, as organizers mentored newer
organizers around a survivor-centered approach, they explicitly emphasized continued
relationship-building despite such cycles, with an eye towards movement-building.
Organizers who themselves continued to suffer domestic violence faced conflicts around
how to manage this while assuming their organizing responsibilities. They appreciated other
collective members’ non-judgmental support and flexibility. Neng, a new organizer in Aroma,
described what she found helpful in others’ responses as she dealt with her husband’s controlling
behavior; she recalled how Gabby combined solidarity with a long-term view of these conflicts:
There was a time I wanted to go to a mobilization but my husband did not allow me.
‘[Gabby] it’s frustrating… he didn’t let me go...’
‘It’s fine, do you want me to go there? To talk to your husband?’
I told her, ‘Don’t bother…’
[She said,] ‘It’s okay, you can just go with us next time’… She would not totally be like,
‘Why are you like that? You should join, [do] like this or that...’
No. Whatever my situation, she understands.
37

Rather than insisting that Neng defy her husband immediately and every time, Gabby offered to
help intervene – but also accepted Neng’s judgement call about a difficult situation. Neng
appreciated her patient approach and not facing additional pressure from Gabby to fix her
relations right away. In another instance, a different organizer, Lail, tried to talk to Neng’s
husband, but he treated her rudely. Neng says, “After a while, I texted her… ‘I’m sorry…’ Ate

37
“Pag halimbawa... Gusto kong sumama sa mob, ayaw ng asawa ko, di ako pinayagan. ‘[Gabby] nakakainis
naman... Di ako pinapasama...’ ‘Okay lang yan, ano, gusto mo puntahan kita diyan, sabihin ko sa asawa mo na...’
Sabi ko, ‘Wag na....’ ‘Okay lang yan, sa susunod ka na lang sumama’... Hindi naman siya totally na ‘Ano ba yan?
Dapat kasama, ganun ganun...’ Hindi. Basta kung anong sitwasyon ko, iniintindi lang niya” (Neng 2013b).

318
[Lail] replied me, ‘Yes, it’s fine, we encounter a lot of husbands like that.’ Then she added,
‘You’re so dramatic, you’re making me cry.’”
38
Lail tried not to add to Neng’s already present
feelings of embarrassment.
Moreover, after Neng herself became irritated at another VAW survivor, Gabby’s
mentorship urged her to in turn maintain a supportive attitude. When Neng was newly a
GABRIELA officer, she and Gabby brought a woman who had been battered by her husband to
the hospital, and then the barangay hall. Neng said, “I didn’t help her because I’m a
GABRIELA. I helped since she’s my neighbor and best friend’s sister... I really pitied her… so
many times her husband beat her up, and no one helps.”
39
The woman told barangay officers she
wanted her husband arrested; but, “When we arrived back at their house, just a short
conversation [between the survivor and her husband], and it was nothing”
40
– all was forgiven.
Neng continued, “She even said I incited her to involve the barangay… She said I’m the one
who encouraged her to separate from her husband.”
41

Neng was angry and resentful. She no longer wanted to assist the woman or even talk to
her. She explained, “That wasn’t the only time I helped her… The first time he beat her up… I
took her for a medical check-up… I’m the one fetching her sister... Those kinds of things wear
you out… When the husband grabs her children I’m the one coming in between.”
42
However,

38
“Tapos maya-maya nag-text na ako sa kaniya… ‘pasensya ka na ha?’… Tapos sabi ni Ate [Lail], ‘Oo, okay lang
yan, marami kaming nakaka-engkwentro… na ganiyan na mga asawa.’ Tapos sabi niya... ‘Ang arte mo naman,
naiiyak na tuloy ako’” (Neng 2013b).
39
“Hindi ko siya tinulungan dahil GABRIELA ako. Tinulungan ko siya dahil kapitbahay ko siya, kapatid siya… ng
bestfriend ko… naawa na talaga ako… ilang beses na siyang binubugbog ng asawa niya, walang tumutulong” (Neng
2013a).
40
“Tapos pagdating naman sa bahay nila, konting usap lang wala na” (Neng 2013a).
41
“Tapos… sinulsulan ko daw siya kaya daw nagpa-baranggay… ako daw ang nanunulsol sa kaniya na hiwalayan
ko yung asawa niya” (Neng 2013a).
42
“Hindi lang naman yun yung time na tinulungan ko siya… Una, yun nga binugbog siya nagka-pasa siya, pinaka-
medical ko yan siya... Ako ang nagpupunta dun sa ate niya... Nakakasawa pag... mga ganung bagay lang naman,
pag... yung anak niya kinukuha ng asawa ako ang humaharang” (Neng 2013a).

319
when Neng discussed the matter with Gabby, she says Gabby still urged her to react differently:
She said I should understand…
Her reaction was… that’s just how it goes… [Gabby] told me, ‘Sus, it’s just like that!
Because even you, you’re the victim – for instance you’re in her situation, maybe your
reaction will become just like that. Of course she’s still with her husband, because
there’s not really [someone] the victim can hope towards, except her husband.’
43

Neng tried to argue: “I said, ‘Anyway, she also is depending on me – if her husband is not
here… she’s [coming] to me;’” but she says Gabby maintained, “Don’t take things to heart.”
44

Perhaps because of Gabby’s encouragement, despite Neng’s mixed feelings and
estranged relations with the survivor, she still continued to make herself somewhat available.
Neng said,
She’ll go to my house to ask [help]… It’s like nothing happened for her... She’s fine
towards me. But for me, I am confused… The victim’s always Ate [Neng], this and that,
help... Yes I speak with her, but not like before when we were really close.
45

They maintained limited communication. Nevertheless, Neng was able to empathize with the
woman’s possible reasons for staying with her husband. Besides economic pressures and the
question of their children, she reflected, “I only helped… but he threatened me. Maybe… he’s
threatening her, too, but the victim is not totally open about it… He said he’ll kill me if I still
meddle.”
46
(She also considered that since their relationship involved emotional abuse, including
infidelity on the husband’s part, perhaps the woman had insecurities about separation.)
Organizers mentored others to consider relationship-building as a strategic priority. They

43
“Intindihin ko na lang daw... Ang reaksyon niya, sabi, ganun lang yun siguro... sabi sa akin ni [Gabby], ‘sus,
ganun lang yun! Kasi ikaw naman, biktima ka, halimbawa ikaw ang nasa kalagayan niya, ganun talaga ang
magiging reaksyon niya siguro. Siyempre dun pa rin siya sa asawa niya kasi wala ngang inaasahan yung biktima
kundi yun lang, yung asawa niya’” (Neng 2013a).
44
“Sabi ko naman… siyempre… inaasahan din naman niya ako eh, pag wala yung asawa niya saan ba siya sa akin
din naman din;” “wag ko na lang daw damdamin” (Neng 2013a).
45
“Pumupunta sa bahay, manghihingi ng...parang balewala lang sa kaniya… okay siya sa akin. Pero ako nalalabuan
ako… yung biktima lagi namang Ate [Neng] ganito-ganon, pahingi naman ng ganito… oo kinakausap ko siya pero
hindi katulad ng dati na close na close” (Neng 2013a).
46
“Ako na tumulong lang… pinagbantaan niya ako eh. Siguro… pinagbabantaan din siya, pero hindi naman totally
ino-open… nung biktima... Papatayin daw niya ako pag nangialam pa daw ako” (Neng 2013a).

320
encouraged members to put conflicts within a hierarchy of concerns, keeping in view the larger
goals of movement-building. Neng mused Gabby might have been frustrated about the situation,
as well; but “she doesn’t like me having enemies.”
47
Neng explained Gabby’s advice about
patience and understanding extended to her interpersonal relations with neighbors in general, not
only survivors of domestic violence. She said Gabby framed the importance of cultivating
supportive relations as part of being a GABRIELA organizer: “She told me I should exercise
greater empathy… since that’s how a GABRIELA should be… a little more understanding, a
broader perspective… really more patience so I could encourage people to join [our cause].”
48

Organizing trainings, such as on the meanings of ‘serving the people,’ reinforced such an ethic.
49

3. Balancing Priorities: Addressing the ‘Personal’ While Organizing for Change
How did local organizers juggle handling crises related to interpersonal gendered
violence, while continuing to pursue their other community organizing work? Balancing
individuals’ immediate needs and movement-building goals can be challenging, given time and
energy constraints. GABRIELA has prioritized VAWC as an area of politicization, especially in
the locations where I conducted research.
50
Organizers addressed VAWC as an issue in its own
right affecting local members, and not merely in service of other campaigns. Reflecting

47
“Ayaw ni [Gabby] na may kaaway ako” (Neng 2013a).
48
“Sabi sa akin ni [Gabby], lawakan ko daw... yung pag-iintindi sa kanila kasi ganun daw dapat yung
GABRIELA… konting pang-unawa, lawakan yung pag-iisip… talagang lawakan at habaan ba yung pisi baga para
maka-encourage ako ng mga tao na sumali” (Neng 2013a).
49
Local organizers occasionally used the languge of ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ (terms common to Marxist
political traditions) as a framework for discussing perspicacity. Rather than simply connoting a divide between the
rational or factual in contrast to the emotional, organizers invoked ‘objectivity’ to refer to taking into account the
greater good or long-term interests – to connote concern for all, rather than partisanship.
50
VAW has been a priority issue in GABRIELA’s national programs of action, but local chapters have discretion on
how they carry out activities. Not all GABRIELA chapters have a developed capacity to respond to VAWC, and my
research focused on those more active doing so. Other Metro Manila chapters, for example, have been more
engaged around other campaign issues like demolition.

321
GABRIELA’s overall attention to capacity-building regarding VAWC, when it came to offering
services – i.e., support geared at individuals rather than community-level campaigns – organizers
often prioritized such casework for VAWC above other kinds of issues.
51

Responding to VAWC took a significant portion of organizers’ time in chapters where I
conducted fieldwork. In one Quezon City neighborhood, organizers estimated they handled as
many as five to seven cases of intimate partner violence per year, sometimes as frequently as
monthly, with at least counseling and other support (Claudine 2013).
52
An organizer elsewhere
in Quezon City reported her chapter’s officers mediated domestic conflicts around once per
month (and residents called them to do so because of GABRIELA’s reputation) (Mercedes
2013). In Tondo, Carlos recalled that while he served as an organizer from 2005 to 2009, his
collective handled at least ten domestic violence cases, or roughly over two yearly. Sometimes,
the level of support provided could be intense: organizers who counseled one victim of incest in
2010 met with her twice per week (Maya 2013). In Muntinlupa, a local VAW Response Team
said they handled about three domestic violence cases per year; while a regional level organizer
said she was called to provide additional assistance for five to ten cases yearly (Sophia 2013;
Lisa 2013). Yet these same chapters waged community organizing campaigns on a variety of
issues in addition to VAWC – such as housing, public health, lack of jobs, and price hikes –
depending on urgency, regional strategic importance, and community sentiment.
53

Nonetheless, local organizers reiterated they viewed responding to VAW as contributing
to, rather detracting from, their overall organizing work. Maris, an organizer in Quezon City,

51
E.g., when a mother whose son had been abused by police approached her, Gabby offered sympathy and advice;
but noted that, whereas GABRIELA frequently assists in filing VAWC cases, the local chapter did not yet have the
wherewithal to help file a complaint in this situation. Her fallback was to build capacity to address police abuse by
encouraging the mother to file herself and then serve as resource for others.
52
Private communication with Niel, April 14, 2013.
53
Priorities are influenced by GABRIELA’s organizing agendas as a whole, established through its National
Congresses. Also, local chapters participate in solidarity work arising in coordination with other ND organizations.

322
argued that interpersonal gendered violence should be addressed at the same time as other
campaign issues, especially when brought up by community members. Articulating an
organizing theory around ‘dual tactics,’ she asserted that being available to listen to members’
personal problems reinforced campaigns on community issues, and vice versa:
[It’s] ‘dual tactics.’ During the campaign, we face [issues] together at the same time…
Now we’re in the election campaign period, there’s also the issue of demolition… How
do you resolve this, and how do you face it? Concurrently…
Someone approaches you with a [personal] problem while you’re campaigning – you can
learn about the problem, give advice on what to do, as you campaign. Because in the
community… it’s like that when you’re going around… Someone will discuss their
problem with you. Of course, while campaigning, you also give advice what to do and
how she can be supported.
It’s done at the same time. Joint[ly].
54

Moreover, Maris advocated for why even ‘smaller’ issues should be addressed:
You need… to not leave issues unattended. Whatever the ‘main’ thing you’re doing,
whatever the priority – the smaller, secondary issues should not be disregarded. Instead,
while doing your priority task… you also attend to the secondary task…
They cannot be separated, because from time to time… the ‘secondary’ issue can call for
immediate attention… Suddenly… what is your priority switches.
55

Maris’ point about not essentializing a particular issue as perpetually ‘primary’ (or ‘secondary’
as the case may be) is crucial: she stressed priorities are not static but can rapidly switch as
circumstances shift, so organizers should be versatile in approaching a range of issues together.
Addressing VAW alongside other community struggles reflects GABRIELA’s near

54
“Dual tactics. During the campaign, sabayan, sabayan yung pagharap… ngayon, kami ay nasa period ng
pagkampanya, may isyu ng demolition… na rin… Papano mo ‘to reresolbahin at papano mo ‘to haharapin? Kaya,
sabayan… may lumapit sa’yo may problema at nangangampanya ka, pwede mo rin naman alamin ano ang
problema, i-advice kung ano ang dapat gawin habang nangangampanya ka. Kasi sa community… ganyan yung
nadadaanan mo habang sa pag-iikot mo, may… nakikipag-usap sa’yo kaugnay sa problema niya. Syempre habang
nangangampanya ka rin, nagpapaliwanag ka rin sa kaniya kung ano yung dapat niyang gawin at kung papano din
siya matutulungan. Sabay siya. Joint” (Maris 2013b).
55
“Kailangan na mga isyu ay ano, hindi mo siya iniiwanan bilang kung ano yung main na gawain, ano yung priority,
dapat yung mga maliliit, mga sekondaryo mga usapin ay hindi mo dapat na isinantabi kundi habang ginagawa mo
yung priority task mo… ay isinasabay mo rin yung gawain na sekondaryo… Hindi siya pwedeng paghiwalayin.
Kasi, pana-panahon… yung secondary… ay nako-call ng immediate attention… biglaan na pangyayari… pwedeng
vice-versa yung pag-aano mo ng priority.” (Maris 2013b).

323
political refusal of single-issue campaigns – not only in principle, but in on-the-ground tactics –
because urban poor women don’t live single-issue lives. Even when there is a focus, organizers
constantly use the crisis at hand to draw attention to a larger analysis of how issues interconnect.
This analysis of interconnections, together with a vision for systemic change, forms the
scaffolding that helps give multi-issue struggle direction. Specific issues change but
GABRIELA’s systemic critique of imperialism, capitalism, feudalism, and gender oppression
persists.
56

Organizers drew attention to how political economy reinforces gendered violence, using
high profile cases that GABRIELA is campaigning nationally, as examples. In turn, periods of
heightened local organizing have impacted the lives of survivors, who describe increased support
and personal transformation as a result. Nor is the problem of VAW intransigently ‘secondary’
to other issues, at the local level, for urban poor women; in Manresa, a case of murder by an
intimate partner became a community-wide campaign when the victim’s family lent its support.
Regarding the question of when issues become elevated priorities, in practice I observed political
analysis as well as strategic considerations of logistical immediacy, community impact, and the
willingness of those affected to stand up, at work.
Organizers framed the problem of juggling priorities in terms of the need to continually
expand the capacity of others. For instance, Greta asserted, “It’s… important that you transfer
your skills… so you don’t have to take the full responsibility of dealing with VAW cases all the
time. You have to get the chapter involved” (2013). For Carlos, a strength of organizing in
Tondo has been “giving them training how to do counseling so they can easily do it on their
own… empowering them to handle cases” (2013b). To the extent they could, organizers

56
Similarly, the ND movement attempts to unite an inclusive panoply of issues taken up by various sectors in a
united force for revolutionary change; each sector highlights and brings priorities that disproportionately affect it.

324
integrated capacity-building into their crisis interventions, constantly seeking to involve less
experienced members in observing or participating.
57

When I asked local organizers how, in a pinch, they dealt with handling multiple crises,
they tended to reply they prioritized what needed the most ‘immediate’ attention – which would
include making time for ‘personal’ emergencies. Meetings might extend until midnight, or be
scheduled to continue the next day. One veteran organizer remarked that if an urgent VAW case
unexpectedly came up, she might even temporarily set aside other scheduled tasks (Lisa 2013).
At the same time, although they did not directly name this to me, local organizers seemed
to make judgement calls about ‘immediacy,’ around the overlap of how movement-building and
addressing interpersonal violence impact one another. Other factors being equal, I observed
those more involved in GABRIELA’s daily operations – e.g., VAW survivors who were also
organizers – were often poised to receive more continual monitoring and engagement.
58

Similarly, gendered violence in communities where GABRIELA did not yet have a chapter
might take less priority than local organizers’ ongoing campaigns and commitments. Collectives
were better able to exert influence on social networks they were already enmeshed in.
Organizers’ survivor-led approach relied on close connection between survivors and their
support groups for traction – shaping patterns of response. Thus, collectives seemed more
equipped to provide long-term emotional support, and to repeatedly draw from an array of
intervention tools, for those already embedded in their organizing work. Interventions for local
residents or less active members could likewise involve intensive collective action: mediations,
informally pressuring the perpetrator, and community outreach for social support. But they
seemed to more often center on initial relationship-building steps (reaching out to encourage

57
Survivors in turn became more likely to resist when there was greater capacity to support them doing so.
58
See Chapter 7 for quantitative data on connections between receiving and giving support.

325
these survivors to connect with organizing), awareness-raising, and maintaining communication;
as well as emergency ‘rescue’ or catastrophic steps requiring more desperation or decisiveness
on the part of the survivor (i.e., help to approach government officials, file complaints, secure
protection orders, get medical treatment, or arrange emergency shelter). Often, more peripheral
members or residents might simply confide in organizers, but ask for it to remain at that.
That said, local organizers considered responding to VAWC part of their daily work of
being accessible to communities. They made efforts to address crises involving even peripheral
members and residents, finding opportunities in these to build capacity and community
influence. They rendered responding to abuse into an effective organizing tool to reach new
members,
59
and solidify the commitment of those already engaged. (In the above case where
Tondo organizers provided frequent counseling to an incest survivor, the girl’s aunt subsequently
helped activate a new GABRIELA chapter and VAW Response Team.)
60

Regarding survivors who were also organizers, the extent that violence prevented a
survivor-organizer from staying politically involved, and the strength of her conviction to
actually leave an abusive relationship, seemed to impact the level of her collective’s intervention.
Collectives considered addressing their members’ personal crises part of organizing, and
maintained a baseline of engagement; but the above conditions could spur heightened response.
Before Niel decided to separate from her husband, she described constantly being in tears at
meetings with her collective. Another collective member recalled that at first, they weren’t sure
what steps to take, as they couldn’t tell how decisive Niel was about various plans. After failed
mediations, they gave up intervening with Niel’s in-laws, whom Niel herself agreed were
unreceptive. However, when Niel clearly decided to flee her home situation, they rallied to assist

59
E.g., see Andy’s case in Chapter 5.
60
Her neighborhood was previously unorganized, but she reached out to GABRIELA Tondo because of the assault.

326
her logistically, and renewed their outreach to her family. Niel’s stand pushed them to act, and
in part, they did not want to lose her as an organizer. In contrast, for another domestic violence
survivor-organizer in the same collective, organizers tried to influence the perpetrator and
arrange joint counseling sessions, as well; similarly, these did not end the abuse. But in this
survivor’s case, she did not decide to separate. More recently the collective has not been as
interventionist towards her situation, although its members provide emotional support.
True to survivor-centered decision-making, collectives seemed less proactive at
challenging perpetrators and community attitudes, independent of survivors’ initiative. But
sometimes, organizers’ emphasis on survivors’ leadership risked reinforcing personal
responsibility to change their circumstances or leave a relationship, despite insufficient support.
One member of Niel’s collective tentatively suggested that while they were willing to provide
assistance, when possible, survivor-organizers themselves should “take control of your
problem... If you can help yourself without help from others, you should... Are the things I’m
saying still right? [giggles].”
61
Collectives weighed their capacities against survivors’.
Yet survivors were often cynical about whether perpetrators’ and community members’
attitudes could be changed; they were relunctant to ask others to expend energy, especially if
power to make an impact seemed limited. Furthermore, survivor-organizers faced an extra
dimension of shame regarding abuse: the pressure to project the image of a ‘strong woman’ or
‘role model’ as a GABRIELA organizer.
62
Survivor-organizers often sought to handle it until
they couldn’t anymore. Given the hostile climate of victim-blaming in communities,
demonization of ‘broken families,’ and economic pressures, survivors carried a disproportionate

61
“Panghawakan mo yang problema mo… kung kaya mong tulungan ang sarili mo nang walang tulong ng iba.
Dapat kayanin mo. Tama ba ang pinagsasasabi ko? [giggles].”
62
See also Chapter 7.

327
burden to stand up, even as they battled the isolation and shame of abuse.
Collectives calibrated the kind of support offered survivor-organizers to the severity of
violence, as well. Particularly in situations involving emotional rather than physical or sexual
abuse, survivor-organizers were encouraged to avoid having daily battles hinder movement-
building, to the extent they might be able.
63
For instance, collectives might suggest organizers
wage passive resistance rather than open conflict against partners’ control (e.g., ignoring
harassment and attending events anyway, instead of fighting about it). Alternately, if an
organizer was unlikely to prevail in such battles, collectives might support her in strategically
‘lying low’ (taking a break from organizing) or compromising.
64
However, ‘lying low’ and
avoiding direct conflict may partly reflect the movement’s limited capacity to transform relations
straightaway. Simultaneously, collectives still sought to intervene with perpetrators and change
community attitudes.

4. ‘Comprehensive’ Organizing and Approaching Perpetrators
How local GABRIELA organizers engaged perpetrators, as well as men and their larger
communities, was closely connected to their ‘comprehensive’ organizing ethic of seeking to win
over not only women, but ideally urban poor communities as a whole, to the larger ND
movement. Nevertheless, organizers were willing to take strong stances resulting in
consequences for those perpetrating harm, as they acted to support and protect survivors. I
discuss a range of tactics for engaging men perpetrating domestic abuse; sources of clout,
including involving the state as leverage; and the example of DIEGO, an allied men’s group.

63
See Chapter 7; I discuss the emotional burden of this on survivor-organizers.
64
Some officers and members expressed appreciation of collectives’ understanding regarding balancing ‘family
time,’ but others were resentful about ‘lying low’ when they’d much rather be organizing.

328
Afterwards, I return to how Niel’s collective purposefully countered community backlash. I
consider how, reflecting relational values, political ideology, and power dynamics, GABRIELA
organizers put forward a vision of justice stressing interdependence.

4.1 Engaging Perpetrators, Winning Men Over
Organizers tended to take the initial approach of trying to win controlling or abusive
partners over. Male partners’ jealousy and opposition to women’s involvement was a common
dilemma. Partly to actively preempt this problem, in the course of recruitment, organizers tried
to establish friendly relations with not only women, but their partners and relatives. Xian
described how she engaged with husbands during her organizing rounds:
We explain, ‘We have this activitiy, Tay [father]. This is what we’re going to do. Maybe
you’d like to participate to support your wife? Since this is for the women, to show how
much you love your wife?… It just depends on if you’d like to… we’re not pressuring
you… We’re informing you so you know… If anyone wants to join… we’re very
willing to have you... Because we also organize the men, too.’
65

Organizers tried to connect with the whole family, encouraging youth to join GABRIELA-
affilated youth organizations, and men to join allied groups, as well.
Collectives strategized how to befriend and neutralize hostile partners. Organizers might
meet one-on-one or collectively to talk with husbands who opposed wives’ GABRIELA
involvement. Furthermore, meetings with husbands to encourage support of wives’ activity were
inroads to address household dynamics. In Muntinlupa, Jona described visiting the husband of a
member who wasn’t able to be active, because of his emotional abuse and financial neglect: “I
explained… ‘Kuya [brother], your wife is not just a member of GABRIELA, she has

65
“Pinapaliwanag natin na ‘May ganito po kaming activity tay. Ganito po yung gagawin. Baka gusto niyo rin po
makiisa para sa pagsuporta sa asawa niyo? Dahil ito ay para sa kababaihan, kung gaano niyo po kamahal ang asawa
niyo... Ito po ay depende kung gusto lang at di po namin ipinipilit… ipinapaalam namin para alam niyo po… kung
gusto nilang sumama… willing naman po kami na kayo ay pasalihin. Kasi pati naman po yung mga kalalakihan ay
inoorganize din namin” (Xian 2013).

329
responsibility… My husband, he’s able to find a way [to adapt]. What about you?’”
66
Jona
combined urging him to act differently, with political discussion about the larger context of
unemployment in the Philippines; she recounts telling him,
‘If you want to find a job, there’s a way… the price of goods has gotten expensive’ – you
go on about the national situationer [a discussion of the national context]… ‘It’s really
hard… those who don’t have education have no jobs, if they don’t seek. What about
you? If you finished school surely you’re better… What will happen to your children?’
Like… we’re adding it up… his responsibility to raise his kids.
67

Jona felt she was able to help make a limited impact on the husband, because afterwards he
began to drink less (however, she notes the household situation remained unfair because his wife
was still forced to do most housework and income earning for their children’s schooling). She
contrasted her approach with that of relatives who excused the husband’s behavior.
In Quezon City, one external organizer combined services provision and political
education with her outreach to several husbands who were perpetrating domestic violence
against other organizers. Queenie, a local organizer, described how when her husband fell sick,
this organizer gave him acupuncture, while simultaneously holding forth with him and other men
about economic conditions and GABRIELA’s work. Although the abuse in their relationship did
not end, Queenie says the relationship-building had some positive effect on his attitude.
Other times, organizers used ‘couples counseling’ as a tool for structured conflict
mediation. Vanessa, a local organizer in Quezon City, shared that such a mediation helped
lessen her husband’s emotional abuse. During the four-hour long facilitated discussion, each
party was given space to voice their hurts and points of view; at the end, they drew up an

66
“Pinaliwanag ko doon… kuya, ang asawa mo, hindi lang siya simpleng… member ng GABRIELA at meron
siyang responsibilidad… ang asawa ko, mahahanapan ng paraan. E ano pa kaya ikaw” (Jona 2013b).
67
“Kung gusto mo maghanap ng trabaho, may paraan… umabot tayo sa mahal ang presyo ng mga bilihin. Tapos
pinopropahan mo na ng natsit… ang hirap talaga… iyong mga walang pinag-aralan, ay walang mga trabaho kung
hindi ka maghahanap. E ano pa kaya ikaw, kung may pinag-aralan ka sigurado ikaw iyong mas… anong mangyayari
sa mga anak mo… Parang… susumahin lang naman natin… responbilidad niyang magpapalaki ng anak” (2013b).

330
agreement about their wants. Afterwards, Vanessa’s husband decreased both verbal abuse and
opposition to her GABRIELA involvement. (Later, he became an officer in DIEGO, and active
volunteer for GABRIELA.) In Muntinlupa, Lisa described holding a successful mediation that
increased the husband’s respect for GABRIELA and even ended his physical abuse. However,
for others like Niel, repeated mediations did not stop violence, necessitating further action.
When intervening with men who were perpetrating domestic abuse, organizers described
their manner as friendly, and willing to hear what the men had to say – while remaining
committed to taking a stand against abuse. Jona suggested, “Just talk to him as a brother…
When the time comes for serious talk… go there. We’re like that, to get ‘close,’ [but] not so
close. To make him open up.”
68
As one of the first male organizers working with GABRIELA
in Tondo, Carlos’ collective often pushed him to help deescalate situations where perpetrators
threatened them for intervening. Similarly, he sought to engage the men in friendly
conversation, but not lose track of deterring violence. When a woman sought refuge from
battery at the GABRIELA center, her husband angrily came to find her. Carlos said, “My
impression was I have to ask what happened… to make a balanced decision… I just talked to
him about the situation… why we allowed his wife to stay with us.” Still, Carlos warned they
could involve the barangay and file a case; and said they would “inform the [woman’s] family”
what had happened (2013b). At the time, the husband promised he would not physically hurt her
again. (After the woman went back to him, the organizers continued to visit and followup.)
Carlos’ collective often first spoke to perpetrators before taking further action. He
explained, “We asked the husband’s story just to… get also his opinion.” Paralleling similar

68
“Parang kausap mo lang bilang kapatid, like brother… pero pagdating ng panahon na seryosong usapan, pwede
namang tunguhin. Ganoon naman tayo… para maging close. Hindi naman close na ano. Para maging bukas siya”
(Jona 2013b).

331
rationales for survivor-centered decision-making, he noted that being willing to hear out
perpetrators doubled to protect the organization from blame: “We study it… If we are just going
to conclude that it’s men’s fault, then those men might think badly of GABRIELA, and part of
organizing in GABRIELA is not isolating men.” He added, “I appreciate… you warned him that
you know this is happening… the fact that we confront him” (2013b).
Nevertheless, organizers saw the collective’s role as amplying the survivor’s voice and
trying to implement her plan. They still sought to remain accountable to a survivor-centered
approach. In the words of Carlos, “That we need to confront him… to tell him these things,
actually it’s the idea of the victim… that she can’t say it directly to her husband… We’re just
helping… in doing her plan.” He continued, “even though [the perpetrator] denied it, we’re still
pushing for what we decided… because we know that what we are pushing for is the victim’s
decision” (2013b). Although collectives might lack the clout to actually achieve decided upon
goals, they tried to stand up for these.
The balance of engaging with those perpetrating VAW, but also standing up for
survivors, was not without tensions. Carlos noted, “When there is a VAW issue, the men…
justify what he did, but he’ll never say that he did it.” Perpetrators often easily evaded
accountability. Along similar lines, when organizers sought to talk with a perpetrator following
his violence, they might have to wait until he was sober; but such delays could mean continued,
unchecked hardships for survivors in the meantime (as in April’s case). As noted, Niel’s
collective strategized for her tell her husband about her history of sexual abuse, in hopes of
gaining sympathy, but this only provoked further backlash.
Around her ‘disappearance,’ Niel’s collective constantly navigated tensions around what

332
to tell other community members, to best neutralize opposition and draw them in.
69
Likewise,
she observed that initially local organizers refrained from holding political education workshops
with husbands, in case opponents would use the knowledge to attack GABRIELA. At the same
time, she recognized the strategic importance of finding ways to politicize men.

4.2 Throwing Clout: Collective Action and the State
Organizers reported that domestic violence survivors only involved the state as a last
resort, so that they handled most cases through other means, such as counseling or mediation.
Still, organizers generally did not hesitate to invoke the law and the threat of legal cases,
protection orders, or jail as leverage. Particularly when throwing clout, they often combined
direct action and collective pressure, with the threat of the law behind them.
A new organizer in Quezon City explained how local officers promoted possibilities of
state involvement as a deterrent: they let it be known that for women who wished, GABRIELA
would take husbands who did not stop abusing their partners to the barangay (Mercedes 2013).
Indeed, organizers helped secure protection orders, and file court cases under the Anti-VAWC
Act or for child support. Occasionally, a domestic violence survivor wanted her abuser held in
the barangay jail overnight or for a week, and organizers assisted with this, as well (afterwards
survivors usually did not pursue criminal charges).
Organized collectives had other means of leverage, too, both apart from and in collusion
with the threat of state involvement: arranging escapes, influencing social networks, increasing
community intervention. Notably, much of this potentially ‘prefigurative’ power did not
necessarily center on restraining the perpetrator directly, but on supporting the survivor’s

69
At first, they avoided talking to Niel’s in-laws since the latter were unsympathetic to GABRIELA, but engaging
them to defend the separation was later unavoidable. In retrospect, Xian advocated for reaching out to them sooner.

333
separation, by changing relations of power surrounding them. However, sources of clout
available to organizers reflect the limitations they faced wielding power, in the shortfall between
their prefigurative creations and sweeping revolutionary change.
70

In Muntinlupa, one local officer recounted individually challenging men on sexual
harassment as she did community outreach:
Rosie: Sometimes, there’s a group drinking together… Someone will pass by and they’ll
make comments… If they’re… not yet that [drunk], you can still talk to them.
71

Me: How do they react? Do they get annoyed?
Rosie: Not really… What they’d say is… ‘There, you heard… Ate [sister]… she’s right,
you really shouldn’t do that because—’ They’re okay, they don’t react… like
they’re getting angry… Sometimes, they even thank us… because if not for us,
they would not be aware… actually it’s prohibited… and there’s even a law.
72

She noted her involvement in GABRIELA has propelled her to intervene; and the first time, “Of
course you’re afraid… Maybe… you’ll get punched.”
73
But, she says she watched for an
opening, and addressed the group in the following manner:
‘Do you have children?’ They only stared. ‘A mother? Siblings?’ They did… ‘Oh, so
you do. Then why do you talk like that?… Do you understand what I’m saying?’ If they
say—‘Ah, yes ate.’ ‘Oh, okay, okay, don’t do it again… it’s not good… You also have
sisters, you have children… If it happened to your children, or your sisters, what would
you do? Of course, that’s a fight. Oh – see?’
74

Rosie said the men apologized. At the same time, she noted that since they were “quite

70
In contrast, a peasant organizer I interviewed reported that in Luzon rural areas where he was active, an ND
movement peasant organization, KAGIMONGAN, was able to assume certain state functions through the power of
its organizing, and directly impose consequences for domestic violence (Juan 2013). See Conclusion.
71
“Minsan lalo na yung mga nagrupo-grupo tapos nag-iinom, may dadaan, tapos magsasalit… kahit na sila ay
nakainom at hindi pa naman ano, pwede mong kausapin na yun nga” (Rosie 2013).
72
“Hindi naman. Ang sasabihin pa nila yan, eh…‘o yan, narinig mong sinabi ni Ate... tama yan, kasi hindi nga…’
parang-- okay lang, hindi naman sila nagre-react… ng sabihin nilang nagalit sila… kung minsan nga yung iba
nagpapasalamat pa… dahil kung hindi sa amin hindi nila naalam na… bawal na pala yun… at yun pala ay may
batas” (Rosie 2013).
73
“Syempre afraid ka… Baka mamaya… nasapak ka na” (Rosie 2013).
74
“Sabi ko ‘may anak ba kayo?’ Nakatingin lang. ‘Nanay? Kapatid?’ Meron din… ‘O meron pala eh, bakit kayo
ganun magsalita?... naintindihan niyo ba ibig kong sabihin?’ Pag sina… ‘ay opo, ate.’ ‘O, sige, sige, wag niyo nang
uulitin… hindi maganda yun… may mga kapatid din kayong babae, may mga anak kayo, eh kung sa anak ninyo
gagawin din yun, saka kapatid ninyo? Anong gagawin niyo? Syempre, away yun. O di ba? Ayun’” (Rosie 2013).

334
younger… they can’t answer back to me because I’m older… almost their mother.”
75
Rosie’s
and others’ experiences reflected how it is often more socially acceptable to challenge
‘disrespect’ towards women, than other patriarchal assumptions in themselves; in this case, the
underlying motives for men’s concern remained connected to viewing women as property to be
defended, rather than considering sexual harassment wrong primarily because of its impact on
women. Nevertheless, invoking cultural capital as well as the law, Rosie’s actions countered
men’s entitlement to openly harass others in shared community spaces.
Although organizers frequently engaged with perpetrators of abuse one-on-one, they
stressed the importance of collective coordination and action. Ideally, Gabby envisioned local
GABRIELA leaders intervening with perpetrators in their neighborhoods, rather than relying on
her to step in; describing an area where local leaders still lacked the experience, she said,
The members are really scared because… he’s a man… he might… get angry or do
something to them… That’s why they just usually talk to [the survivor]… just advise
her… to break up with him already…
For them to talk to [her husband], they don’t have that courage to face him yet. That’s
what we’re trying to change.
76

Direct support for survivors was an easier task for new collectives to take on, rather than
confronting perpetrators; but Gabby aspired towards building grassroots capacity to do the latter.
Niel’s collective strategized how to influence her then husband, Jim, by involving his
social networks. Xian called their planning a ‘social investigation’ into his relationships. Their
collective challenged his behavior by combining social pressure with threat of law enforcement:
Xian: We will talk to who is near to [him]... someone that he listens to, that’s the person
to bring… to the talk [with Jim].
77

Niel: And we give an ultimatum… ‘[Niel] can report you…to the barangay, or she can

75
“Medyo bata-bata pa… hindi rin nila ako masagot-sagot kasi mas matanda ako… nanay na nila” (Rosie 2013).
76
“Nand’un talaga ‘yung takot e, ng mga miyembro kasi… ‘pag lalaki talaga… baka… ‘yung magagalit o kung ano
ang gawin sa kanila… Kaya ang mas madalas kausapin lang nila ay si Ate... ‘yung advice nila… na hiwalayan na...
para kausapin nila si Kuya, wala pa yung ganung tapang e, na harapin. Yun nga yung binabago natin e” (2013c).
77
“Kakausapin kung sino yung malapit sa... nakikinig sa kaniya, yun ang isasama… sa usap” (Xian 2013).

335
have you sent to jail if you beat her up again’… Demands. Both parties present…
‘This is what I don’t want… And this is what you have to do’… Rules.
78

Even so, Niel asserted they tried to avoid antagonizing Jim: “That’s why at the end, he
eventually became supportive about it. Since, it’s not that someone’s being accused. We’re
actually avoiding antagonizing him, just… [finding] a proper way.”
79
Yet while including Jim’s
voice in the above negotiations, Niel’s collective invoked possible consequences to continued
violence. And when the abuse continued, they had to find other steps to take (though despite the
threat, these ultimately did not result in jail).
Active GABRIELA members sometimes jumped in to deescalate domestic violence right
when it was happening, invoking the law as backing. In Muntinlupa, organizers described how
one VAW Response Team stopped a stabbing. Local members and officers heard a commotion
from a neighboring member’s house. They found the husband drunk and brandishing a knife at
his wife, Sophia. According to Lisa, they shouted for him to stop, saying “We can jail you for
that!” Afterwards, Sophia and her husband separated and the GABRIELA officers helped them
settle it in the barangay hall (Lisa 2013).
Andy became a resource other survivors and neighborhood residents call upon to
‘referee’ in the middle of domestic crises:
I’m the one they call… Because I’m nearest... Even across the area, I’m the one…
When they fight, I’m in the middle like a referee… The woman will complain, the man
will complain… I get confused who to support – of course, I will support the woman.
I’m a woman, of course.
‘I got beaten up here…’
‘What do you want? Decide what you want to do’ – I’m like that. I don’t want to help
and then I’ll just look stupid [if the woman doesn’t push through]. ‘I will help – you
need to insist you’re going to separate, you won’t have him do it again… Because you

78
“Tapos binibigyan ng ultimatum… ‘pwede ka na ireklamo ni [Niel]… sa baranggay o pwede ka na niya ipakulong
kapag binugbog mo uli siya.’ Mga ganung demand. Naglalatag ang bawat isa, magkabilang panig. ‘ito ang ayaw
ko… Tapos ito yung dapat mong gawin’… Rules” (Niel 2013d).
79
“Kay naman bandang huli naging supportive din siya sa ganun. Hindi naman kasi inaaccuse eh... Iniiwasan nga na
di siya maantagonize e, ano lang, yung proper way ng” (Niel 2013d).

336
guys just do this over and over… Now, you fight. You don’t want to involve the
barangay... [Then] it’s like that again, so decide...’
We went to the barangay hall. She decided, ‘I will make him sign [a document] in the
barangay, that he will not beat me up again.’
80

Andy took the tough stance of urging survivors to take action towards separation; she involved
the barangay to witness the perpetrator’s promise to no longer abuse. She recounted sometimes
she would ‘referee’ alone and sometimes with backup from fellow GABRIELA members. (On
standing up to men perpetrating abuse, she said, “I make him sit down… Sit! I’m different
when I get angry… I don’t allow him to stand… I would lose then.”)
81
As noted in Chapter 4,
Andy also helped secure barangay intervention on behalf of a gender non-conforming bakla
victim of domestic abuse, though the Anti-VAWC Act does not cover trans women or men in
same-sex relationships.
Very occasionally, GABRIELA members or organizers threatened that they would report
an abusive partner to the barangay, regardless of the survivor’s wishes, if he ever assaulted her
again. Such tactics deviate from survivor-centered decision-making; while not the default
practiced by most local organizers I interviewed, on two occasions I came across newer
organizers saying they handled a situation in this way. In one case, Neng, a new officer in
Tondo, assisted a survivor who then blamed Neng for inciting her to separate; the husband
threatened to kill Neng for getting involved. Rather than backing down, Neng said in the future
she would report him to the barangay herself, regardless of whether the survivor agreed:
When they confronted me… and the victim said it’s my fault, I told the victim and her
husband, if there’s a time you fight again and come to me for help… I will be the one

80
“Ako ang tinatawag nila eh... kasi ako lang malapit, kahit tawid, dun kayo dito, ako ang tinatawag nila… habang
nag-aaway, nandun ako sa gitna para akong referee... magsusumbong yung babae, magsusumbong yung… 'di
nalilito na ako sinong kampihan ko, syempre di kakampihan ko si babae. Eh babae ako eh. ‘Binugbog ako dito eh...’
‘Anong gusto mo? Mag-desisyon ka.’ ginaganun ko. Hindi naman pwede yung tutulong ako at magmukha akong
tanga. ‘Tutulong ako, kailangan, igiit mo na makipaghiwalay ka, di mo na niya uulitin... Kasi, ulit-ulit lang yan
kayo… Ngayon, away kayo. Ayaw mo ipa-barangay.... Di ganun din, mag-desisyon ka...’ Pumunta kaming
barangay. Desisyon siya. Papirmahin ko sa barangay, hindi na niya uulitin na bubugbugin pa ako” (Andy 2013b).
81
“Pinapaupo ko… Upo! Iba ko magalit… Di pwede na nakatayo siya… Talo ako nun” (Andy 2013b).

337
making the decision. If you don’t want to put your husband in jail, I’ll jail him myself.
82

Neng had frequently witnessed the woman being “beaten, slapped… dragged by the hair.”
83
In
another incident, a Muntinlupa organizer said she pressured a perpetrator to sign a witnessed
agreement that if he physically assaulted his partner again, the organizer would file a case with
or without the victim’s consent (Rosie 2013). Nevertheless, in my fieldwork, I did not come
across reports of organizers actually carrying through with involving the state, or filing police
reports, against survivors’ wishes; neither did the above threats seem to be their general
practice.
84
On those few occasions some organizers made such threats, the tactic seemed to
mostly serve this purpose – as leverage and intimidation.
Yet one limitation of such an approach is that it might isolate survivors and pressure them
to hide violence, which does not end, but is simply ‘driven underground.’ Such threats increase
reliance on carceral remedies ideologically and practically, potentially precluding other options
as survivors’ secrecy heightens. I was unable to investigate impacts more fully by talking
directly to survivors in the above cases. Meanwhile, the organizers involved described their
threats as effective. According to Neng, the above couple still fights, but abuse is verbal rather
than physical: “The husband seemed to be scared so he stopped physically hurting her… Unlike
before when blood was really spilt. Now they just yell.”
85
Close living arrangements and lack of
privacy in her neighborhood might allow Neng to more effectively monitor the situation. At the
same time, given the problem of shame and isolation as a dynamic in domestic abuse, I suggest
what remains most promising is organizers’ ethic of maintaining communication and support

82
“Nung time na yun na nagka-komprontahan kami... kasalanan ko nga sabi nung biktima, sinabin ko sa biktima
saka dun sa asawa, pag time na mag-away ulit kayo at lumapit kayo sa akin, na ganito tutulungan ko kayo... ako na
magde-desisyon, na kung ayaw mo ipakulong yung asawa mo ako na lang magpapa-kulong” (Neng 2013a).
83
“Binubugbog, sinasampal siya, ano. Yun nga sinasabunutan” (Neng 2013a).
84
Likely because such actions risk putting themselves at odds with survivors and undermining their credibility.
85
“Parang natakot yung lalaki kaya hindi na siya nananakit…. hindi na tulad ng dati nung last na may duguan
talaga. Ngayon sigawan na lang sila” (Neng 2013a).

338
extended to survivors, despite the ups and downs of cycles. Tactics aligned with carceral
feminism can encroach on a typically survivor-cenetered approach.

4.3 DIEGO
In Quezon City, local organizers have recruited men into ‘Friends of GABRIELA,’ and
as of late 2012, a newer group they helped start, called DIEGO. DIEGO (Dignity, Integrity,
Equality of Genders Organization) is named after the historical figure Diego Silang, the real-life
husband of Gabriela Silang, and himself a revolutionary, too. Many DIEGO members and
officers are husbands or relatives of GABRIELA members.
Only a few months old when I conducted fieldwork, DIEGO was not as active or political
as GABRIELA. Men in the local chapter steered it towards playing mainly a social role: holding
basketball tournaments and community bingo, as well as donating for funerals. Some envisioned
it starting a pharmacy and chapel, or offering loans for income generation projects, in the future.
Meanwhile, in a group interview, several DIEGO officers whose partners were GABRIELA
organizers evinced interest in a more political role for the organization, allied with ND
movement-building. GABRIELA organizers had thus far arranged a workshop with DIEGO
members on housing and demolition issues, with support from Kadamay, an ND-movement
organization of urban poor people.
DIEGO regularly attended political mobilizations, such as on May Day and International
Women’s Day, that GABRIELA organizers recruited for. Its individual members volunteered
with logistics during GABRIELA’s day-to-day organizing. (Similarly, ‘Friends of GABRIELA’
had donated their labor time to build the local women’s center.) In turn, GABRIELA members
fundraised for DIEGO, soliciting donations from local politicians; assisted with its activities; and

339
even deescalated fights between DIEGO members, to show “we are also there for them.”
86

The DIEGO members I spoke with were supportive of GABRIELA, viewing women
involved as firebrands taking on the government. Reflecting GABRIELA’s appeal due to its
inclusive political agenda, they appreciated its action around wages, price increases, and
livelihood issues. They praised its dependability and “approachability”
87
in supporting and truly
“helping those in need.”
88
(In this neighborhood, a couple affiliated with the two groups even
named their son ‘Gabriel’ after GABRIELA.) At the same time, the DIEGO members noted that
their wives’ GABRIELA involvement had increased the women’s outspokenness, indirectly
hinting this led to some conflicts (“So many things happen between us;” “It got worse –”
“Change your answer,” another man interjected. The other continued, “We become more
aware… we get lessons… since sometimes we forget.”
89
).
At the time of my interviews, local GABRIELA organizers did not yet think DIEGO
could play a strong role in holding men who perpetrated domestic violence accountable, although
several external GABRIELA organizers expressed hopes about this future potential. Indeed, my
conversation with DIEGO’s officers indicated telling gendered divides in perceptions. The men
I interviewed with were much less aware of the extent of GABRIELA organizers’ support for
survivors, partly because the organizers had needed to keep some of this hidden. Interestingly,
they voiced approval of GABRIELA’s intervention against domestic violence, including its help
securing restraining orders – perhaps from the perspective of keeping the peace in the
community, as I will explain. But reflecting the continued unacceptability of ‘breaking up

86
“Andun rin kami para sa kanila” (Isabel 2013).
87
“Madaling malalapitan” (DIEGO 2013).
88
“Tumutulong pa rin sa mga nangangailangan ng tulong” (DIEGO 2013).
89
“Andami na kasing nangyayari sa atin;” “Lumala –” “Palitan na yan.” “Mas nahahasa tayo… medyo
nakakatanggap tayo ng aral sa kaniya kasi minsan pinapaalalahanan tayo ng...” (DIEGO 2013).

340
families,’ while they approved of how GABRIELA handled Niel’s situation, some insisted Niel
and her husband Jim were not actually separated, since they still interacted on friendly terms (an
interpretation actively promulgated by Jim).
90
Meanwhile, local organizers noted some DIEGO
members already informally challenged their peers or drinking buddies around domestic
violence, but their merely saying something was not enough to stop abuse.
Conversations with DIEGO members illustrated how room remained for transforming
dominant perceptions of rape. Despite several local cases of rape and incest that GABRIELA
members had responded to in recent years, DIEGO members seemed unaware of incidents of
‘rape’ in their community. Rather, they viewed ‘rape’ as a crime committed by drug addicts,
repeating tropes of rape as an act of sexual passion by those who can’t control themselves.
However, all were aware of the gang rape case involving ‘Nicole,’ perpetrated by U.S. Marines,
and GABRIELA’s role assisting her; GABRIELA has prominently campaigned about the case in
national media, and its grassroots organizing.

4.4 Addressing Community Backlash, Contesting Power Relations
Local organizers plunged into contestations over gender relations and the meanings of
interpersonal gendered violence. Niel’s collective intervened with her social network, shifting
webs of power. After Niel ran away, her collective made a systematic plan to reach out to Jim
and his family about the separation. Claudine, a member of the collective, recalled: “We were
going to talk to the whole family, [they’re] so many… if there was no plan… it would just be
useless. What the collective did is really plan what should be done… who should be talked to.”
91

90
One said, “They’re not separated. It’s like she’s just been freed” (“Di sila naghiwalay. Parang pinalaya lang”).
91
“Kakausapin lahat-lahat sa pamilya, eh ang dami… kung walang plano… useless lang rin. Ang nagawa ng
collective, eh napag-planuhan talaga kung ano ‘yung dapat gawin at kung sino ‘yung dapat kausapin” (2013).

341
They spoke with Jim, “the relatives… parents, siblings… children… plus our neighbors.”
92

Claudine explained they especially needed to answer the in-laws’ questions, as persons
directly affected:
They are the ‘number ones’ affected by the separation…
They were questioning… why now – only after [Niel] became a GABRIELA…
They’re affected because Kuya [Jim] isn’t eating, he’s drinking and drinking, going about
searching and searching for [Niel]…
They’re the ones who can help Kuya [Jim], so they were the first we talked to.
93

However, the collective met resistance when they tried to approach Jim and his family. Initially,
his relatives refused to speak with them, so the organizers tried to corner Jim; Claudine recounts,
The whole collective was there, five of us… He didn’t want to talk… since I’m his
cousin, he rebuffed me. I was even pregnant then, I climbed up onto the roof… He went
to the edge of the roof just so we couldn’t talk. I threatened him… so he approached…
[Jim] was really against, as he called it, ‘Why is GABRIELA meddling?’
We said, ‘We’re not meddling. We’re arranging [things] since [Niel] has a plan to
separate from you, but wants to have a proper break.’ He refused to accept it.
94

His relatives were furious and blamed GABRIELA: “Of course at first, they were angry.
Because, they said, [the two] were already together for so long, and [Niel] had no complaints like
that… Only when she joined GABRIELA, they said, then [Niel] got the courage to separate.”
95

One by one and “step by step,” Claudine said she explained to Jim, her cousins, and their
extended family, that the separation was not GABRIELA’s fault, and rather, was for the better.
She argued, “Because of GABRIELA… [Niel] was awakened. But it wasn’t due to GABRIELA

92
“Yung kamag-anak… magulang, yung mga kapatid… mga anak… plus yung mga kapit-bahay” (Claudine 2013).
93
“Sila ‘yung number one na apektado sa paghi-hiwalay nila… nagtatanong sila… bakit ngayon lang kung kailan
naging GABRIELA na siya… sila ‘yung maapektuhan. Kasi si kuya [Jim] hindi na kumakain, inom ng inom, layas
ng layas, hanap ng hanap kay [Niel]… sila ‘yung makakatulong kay kuya [Jim] kaya sila yung una talaga naming
kinausap” (Claudine 2013).
94
“Buong collective, mga lima kami… No’ng una ayaw kami kausapin, eh dahil pinsan ko siya, tinarayan ko.
Buntis pa ‘ko no’n. Umakyat pa ‘ko ng bubong… pumupunta talaga siya sa bubong sa dulo para lang ‘di makausap.
Tinakot ko siya edi pumunta naman siya, nakipag-usap siya… against na against siya bakit daw nakikialam ang
GABRIELA. Sabi namin, hindi kami nakikialam, inaayos namin kasi si [Niel], ay may balak na hiwalayan ka. Pero
gusto niya, makikipag-hiwalay siya ng maayos. Ayaw niya pumayag” (Claudine 2013).
95
“Syempre no’ng una eh, nagagalit sila kasi ang tagal na raw nagsasama, wala naman ganyang reklamo si [Niel]
pero no’ng nag-GABRIELA na, saka lang daw nagka-lakas ng loob si [Niel] makipag-hiwalay” (Claudine 2013).

342
[she] wants to leave [Jim]… Those are different things.”
96
She recounted telling them,
Suppose it’s true… if not for GABRIELA, [Niel] would not have the courage…
But… are we going to wait for [Niel] to think, ‘I’ll pour these boiling Lucky Me [instant
noodles]’…? When he verbally abuses her, I told my cousin, [she] has a view like that…
Say it’s because of GABRIELA she gained courage… knowledge of the law… would she
still make no move? [The situation’s] too much already, she’d do something to herself.
97

She implied the abuse was at fault, and also appealed that keeping the couple together would
have worse effects. When the collective spoke with Niel’s children to explain her decision to
separate, Xian was on board right away; Claudine recalled another daughter “blamed
GABRIELA” at first, but was quickly swayed when the collective reminded her of the violence
she herself had grown up witnessing.
98

Finally, local organizers dealt with backlash from men in the community and their own
partners. Claudine said,
[Jim] was closed-minded. He didn’t like it… He said he’d kill himself if [Niel] left
him… and would leave a suicide note. He told this to my older brother and you know
men. It was super chaotic that time…
We’re not doing anything but explaining. Explaining and explaining to neighbors, to our
husbands, to our brothers, to men there. We explained it wasn’t us separating [them]...
[Niel] was the one who wanted it… Really it was good that Niel had a plan.
99

Claudine says through such dialog they were able to help others understand, and neutralize
opposition: “There were those on [Jim]’s side who, once we explained, were okay [with it];”
100

96
“Dahil nga sa GABRIELA… nauntog si [Niel] pero hindi dahil sa GABRIELA kaya hiniwalayan ni ate [Niel] si
kuya [Jim]. Magkaiba kasi ‘yon eh” (Claudine 2013).
97
“Kung totoo man… kung hindi dahil sa GABRIELA, hindi magkakaro’n ng lakas ng loob si [Niel]…. pero kasi
naman, antayin pa ba natin si [Niel] na nag-iisip na ng ‘buhusan ko kaya ‘to ng kumukulong Lucky Me’ mga
ganyan?... pag bine-verbal abuse siya. Sinabi ko yun sa pinsan ko na may ganyan nang pagtingin si [Niel]… Sabihin
na natin na lumakas ang loob niya dahil sa GABRIELA… nalaman niya ‘yung batas… magsasawalang kibo pa ba
siya? Masyado na niyang inano ‘yung sarili niya” (Claudine 2013).
98
“Sinisisi ang GABRIELA. No’ng napaliwanagan siya, OK na siya” (Claudine 2013).
99
“Sarado utak ni [Jim] eh. Ayaw niya… Magpapakamatay daw si kuya [Jim] ‘pag iniwan siya ni [Niel]. Tas meron
pang mag-iiwan daw siya ng suicide letter. Sinabi niya ‘to sa kuya ko. Eh siyempre mga lalaki. Super gulo-gulo
no’ng mga panahon na ‘yon… wala kaming ginawa kundi magpaliwanag. Magpaliwanag ng magpaliwanag sa mga
kapit-bahay, sa mga asawa namin. Sa mga kuya namin, sa mga lalaki dyaan. Nagpapaliwanag kami na hindi namin
pinag-hihiwalay… Si [Niel] ang may kagustuhan no’n… Maganda nga no’n, may plano si [Niel]” (Claudine 2013).
100
“May mga kampi kay [Jim] na kapag pinaliwanagan OK naman” (Claudine 2013).

343
she added, “of course there are others we can’t blame… who really think [Niel] is just brave
because of GABRIELA.”
101

When Niel returned, the collective helped broker a more formalized separation at the
barangay hall. They brought Jim there to meet Niel, but still he wouldn’t agree to separate.
However, Claudine recounted, “There is [Niel], brave – so we no longer had to speak… Because
[Niel] is an example that women are the ones taking a stand now… ‘I want to separate. I’m
already sick and tired of your insults.’ She’s really tough.”
102
The collective helped pressure
Jim to accede to separate living quarters, appealing that at least the two would still be in the same
neighborhood:
We’re explaining, ‘If you force [Niel] to return to you, she’ll escape and escape still.
What do you want, for [Niel] to always be [in the area], or that [she’ll] leave and you
won’t know where to?’ He said he preferred that he sees her.
That’s why he agreed to ‘separate’... But he’s still not following through on separation
because… to himself, Niel is still his wife… He still isn’t agreeing… really only [Niel’s]
the one who wants it… Till now, we settled it, they’re okay with the situation like that.
103

Given the illegality of divorce, and the inaccessibility of attaining even legal separation
especially for urban poor women, due to lengthy court processes and legal fees, Niel and her
collective negotiated their own working solution. Niel remains adamant their relationship is
over, and Jim was forced to respect Niel’s wishes regarding their different living arrangements.
Niel and Xian felt the collective’s engagement with their in-laws and community had a
positive effect. They said,

101
“Syempre ‘yung iba, hindi natin masisisi… talaga silang pag-iisip na kaya lang tumapang si [Niel] dahil sa
GABRIELA” (Claudine 2013).
102
“Eto si [Niel], matapang, kaya hindi natin masasabi na… kasi isa si [Niel] sa mga example na ang mga babae ay
may paninindigan na… ‘gusto ko na makipag-hiwalay. Sawang-sawa na ‘ko sa kaka-mura mo.’ Talagang matigas
siya eh” (Claudine 2013).
103
“Pinapaliwanag naming na pag ka pinipili si [Niel] makipag-balikan sa’yo, magla-layas at magla-layas na naman.
Anong gusto mo laging si [Niel] na nandiyan, o aalis si [Niel] nang hindi alam mo kung nasaan. Mas gusto niya
naman daw yung nikikita. Kaya pumayag na siyang makipag-separate… Pero hindi pa siya nakikipag tuluyang
separate kasi… sa sarili niya, asawa niya pa rin si [Niel]… hindi pa rin siya pumapayag… si [Niel] lang ang talaga
may gusto... Hanggang sa ngayon naayos na namin, OK na sila sa sitwasyon na gano’n” (Claudine 2013).

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Xian: It’s now they realized Papa’s wrongs, his family as well. At least now… their
sympathy went to Mama…
‘Maybe [Niel] really got fed up… It’s okay they’re separated like that, because at
least [Niel] woke up to the truth it’s cyclical, not changing...’ That’s what Papa’s
relatives said… At least now, they understand why it happened like this… There
was a lot said by his family about him…
And even now, Papa’s family is still there… There isn’t the view to ignore us…
When they have occasions… they still invite us… Christmas… New Year…
Their position is in the middle, like they don’t take sides…
104

Niel: They also don’t force me. It’s not that they invite me to ‘make the family
complete.’ It’s just, [Jim] is told to also invite [Niel] over. But, not because…
it’s a family reunion.
105

Some in-laws came to recognize the cyclical dynamics of intimate partner abuse; they
sympathetically accept, or at least tolerate, the separation without ostracizing Niel. Niel is on
good terms with a sister-in-law she “can talk to frankly.”
106
At the same time, regarding other
siblings who still favor her reuniting, Niel says, “I ignore the times they invite me to join in
merrymaking... maybe later that’s their scheme… to match-make me again” with Jim.
107

In community opinion, Niel, Xian and other organizers perceived gender divides. They
said most women sympathize with Niel, while men more often sided with Jim. Xian asserted,
On the side of the men, a few favor Papa. Those… close to him. But in women’s views
of the situation, it was consoling to get their sympathy, that what happened was only
right… Even if they’re not organized, they saw [Niel] was brave to do that. It gained
their regard.
108

104
“Ngayon nila narealize kung ano yung kamalian ni Papa pati yung pamilya niya. At least ngayon… yung
simpatiya nila ay kay Mama… ‘siguro nga napuno na si [Niel]… OK na yung ganyang pagiging separate kasi
ngayon at least nagising na si [Niel] dun sa katotohanan na, paulit-ulit, di nagbabago…’ yun yung mga sabi… ng
pamilya ni sa side ni Papa. Kaya at least ngayon, naiintindihan nila kung bakit nangyari yung ganun… Marami ring
sinabi yung pamilya niya about sa kaniya… At ngayon din, andun pa rin naman yung pamilya ni Papa… Walang
pagtingin na hindi na namamansin… kapag may mga okasyon sila, iniinvite pa rin kami… Christmas… New
Year… Nasa gitna yung pagtingin nila na parang walang kinakampihan” (Xian 2013).
105
“Saka hindi nila ako pinipilit. Hindi yung iniinvite nila ako para mabuo yung pamilya. Ano lang, yung
sinasabihan din si [Jim] na yayain din si [Niel]. Pero di porket… reunion ito ng pamilya” (Niel 2013d).
106
“Nasasabihan ko siya ng prangka” (Niel 2013d).
107
“Dinededma ko lang kapagka ganun na niyayaya ako na magkasiyahan… Baka mamaya yung iskema nila na
gagawin... irereto ulit ako” (Niel 2013d).
108
“Yung side ng mga lalaki, mayrong kaunting pagpabor kay Papa. Yun yung mga… malalapit sa kaniya. Pero dun
sa pagtingin dun sa sitwasyon ng babae, consoling yung pagkuha ng sympathy dun na tama lang yung nangyaring
ganun… kahit na di sila organized pero andyan nakita nila na matapang si [Niel] na nagawa yung ganung ano,
nagain yung paghanga nila” (Xian 2013).

345
Xian felt even women who were not GABRIELA members approved. She added, “They even
blame Papa… Say, ‘it’s okay things happened like that… his wife finally woke up.’ I hear
things like that… it’s like their concern is Mama.”
109
Meanwhile, Niel described being treated as
having a certain notoriety in the community: “Some people… when I pass by there, they go, ‘Uy,
[Niel] is heeeere.’ I reply, ‘Why? Is it not allowed?’… People I know tease like that. But they
know there’s no way we’ll get back together.”
110

Even as sentiment in their neighborhood increasingly supports challenging those who
physically abuse their partners, actually separating continues to carry stigma. GABRIELA
organizers were not necessarily able to reverse these dominant attitudes, but they did succeed in
creating a more supportive web of relationships for Niel. Niel’s collective stressed the
importance of engaging and patiently influencing community members. Claudine recounted,
At first, I get annoyed at people who judge easily, who don’t try to understand first before
blaming other people… but I say maybe they’re like I also was before, without
awareness… my annoyance fades and I just explain it to them.
111

She asserted, “We did was right, step by step... If the same problem happened again to [Niel],
we would do that again.”
112

4.5 Interdependence
Organizers often invoked an ethic of what I term ‘relational interdependence,’ when
describing both the kind of interpersonal relations they aspired towards, as well as how to get

109
“Kahit sila sinisisi nila si Papa... Na OK na yung nangyaring ganun, at least nagising na yung asawa niya. Mga
ganun, yung naririnig ko... parang ang concern naman nila si Mama” (Xian 2013).
110
“Yung ibang tao, kapag naligaw ako diyan, sasabihin, ‘Uy, nandiyan na si [Niel].’ Sasabihin ko, ‘Bakit bawal
ba?’… Ganong biro ng mga kakilala ko. Pero alam na nila na wala na sa proseso na magkakabalikan kami” (2013d).
111
“Pakiramdam ko una, parang naaasar ako kadalasan sa mga tao na humuhusga agad. Hindi muna nila alamin
bago manisi ng ibang tao... pero sinasabi ko baka katulad ko rin sila dati; walang-alam, nawawala din ‘yung parang
asar ko tapos nagpa-paliwanag na lang din ako sila” (Claudine 2013).
112
“Ginawa talaga namin step by step ayon sa tama… Kung mangyayari ulit ‘yung same problem kay [Niel],
gagawin namin ulit ‘yon” (Claudine 2013).

346
there. How they envisioned justice in interpersonal relations was often built around values of
mutuality and collective support. Some organizers explicitly contrasted their ideals of
transformative interdependence to visions of liberation based on individualism and ‘selfishness.’
Instead, they articulated their own rights as always already imbricated with the rights of others –
emphasizing how individuals coexist in relation to each other. Rather than conceiving of their
rights in a vacuum, they defined their own rights in terms of the need to respect others’ rights.
When discussing what egalitarian relations in the family should look like, Niel
commented, “Knowing your rights is… you know how to respect each other’s rights” (2013c).
She explained justice in the family meant changed relations from those of absolute authority and
hierarchy, to ones of mutual respect, not only between husbands and wives, but between parents
and children, as well. As part of asserting their own rights at home as women, GABRIELA
members sought to relate to and discipline their children in a different way.
Still, recognizing unequal power relations, organizers applied logics of interdependency
to argue that justice requires actively defending the rights of the oppressed. For example,
speaking of the need to side with the oppressed against exploitation, Shey, an officer in
Muntinlupa, asserted, “Remind them [the powerholders] that they shouldn’t just focus on their
own rights, all of us each have rights.”
113
She affirmed those who have been abused have the
right to defend themselves. Through a more radically democratic interdependence, GABRIELA
organizers sought to challenge collective relations governed by feudal hierarchy, and demand
accountability.
Organizers’ relationally interdependent approach invokes cultural norms and practices
that value interdependence over individualism. But such ‘cultural’ norms are neither fixed nor

113
“Palalahanan na hindi lang nakapokus sa isa ang karapatan nila, lahat tayo may karapatan sari-sarili” (Shey
2013).

347
robotically applied. ‘Culture’ should not be essentialized as a set of deterministic traits
controlling a society’s workings; it is itself inflected by power relations and inequalities. I argue
how organizers have drawn upon existing values partly reflects webs of power, including
limitations on their leverage to transform a status quo of inequalities; as well as GABRIELA’s
political ideology of ‘comprehensive’ organizing, that seeks to include poor men – and win over
perpetrators of interpersonal gendered violence among them – as allies. Still, I suggest that at
best, an ethic of relational interdependence, combined with accountability, offers an inclusive
vision of transformation that focuses on changing the balance of power in relationships, rather
than assuming individual liberation outside a collective context is possible.
In one example of organizers’ relational approach to justice, Shey described helping a
fellow GABRIELA officer who had been physically and sexually harassed by a drunk highway
police patrolman, while she worked as a food vendor. Shey accompanied her kasama to file a
complaint at the barangay’s women’s desk. However, the policeman’s wife intervened, begging
the woman not to jail him, because their children depended on him. The GABRIELA officer
decided not to pursue a case; she merely had the policeman sign an agreement not to do it again.
Shey expressed her commitment to providing support in VAWC cases: “I’m happy
because I can help my fellow [person] not be hurt again.”
114
Describing her feelings about the
above situation’s outcome, she said, “I’m happy also, because I saw how [she] is more… she
loves her family most.”
115
Shey explained further,
If it wasn’t for her love for her family, she wouldn’t have agreed to the settlement. She
wouldn’t have looked at that kid… She told [me]… ‘Ate… I really don’t like this… I
was sexually harassed, but ate, I feel sorry for the child’… The child cried… when

114
“Masaya kasi nakatulong ako nang kapwa ko na hindi na siya masasaktan ulit” (Shey 2013).
115
“Masaya rin ako kasi nakita ko yung ano ni [S] na… mas maano siya, she loves her family most” (Shey 2013).

348
[she/he] saw [his/her] papa being jailed.
116

On the one hand, Shey and her kasama’s reactions arise in the context of the widespread
impunity of state authorities and police for crimes they commit; and perhaps they merely adapt
to or cope with this situation, rather than significantly transform it. Their responses also reflect
women’s disproportionate, gendered responsibility for holding together family relations,
regardless of the violence they have experienced. But at the same time, Shey and her kasama’s
ethic of relational interdependence can be seen as a harm reduction approach to a criminal justice
system that would still perpetuate gendered violence, even while doling out ‘justice’ through
incarceration. Their responses reflect the social reality of women’s gendered economic
dependence on male breadwinners.
In contrast, however, for other high profile cases of egregious sexual violence and
killings committed by U.S. or Philippine military personnel, state agents, and corrupt
powerholders, GABRIELA has publicly campaigned for harsh consequences including full legal
prosecution and incarceration.
117
The positionality of the perpetrator, and structural inequality
surrounding the abuse, matters. Rather than eschewing disciplinary consequences or punitive
action altogether, organizers treated these as tools to shift power relations; they were not adverse
to severe penalties if unequal relations were extreme.
Still, organizers’ relational interdependence facilitated combining a commitment to back
the oppressed, with ‘comprehensive’ organizing of oppressed communities broadly defined
(especially around class-based centers of gravity). Shey echoed others in her description of
GABRIELA’s scope:

116
“Kung hindi dahil doon sa… pagmamahal niya sa pamilya niya, at saka hindi siya papayag din na
magpasettlement. Hindi niya nakita yung bata… inano niya… ‘te, isip talaga ‘to ayoko talagang... binastos ako, pero
te naawa ako sa bata’… umiyak yung bata eh. Kumbaga nakita niya yung papa niya na nakakulong eh” (Shey 2013).
117
E.g., regarding the murder of Jennifer Laude, and gang rape of ‘Nicole,’ by U.S. troops; see Chapter 3.

349
In GABRIELA, whether you’re a woman, man, child, if you get abused, we’ll defend
you… We won’t look at just one side but all… You won’t be looked down upon when
you are down already… All people, each one of us has the right to defend ourselves.
118

GABRIELA’s comprehensive organizing – both in terms of engaging whole communities, and
taking on gendered violence in connection to a broader, radical social change agenda – reinforces
and draws from values of relational interdependence.
119

When both perpetrators and victims of abuse were GABRIELA members, organizers
appeared to take this into account. As described in Chapter 5, Gabby provided assistance to a
teenager who was physically assaulted, as well as to the gay youth who had assaulted her, and
was also a victim of violence. In a case in Muntinlupa, involving a family who threatened and
harassed a teenaged girl in their neighborhood, where both parties were GABRIELA members,
organizers at first hoped to urge the perpetrators to apologize, and see if the victim’s family
would accept the apology without pursuing a case. Nevertheless, when the perpetrators failed to,
the organizers left the decision up to the victim, and stood ready to support her in her
complaint
120
– demonstrating nuances of pursuing a survivor-centered approach while
accounting for broader concerns. As discussed, organizers were sometimes encouraged to view
their interpersonal struggles within a hierarchy of movement-building priorities.
Now that she and her mother live separatedly from her father, Xian commented, “It’s not
that I am taking away his right as father. I want him to respect what I want.”
121
She elaborated,
I am of age, I know what’s right and wrong…
We know you love us as your children, but it’s choking us…
Yes, it’s the case you’re our father and we value all you should say – but it’s also

118
“Dito sa GABRIELA wala naman mababae, malalaki, mabata lahat pag inaabuso ka ipagtatanggol ka… wala
naman ano tiitingnan na isang side lang kumbaga lahat… hindi pala… na purkit nadown kana talagang mas more
ilookdown ka pa… lahat ng tao na bawat isa sa atin may karapatan na ipagtanggol ang sarili nila” (Shey 2013).
119
I observed organizers who vented frustrations about abusive husbands also humanize them, noting positive traits
and contributions to organizing.
120
The teen pursued her case at the barangay level, and the parties settled before it became a legal case in court.
121
“Hindi sa inaalisan ko siya ng karapatan bilang isang ama, gusto kong irespeto niya anong kagustuhgan ko”
(Xian 2013).

350
sickening and tiring you always decide. That we have no rights as part of your family.
122

Xian argued for her own rights while continuing to respectfully recognize her father’s role.
Clear, a member of Niel’s collective, described her position towards Niel’s separation
from Jim this way:
I also understand [Niel] because she has something in her attitude… I’m just trying to
get along – it’s necessary and her husband is also my uncle…
In the collective [we] talked… We were united… Each was asked… Our answer was,
‘It’s okay that they don’t get back together,’ from each and every one…
Because, we also saw it was okay for [Jim] they not be separated, ay, [corrects herself]
that they will be separated, since she’s just here. They would also see each other.
So, they are not allowed to be together.
123

Clear’s somewhat contradictory speech reflected Niel’s and Jim’s lack of absolute separation,
since they see each other regularly living in the same neighborhood; and how these entangled
relations manifested an ongoing clash between the two parties’ opposing hopes. In effect, Jim
has actively inserted himself into Niel’s daily routines, by volunteering with GABRIELA or
bringing her food (which Niel said she views as attempts to win her back).
Nevertheless, despite condoning their continued contact, Clear affirmed,
It’s just right… they should talk like that only… I also don’t want them to get back
together… If they [do], she’ll again be held by the neck like before… ‘You cannot
leave…! You just stay here’… It’s enough, they should really not get back together.
124

Clear favored the separation, adding she desired to support Niel’s own decision. At the same
time, her earlier justification – that arrangements also respected Jim’s desire to still be in contact

122
“Kasi nasa edad ako, alam ko kung anong tama at mali… Yung alam naman naming mahal mo kami bilang anak
mo kami, pero nakakasakal... oo andun sa punto na tatay ka namin at pinapahalagahan namin lahat ng dapat mong
sabihin pero nakakasawa at nakakapagod din na ikaw yung laging nasusunod. Na wala yung mga karapatan namin
bilang isang pamilya mo” (Xian 2013).
123
“Naiintindihan ko din naman yung tiyahin ko kasi may ugali din siya na ano... Nakikisama lang ako, kailangan
saka tiyuhin ko naman ang asawa niya e… Napagusapan naman sa kolektibo... nagkaisa kami… Bawat isa sa amin
tinatanong kami… ang sagot namin na ‘ok lang naman na hindi sila magkabalikan’ isa isa siya… Kasi nakitaan din
naman namin na OK lang naman din sa lalaki na… hindi sila magkahiwalay, ay, magkahiwalay sila kasi andito lang
naman siya. Magkikita rin naman sila e. Kaya hindi pwede sila magsama” (Clear 2013b).
124
“Tama lang din sana na… mag-usap sila na ganun lang… ayaw ko din magkabalikan sila… kung magkabalikan
sila, hawak nanaman siya sa leeg kasi kagaya dati… ‘hindi ka pwede aali…! Dito ka lang’… Tama na sana yung di
sila magkabalikan talaga” (Clear 2013b).

351
– drew on prevalent logics and circulated because it held some sway.
For her part, Niel is adamant about separation:
I’ve already put a period on it… It’s better when you’re free, like no one controls you…
Really, ‘It’s too late to apologize’ [singing]… I gave so many chances…
Respect should take primacy. It’s not just taking care of you, remembering you… You’re
doing this because you want something in return from me. Not anymore. Because when
you’re drunk, I will be the one you do things to. I’m fed up with that.
125

She discussed their ongoing dynamic: “He always says I shouldn’t deprive him of my children.
‘Alright, tomorrow, you bring food here;’”
126
she implied she is lenient or accomodating.
Niel and Xian both noted GABRIELA’s influence on Jim, but repeatedly stated they
don’t feel he has taken full responsibility for his abusive behavior or fundamentally changed
those tendencies. For instance, he continues to blame others. Niel remarked,
Now, I can’t tell if his getting active [with GABRIELA] is because he understands or…
is [just] trying to impress me… It looks more like to impress me… [or] to say, ‘That’s
my wife there, my wife is a GABRIELA.’
No... I won’t be the one to [influence] you. Don’t just do it to impress [others]…
I said, ‘You will be the one to change yourself, not me.’
127

She was skeptical of Jim’s support for GABRIELA and the extent to which he has internalized
different values.
Yet Jim is now an ally of GABRIELA, a significant shift from previous dynamics when
he actively sought to prevent Niel’s involvement. Relations have transformed, even if Jim’s
genuine personal transformation remains elusive, and beyond the capacity as well as priorities of
local organizers. Xian observed GABRIELA helped at least create breathing room:

125
“Ako tinutuldukan ko na… mas maganda na malaya ka eh, parang walang nagkokontrol sayo… sabi ko nga ‘too
late apologize, its loo late’… andami ko nang chance… mas nanaig yung respeto dapat. Hindi lang naman doon sa
pag-asikaso sayo, pag-alala sayo… ginagawa mo ito, dahil may kapalit kang hangarin sa akin. Hindi e, kasi pag
nakainom ka, ako naman ang aanuhin mo. Nagsasawa na ako sa ganon” (Niel 2013a).
126
“Lagi’t lagi niyang sinasabe wag ko raw ipagkait sa kaniya mga anak ko, ‘Sige bukas ka, magdala ka ng pagkain
diyan’” (Niel 2013a).
127
“Ngayon hindi ko masabi na ang pagiging active niya ay dahil naunawaan niya o… sakin nagpapa-impress.
Parang mas ganun pa yung impression ko eh…. para masabi na ‘Nandiyan yung asawa ko eh, GABRIELA yung
asawa ko eh.’ Hindi.... Hindi naman ako ang mag-aano diyan sa sarili mo. Hindi yung nagpapa-impress ka lang…
Sabi ko, ‘Ikaw naman ang magbabago sa sarili mo, hindi naman ako’” (Niel 2013a).

352
Now that you’ve been organized, you very much feel where you’ve come… There’s
your father, who recognizes your rights as a daughter. Because he knows – and we very
much know – our rights. And, because he’s also organized… He’s had some educational
discussions, too, he balances what he is supposed to do…
He’s not left behind… Even he will watch out how he should act.
128

At the same time, Xian underscored the difference between personal and relational
transformation, as well as the continued importance of collective support:
For him it’s like they’re still together... that’s only in his perception… But since the
collective is here, guarding for Mama, to support her whatever Papa does… now, the
situation is better. GABRIELA is also there to support with what help is needed.
129

Local organizers often did not have the capacity to completely transform those perpetrating
abuse; but short of this, they shifted balances of power. Along similar lines, another Quezon
City organizer, Mercedes, commented: “Sometimes, you really just can’t change a person but
what society gives you can be changed. You can make a change.”
130

Organizers’ on-the-ground experience suggests first steps of transformation can usefully
center upon practical shifts in power relations. Transformation is a collective process involving
personal change, especially over time, but organizers did not necessarily focus strategies around
the expectation we can be new people overnight. Likewise, organizers effectively met survivors
where they were: one need not already live a drama-free, violence-free life, in order to be a
‘Gabriela.’ Rather, organizers suggested, empowerment can only be a constant struggle and
process rather than end state, as long as systemic and structural violence remain; collective

128
“Ngayong na-organize ka, sobrang ramdam mo na, asa’n ka ngayon. Na andyan na yung tatay mo na kinikilala na
niya ano yung karapatan mo bilang isang anak. Kasi alam niya na e, alam niya na at alam na alam na namin kung
ano yung rights namin. At dahil siya ay na-organize naman na din… may mga pag-aaral naman na ding nakuha,
binabalanse niya na, anong dapat niya lang gawin… hindi na siya magpapahuli… kahit siya tinitingnan niya na,
yung mga dapat niyang ikilos” (Xian 2013).
129
“Para sa kaniya parang sila pa rin… Sa kaniyang pagtingin na lang yun. Pero dahil andito naman ang collective
nagbabantay rin para kay Mama. Para sumupport din sa kaniya kung ano mang gawin ni Papa… mas OK ngayon
yung sitwasyon. Andyan lang naman yung Gab para sumupport din kung ano pa yung may kailangan” (Xian 2013).
130
“Minsan hindi mo na talaga mababago ang isang tao pero parang binibigay ng lipunan sayo na pwedeng
magbago. Pwedeng makapagpabago” (Mercedes 2013).

353
struggle in the movement is empowerment. When individuals fell short, organizers considered
the balance of relational and structural forces. Shifting these, including in a manner exacting
costs on perpetrators, could pave the way for inclusion in movement-building on new terms.

5. Building Community Engagement
Local organizers have fostered active intervention against abuse by the wider community.
GABRIELA’s members have involved local residents to win protections beyond those under the
law, partially reclaiming the state and defining the law for themselves from the ground up.
Focusing especially on my Quezon City site, I discuss how GABRIELA’s influence differs from
prior patterns of response to domestic conflicts in its closely-knit communities; examples of
broader community engagement against VAW; and community impacts.

5.1 Redefining ‘Public’
GABRIELA’s direct actions against domestic violence build upon pre-existing practices
of community involvement in disputes – practices woven into the fabric of urban poor residents’
interconnected daily lives, in close quarters. Interviewees recounted that Metro Manila
neighborhoods they had lived in varied, with regard to residents’ reactions to domestic conflict:
in many areas, such violence was ignored, but in some communities neighbors were accustomed
to trying to stop incidents that could escalate into serious physical harm. Chapters where I
conducted fieldwork also exhibited differences between them: in my Quezon City sites,
neighborhoods already had a baseline of tight kinship and active engagement; in contrast to
residents living on the lake in Muntinlupa, who were more newly settled and generally felt
intimidated from getting involved.
Yet my interviews illustrated how the activities of GABRIELA organizers deviated from

354
already existing practices of intervention. In comparison, GABRIELA organizers engaged in
contestations to redefine notions of public and private, stretching the appropriate degree of
involvement and support for survivors. For instance, DIEGO members explained to me that
even prior to GABRIELA’s organizing, men in the community regularly broke up domestic
fights. Given their community’s tight kinship relations and interconnectedness, they were
concerned that if someone was injured, a dispute might escalate into a broader conflict, as others
took sides or retaliated. Their goal was to prevent disturbance and widening discord; but as one
interviewee commented, “[You] can still fight in bed, we won’t apprehend it.”
131
By
implication, those conflicts that remained contained within the ‘private’ realm, did not
necessitate others’ meddling. The DIEGO member elaborated, “When it’s a family problem, it’s
hard to meddle there. But when it’s no longer [just] a family problem, you should break it up”
(2013).
132
Such an approach puts the burden on survivors to endure violence until it becomes
impossible to ignore as a community issue, because it threatens to draw in other people.
In contrast, GABRIELA organizers sought to actively connect with survivors and take
their cue from whether survivors sought support, regardless of whether the violence occurred
privately or furtively. They campaigned that VAWC is already a public issue. They challenged
not only physical violence, but forms of VAW such as sexual harassment, emotional abuse, and
financial neglect. Due to political priorities, capacity limitations, as well as community opinion,
GABRIELA members were still influenced by the extent to which ‘domestic’ problems became
unavoidable and thus ‘public.’
133
Yet organizers’ wider and survivor-centered understanding of

131
“Pwede pa away sa kama di kami aawat” (DIEGO 2013).
132
“Kapag family problem, mahirap ang makialam diyan. Pero kapag hindi na family problem, umawat ka na.”
133
E.g., one organizer redoubled efforts to encourage a survivor to report battery to the barangay after her partner
disrupted her workplace; her employer also reported him. Domestic violence might become a crisis necessitating
GABRIELA members’ response, when it interfered with urban poor women’s ability to participate politically.

355
‘public’ meant they intervened whether survivors made their condition ‘public’ by going to the
barangay, or simply asking for help – and they insisted survivors should have these recourses.

5.2 Community Participation in Direct Action and Local Campaigns
Efforts at wider community engagement were at times geared at publicizing and
enforcing the law. For instance, when a VAW Response Team was established in another
Muntinlupa neighborhood in 2013, its first activity was a postering campaign about the Anti-
VAWC law. But with heightened participation, other possibilities opened.
GABRIELA organizers turned egregious local instances of VAW into opportunities for
community education and mobilization, using these to establish footholds for VAW Response
Teams and local organizing machinery. As noted, in Manresa, organizers helped lead a
campaign following the 2007 murder of a local resident by her partner;
134
the local chapter held
awareness-raising forums, VAWC trainings,
135
and demonstrations, resulting the establishment
of VAW desks in its barangay and others. In Muntinlupa, after a young girl was sexually
assaulted by a military serviceman in 2012, staff from the National Office conducted a VAWC
orientation in her neighborhood, and offered the family legal and counseling services; organizers
activated a local VAW Response Team, and encouraged members to counter shaming of the
victim, including by talking to their children about what had happened (e.g., Greta 2013).
In my Quezon City site, organizers mobilized a growing number of local GABRIELA
members in response to several sexual assaults of children during the late 2000s. Around 2007,
local organizers and officers attended to a case of child sexual abuse repeatedly perpetrated by a
barangay official (Matet 2013; Rosa 2013). Initially, the child’s grandmother approached

134
Nida, the daughter of a GABRIELA member. See also (Manglalan et al. 2010, 13).
135
Both with the National Office’s assistance and afterwards through local organizers.

356
GABRIELA organizers, who helped arrest the official; but a policeman relative bailed him out of
jail the next day, and he escaped prosecution. Afterwards, local organizers provided counseling
to the child. (Following this incident, the National Office conducted VAWC trainings with more
local organizers, which aided in increasing community engagement.)
In roughly 2009, another family discovered their child was repeatedly sexually assaulted
by a neighbor. Relatives first approached the barangay, but when officials did not take action,
they solicited GABRIELA’s help. As organizers met with the barangay the next day,
GABRIELA members texted one another to guard the entrances of the community and prevent
the perpetrator’s escape. According to Rosa, the members decided so of their own initiative,
facilitating his arrest. The perpetrator was held three days, but released on procedural grounds
when the case was sent to ‘preliminary investigation.’ He then fled to the provinces.
Afterwards, Claudine recalls the family distanced themselves from GABRIELA, saying they no
longer wanted to pursue a legal case because of length and cost. However, she heard from
neighbors the perpetrator had bribed the relatives before leaving. After yet another child rape
case in 2010, Claudine said the perpetrator now remains in jail; she thought the barangay carried
out this arrest because they feared GABRIELA would rally (Rosa 2013; Claudine 2013).
136

Over these same years, organizers in the above neighborhood developed local members’
capacity to serve as advocates regarding domestic violence at the barangay. Claudine explained,
Sometimes for simple fights… they still knock on my door… But now, they are the ones
who go directly to the barangay. Other members will go… though it’s a couple’s fight.
Maybe they already know I’m busy… they already know what to do.
137

She discussed their increasing pressure on the barangay to respond:

136
Claudine felt GABRIELA has helped deter child sexual abuse, as after 2010, local organizers didn’t hear of other
incidents. (Considering high abuse rates, though, it is possible such violence was driven further underground.)
137
“Minsan, ‘yung kadalasan… ‘yung simpleng away na lang… sa akin pa minsan kumakatok eh. Pero sila ngayon,
sila mismo ang pumupunta sa barangay. ‘Yung ibang members ang pumupunta… kahit away-mag-asawa. Siguro
alam nila sa sobrang busy… Kasi alam naman nila kung ano’ng dapat gawin eh” (Claudine 2013).

357
When the organizers and members here hadn’t taken trainings yet, it was still [an external
organizer] who [negotiated] at the barangay, that women shouldn’t be abused because
there’s a law… But when we already had training… we just did it, even without [her].
Just us, the organizers and kasamas and other members… to help women seeking help.
138

She added that officers in neighboring chapters now handle cases, too.
In this barangay, organizers described increasing community backing when they
intervened against domestic violence. Rosa recounted that in 2007, local residents took her side
when a violent husband threatened to shoot her for assisting his wife with emergency shelter.
GABRIELA members decided to have him blottered. They and residents confronted him, saying
if he ever hurt Rosa, they all lived in the neighborhood so he should “just try it” because he
“didn’t know who” he was dealing with (Rosa 2013).
139

Claudine recalled what she termed a ‘community arrest,’ that neighbors helped carry out
in 2008, after GABRIELA organizers encouraged a battered woman to report her husband:
People here got fed up… because he beats his wife and he’s noisy… Besides that, he
brought over his mistress… When his wife caught him… people here stepped in.
We said, ‘Come [Kate], report it to the barangay… That’s really abuse. You’re so very
quiet. Respect yourself, too…’ So she reported it, with [GABRIELA organizers]…
They brought the barangay tanods back here...
‘Hoy…!’ the neighbors called [to the husband]. ‘Come out now… the tanods are here.
Talk in the barangay hall, because you’re always hurting your wife.’
140

But when he stepped out, he tried to assault his wife for filing a complaint. Claudine said,

The first to restrain him were the women here. They said, ‘Hoy… always hurting your
wife. You’re really the one already at fault, and still you’re hurting her?’…

138
“No’ng wala pa… training ‘yung mga organizer at member… dito, dati si [T] pa ‘yung nag-aano sa barangay, na
hindi dapat saktan ang babae dahil may batas… Pero no’ng nagkakaro’n na kami ng training… kami na lang, kahit
wala na si [T]. Kami na lang mga organizer at kasama pa ‘yung ibang member… para matulungan ‘yung mga babae
na humihingi ng tulong” (Claudine 2013).
139
“Subukan mo lang;” “di mo kilala ung ano.” According to Rosa, the residents were drinking outside with him
when he made the threat; they told GABRIELA members but also directly challenged him.
140
“Ang mga tao dito ay napuno… dahil binubugbog niya ‘yung asawa niya at naiingayan na rin… bukod pa doon,
nagdala siya ng babae dyaan… no’ng nahuli siya ng asawa niya… nakialam ‘yung mga tao dito. Ang sabi namin,
‘Halika na [Kate], mag-sumbong ka na sa barangay… abuso na talaga ‘yan. Napaka-tahimik mo naman. Igalang mo
rin naman sarili mo...’ Nagsumbong naman siya kasama with [GABRIELA organizers]… Nagdala na sila ng
barangay tanod dito… ‘Hoy!’… sabi no’ng mga kapitbahay, ‘Lumabasa ka na… andito na yung mga… tanod. Mag-
usap kayo sa barangay dahil lagi mong sinasaktan ‘yung asawa mo.’” (Claudine 2013).

358
Then my older brother… and other men said… ‘Go ahead, try to hurt her, we’ll fight
you… You’re shameless, you actually brought your mistress over… you’re still going to
hurt her?’… That silenced him.
[He] refused to go to the barangay, so what the men did is they pulled him. ‘Get in the
vehicle! Go talk in the barangay!’... the men did like that…
That’s what they call a ‘community arrest.’
141

Taking the lead of local women, residents got him into the vehicle despite his struggling.
GABRIELA’s organizing has helped redefine the circumstances under which community
members are willing to intervene. For instance, organizers helped foster community support for
the implementation of protection orders issued at the barangay level. Claudine recounted how
they and residents took direct action to back up a GABRIELA member seeking a protection
order, in 2009 or 2010:
The beatings were too much… She ran to the barangay, where [another GABRIELA
member] was incidentally there for a children’s workshop… He’s still fighting [Wendy]
in the barangay, pushing… [The GABRIELA member] intervened, ‘Kuya, don’t hurt
her… When you’re here in the barangay, just talk.’
142

The organizers made sure the barangay issued a protection order:

[Niel] called me… [Wendy] wanted to file a complaint… [but] the tanods were saying…
‘It’s just a couple’s fight.’ We went there, we told the barangay… ‘Even if it’s a couple’s
fight, the woman got hurt. He does it again and again.’ We said, ‘Now, all the woman
wants is to rest. Don’t let her husband go near her first. Will you make her a TRO
[temporary restraining order]?’…
Maybe since… we introduced ourselves as GABRIELA… they agreed. They explained
to the man… ‘The TRO means you can’t go near her for 15 days. You can’t enter your
house.’ The man was furious: ‘Why can’t I enter our house?’
[We said,] ‘Though that’s your house, it’s also your obligation to provide shelter for your
wife and… kids, so you should be the one to leave’… He accepted.
143

141
“Unang umawat ‘yung mga babae dito, sabi nila, ‘Hoy… Lagi mong sinasaktan ‘yung asawa mo. Ikaw na nga
‘tong may ginawang kasalanan, ikaw pa ‘tong nananakit.’… Eh etong kuya ko… at ‘yung iba pang mga lalaki,
‘yung nagsabi na… ‘sige subukan mong saktan ‘yan, kami makakalaban mo… kapal ng mukha mo, ikaw na nga
‘tong nagdala ng babae, ikaw pa ‘tong nananakit?’… Do’n na nanahimik. Ayaw sumakay sa barangay ni [J], kaya
ang ginawa no’ng mga lalaki, hinila nila. ‘Sumakay ka na! do’n kayo mag-usap sa barangay.’ … Ginaganyan siya
ng mga lalaki. ‘Yun ‘yung sinasabi na ‘community arrest’” (Claudine 2013).
142
“Grabe na ‘yung pambubugbog sa kaniya… Tumakbo siya sa barangay, eh nagkataon na parang andudoon si
[M]. May workshop do’n ang children... inaaway pa nga rin si [Wendy] sa barangay, tinutulak... [M] na, ‘Kuya,
‘wag mo namang saktan. ‘Pag andito na kayo sa barangay, pag-usapan na lang’” (Claudine 2013).
143
“Edi pinatawag ako ni [Niel]… gusto daw mag-reklamo kaso ‘yung mga tanod daw eh parang inaano… ‘away
asawa lang ‘yan.’ Edi pinuntahan namin, sinabihan naming ‘yung barangay na… ‘kahit away-magasawa lang ‘yan,

359
But immediately after, the husband returned to their house and entered. Onlookers responded,
and in the exchange outside, GABRIELA members justified the protection order to local men:
[Wendy] and people said, ‘Oy… You can’t enter... You have a TRO now’…
The men around asked, ‘What’s a TRO?’
We were outside, and we were really noisy. We explained the TRO…
The men said, ‘There’s really something like that? Hey [Ben]! You can’t enter there for
15 days. If you don’t follow that TRO, you can be imprisoned.’
He didn’t want [to heed them]… They said, ‘Go on, if you hurt [Wendy], we’ll fight
you. You’re so noisy, causing a disturbance. You’re always hurting her’…

Then some men said, ‘Hey, if they separate and don’t see each other for 15 days, how
will they feed their children? [Ben’s] the one working.’
[We said], ‘It’s still his obligation to sustain his wife even if he has a TRO.’
The men said, ‘That’s really unfair… You send him away, then you’re still seeking
financial support’…
We explained… it could happen to them, their child… It’s not unfair because… women
are getting beaten by their husbands.
You, if your wife beats you, you can file a complaint… ‘physical injury’… ‘Oh, you
can…?’ We were very noisy that day.
144

The local organizers not only ensured the barangay administered the protection order, but then
sought to neutralize the opposition of men in the community. Rosa recalled that after a week,
before the order completely expired, Wendy decided to let her husband live with her again.
Nevertheless, local organizers took leadership in carrying out advocacy and involving their

sinasaktan pa rin ‘yung babae. Paulit-ulit niyang ginagawa ‘yan,’ sabi namin. ‘Ngayon, ang gusto lang naman no’ng
babae, ang makapag-pahinga siya. ‘Wag munang lumapit ‘yung asawa niya. Pwede bang anuhan mo siya ng
TRO?’... siguro dahil… nagpakilala kaming GABRIELA, oh sige. Pinaliwanag sa lalaki na… ‘TRO na ibig sabihin
na within 15 days, di ka pwede lumapit sa kaniya. ‘Di ka pwedeng pumasok sa bahay niyo.’ Edi nagalit ‘yung lalaki,
‘Bakit hindi ako pwede pumasok sa bahay… namin ‘yun?’ ‘Kahit pa bahay niyo ‘yon, obligasyon mo pa rin na
patirahin ang asawa mo at… mga anak… kaya ikaw na lang ang aalis’… Pumayag naman yung lalaki” (2013).
144
“Ang sabi naman ni [Wendy] at ‘yung mga tao do’n, ‘Oy… ‘Di ka pwedeng pumasok... Meron ka na ngang
TRO’… Sabi no’ng mga lalaki, ‘ano ba ibig sabihin ng TRO?’ Nasa labas kami, ang ingay-ingay namin.
Pinaliwanag namin ‘yung TRO… Sabi ng mga lalaki, ‘meron palang gano’n? Hoy [Ben]! 15 days kang bawal
pumasok dyan. ‘Pag hindi mo sundin ‘yang TRO na ‘yan, pwede ka makulong.’ Eh ayaw, makulet. Ang sabing
gano’n, ‘Sige, ‘pag sinaktan mo ‘yang si [Wendy], kami nang makakalaban mo. Ingay-ingay niyo, nakaka-istorbo na
kayo. Lagi ka na lang nananakit’… Tapos may mga lalaking nagsasabi, ‘oh, paghi-hiwalayin niyo, hindi sila
magkikita within 15 days, pa’nong pagkain no’ng mga bata? Eh si [Ben] ang nagta-trabaho.’ ‘Obligasyon niya pa
ring sustentuhan ‘yung mag-iina niya kahit may TRO siya.’ Sabi no’ng mga lalaki, ‘napaka-unfair naman…
Pinaalis-alis niyo, tas ngayon nanghihingi kayo ng sustento’… Pinaliwanag naman namin. Na pwedeng mangyari
‘yon sa kanila, sa anak nila... Hindi ‘yon unfair, basta may… mga babaeng nabubugbog ng mga asawa. Kayo, kung
binugbog kayo ng asawa niyo pwede naman kayong mag-reklamo… Physical injury… ‘Ah, pwede ba ‘yon?’ Ang
ingay-ingay namin no’ng araw na ‘yon” (Claudine 2013).

360
community in direct action, to defend its implementation. Protection orders have gained some
acceptance; men I interviewed in DIEGO supported their use and GABRIELA’s assistance in
helping survivors attain them.
Furthermore, organizers helped to actualize, a more generous interpretation of barangay
protection orders (BPOs), than the Anti-VAWC Act itself strictly provides for. As noted in
Chapter 4, BPOs are not explicitly mandated to order a perpetrator to stay away or leave the
house, but only to desist from violence, threats, and communication. Securing a court order is
necessary for addressing issues of housing, child custody and more; whereas BPOs were defined
as a more short-term, emergency recourse with less teeth. Nevertheless, implementation
practices vary. GABRIELA’s organizing has allowed urban poor women to redefine for
themselves the kind of protections they would find useful through BPOs.
Throughout Metro Manila, local GABRIELA organizers have succeeded in enforcing and
mobilizing support for maintaining distance, and requiring perpetrators to leave the house,
through BPOs. Organizers argued that under the Anti-VAWC Act, partners are obligated not to
financially neglect their families, so that in cases of abuse, they should leave the home, not
survivors. In Tondo, Ella reported organizers were able to use BPOs to secure housing for the
survivor only in cases where she pays the rent or owns it; whereas in the above example from
Quezon City, organizers pressured to have the restraining order restrict the perpetrator from the
house, even though he was financially responsible.
145
BPOs can be issued locally and require no
fees, while going to court is often inaccessible and prohibitive for urban poor women. In effect,
GABRIELA organizers extended safety to urban poor women who otherwise would not be able
to avail such protection. Arguably, by removing the perpetrator of abuse from the house,

145
Private communications, Ella and Niel, November 26, 2015.

361
organizers effectively used BPOs to enforce a physical buffer for the survivor, apart from
sending him to jail.
146
(Interestingly, the above community interventions in Niel’s
neighborhood, around apprehending perpetrators and enforcing BPOs, took place
chronologically before her collective’s social and material support of her separation.)

5.3 Community Impacts
Interviewees in Quezon City, Tondo, and Muntinlupa all described how GABRIELA’s
reputation is itself wielded as a threat by survivors of domestic abuse, including children against
their abusive parents. Mercedes asserted that in her Quezon City neighborhood, women “are the
ones warning now, ‘Go ahead, if you hurt me, you’ll answer to GABRIELA.’ They’re the ones
threatening their husbands”
147
directly. In Tondo, a resident said her neighbor’s teen reported
her father to the barangay for physical abuse, and regularly defended herself by warning him
about “RA 9262”
148
and GABRIELA.
In her Quezon City community, Xian felt GABRIELA has increased sensitivity to
domestic violence:
Before… everyone’s outlook was different when… there was no GABRIELA in the
community. It was like… it’s okay people treat [each other] that way. But because
you’re organized and you’ve become one of GABRIELA’s members, everyone’s gotten
concerned… It’s like everyone cares now, your every move is being watched.
‘Go on, you beat up the kid, there’s GABRIELA to lean on… to run to. Remember,
there’s a GABRIELA chapter here.’ That’s how they see it… that’s the importance of
GABRIELA in the community… That’s… established… you know your rights.
149

146
Though the teeth behind BPOs, if perpetrators violate their provisions, is that they can be arrested and sent to jail.
147
“Sila na ang nagbabanta. ‘Sige pag sinaktan mo ako lagot ka sa GABRIELA.’ Sila na ang nananakot pag sa
asawa nila” (Mercedes 2013).
148
The Anti-VAWC Act.
149
“Dati nga, iba yung pananaw ng lahat na… wala pa ang GABRIELA doon sa community parang… OK lang ang
mga ganoong turingang pero dahil na-organize ka at isa ka nang nasa miyembro ng GABRIELA, ang lahat ay may
pakiaalam na… parang lahat ay may pakialam na, na ultimo kilos mo binabantayan na, na ‘sige bugbugin mo ang
bata, may GABRIELA aasahan… tatakbuhan, alalahanin mo may chapter ang GABRIELA dito.’ Ganun tinitingnan
at ganun rin ang kahalagahan ng GABRIELA doon sa community, yun… na nagbuo… na alam mo ang rights mo”
(Xian 2013).

362
She argued GABRIELA at least had raised people’s awareness of their rights and was well-
known as a recourse for victims. Also in Xian’s neighborhood, Rosa asserted GABRIELA had
helped residents see domestic violence as a community concern: “The reaction of people and of
course members, is they were educated anyone can get involved... The usual ‘that’s a couple’s
fight, you shouldn’t meddle’… was broken in the community.”
150
For their part, DIEGO
members I spoke with framed women’s resistance to domestic violence as standing up for what
should be (“yung dapat”).
Regarding victim-blaming, GABRIELA organizers reported more success challenging
this among GABRIELA members, than among local government officials.
151
In Muntinlupa,
Greta recalled how the teen sexually assaulted by a soldier began to emerge from her home, after
hiding for days; she attributed this in part to organizers’ outreach to discourage gossip and
shaming. In Quezon City, Claudine highlighted local organizers’ key role in opposing victim-
blaming, but emphasized it was still rampant in the barangay hall: “If we aren’t there, if
GABRIELA isn’t there, they’re always blaming women. But if we’re present and explaining,
they lay off somewhat… It’s always like that, till now.”
152
Active GABRIELA members
remained at the center of contestations, making a difference at least for survivors.
GABRIELA organizers sought to transform the roles of existing community institutions
and foster their response to VAWC. Women community leaders were often recruited to join
GABRIELA, and they helped with such efforts. For instance, in Tondo and Muntinlupa
neighborhoods, local building officials in public housing projects as well as Homeowners

150
“Ung reaction nung mga tao saka syempre ung mga members na, na educate sila na kahit sino pwede
makialam… ung usual na ano away mag-asawa yan dapat di pinapakialaman… yun pa ung nabasag dun sa
community” (Rosa 2013).
151
See Chapter 7 for quantitative data on impacts of GABRIELA on members’ victim-blaming attitudes.
152
“Kung wala kami, kung wala ang GABRIELA, laging sinisisi ang babae. Pero kung nandya’n kami at nagpa-
paliwanag, medyo luma-lay low sila… Laging gano’n hanggang sa ngayon” (Claudine 2013).

363
Association (HOA) officers were often GABRIELA members, too. Through GABRIELA
involvement, they became increasingly active as go-to persons for domestic violence and
VAWC. Rosie, a GABRIELA officer in Muntinlupa, recalled that before the chapter was
established, local HOA officers did not play such a role; they only became confident challenging
abuse under the mentorship of a GABRIELA organizer:
Only after there’s GABRIELA… we became active. Unlike before… though we had an
HOA, because the presidents were men… especially when there were conflicts, we didn’t
intervene, we were afraid… because what if we’re the ones who get hit.
But now… many of us [HOA officers] are women – and especially while there was [a
GABRIELA organizer] with us, she’s really brave, she’s the one who brought us along…
Now, we likewise… can resolve [conflicts].
153

In Chapter 7, I further examine how GABRIELA involvement has transformed urban poor
survivors’ community engagement around VAW.
154

I was unable to measure GABRIELA’s impact on actual rates of violence.
155
In
interviews, some organizers asserted GABRIELA successfully served as a deterrent against
abuse in their communities. Regardless, organizers observed that because of GABRIELA’s
reputation, more survivors were coming forward: “One positive aspect of GABRIELA’s work
is… now victims are themselves saying they are victims… Before they hide that. Now, because
they know GABRIELA is here and can help about the problems they’re going through, they
voice out what violence they’ve experienced” (Lisa 2013).
156

153
“Nung nagkaroon lang ng GABRIELA… naging aktibo na kami, hindi kagaya nuon… kahit na may HOA noon,
kasi mga lalake naman ang presidente noon eh…lalo na pag may mga gulo hindi kami nakikialam, natatakot kami…
kasi baka mamaya kami ang matamaan. Pero ngayon… mga marami kaming mga babae na – tapos ay lalo na pag si
aling [K] kasama, matapang talaga yan, siya ang magdala sa amin, yun…naging… kami na mismo ang… nag-aayos
sa kanila” (Rosie 2013).
154
Some Quezon City interviewees argued GABRIELA has helped decrease in-fighting between urban poor women.
They said disputes and backstabbing rumors rooted in jealousy over material goods became less common.
155
See Chapter 7 regarding survey results.
156
“Sa positibo… isang bahagi na ng gawain na ng GABRIELA yung nabe-break ng biktima na siya mismo sinasabi
niya na siya ay biktima… tinatago nila yan dati e. Ngayon dahil sa alam nila na nandiyan ang GABRIELA na
nakakatulong sa kanilang pinagdadaanan na problema, sila mismo ivino-voice out nila kung ano yung mga
karahasan na nararanasan nila” (Lisa 2013).

364
6. Closing
Domestic violence survivors’ difficulty leaving abusive relationships has alternately
justified their neglect, or control, by mainstream government institutions and social service
providers. Through survivor-centered decision-making, GABRIELA organizers navigated such
cycles of violence by replacing dismissive and victim-blaming responses with solidarity.
Meanwhile, the strength of interpersonal connections, and movement priorities, shape how
collectives juggle the intensive work of addressing abuse.
Regarding how collectives have influenced perpetrators of intimate partner abuse,
organizers invoked the threat of the law, and did not shy from exacting consequences on those
perpetrating harm, even if these rarely took the form of punitive state action. At the same time,
by shifting power relations they incorporated perpetrators into movement-building on changed
terms. Local organizing has transformed dynamics within abusive relationships, social networks,
and the larger community. Urban poor women mobilize their neighbors in direct actions against
VAW. Organizers’ resolutions of intimate partner violence, as well as their involvement of the
wider community, have contested limitations of existing legal frameworks, and sought to
partially reclaim the state from the ground up – all while organizing a movement that transcends
the scale of local struggle. In the next chapter, I focus more closely on transformative impacts of
GABRIELA’s approach of treating survivors as potential organizers, on survivors themselves.

365
CHAPTER 7

From ‘Victim-Survivor’ to Organizer: The Interpersonal is Political

I had a question like that – ‘Are there people who’ll believe in me, if I speak?’…
I’m just a simple mother… not even going outside the house… I’m shy…
When they elected me… [chapter] president, I quickly declined.
The first thing I thought was, ‘Can people believe in me?
Because really, I’m really a rape victim’…
But during the educational [activities] given us by GABRIELA, I took courage…
I overcame all the big questions in myself…

GABRIELA had a really big impact on me… I became aware of my role, as a woman…
My situation in society – why my life became like this…
That is what I discovered in GABRIELA…
Because you don’t just go to GABRIELA to seek help.
Rather… how can you become meaningful to yourself? [emphasis added]

Maybe the beautiful thing I was able to reap… and help the organization with, is
what I learn… I get to also share with others.
1

– Niel, a GABRIELA organizer in Metro Manila

1. Opening
Engaging with ‘victim-survivors’ as potential organizers, rather than as clients, is a
cornerstone of GABRIELA’s social movements approach to VAW. Social movements by no
means have to address VAW in order to organize urban poor women; but in doing so,
GABRIELA has transformed the lives of survivors directly impacted by interpersonal gendered
violence. Moreover, it has opened avenues for these urban poor women to become political
leaders, when otherwise violence they have suffered might be debilitating. Their leadership

1
“Ako may kwestyon akong ganon, ‘may maniniwala kaya sa akin kung magsasalita ako?’… Simpleng nanay lang
naman ako e. Di nga ako lumalabas ng bahay e... Mahiyain ako… nung mag-eelect na ng… president. Ang bilis ko
makatanggi… pinapangunahan ako ng isip ko na ‘may maniniwala ba sa akin? Kasi nga, isa nga akong rape
victim’… pero sa pamamagitan ng pag-e-educate ng GABRIELA sa amin, dun lumakas ang loob ko e… kasi
natabunan lahat-lahat ng mga malaking katanungan sa sarili ko e… Malaki talaga ang impact sa akin ng
GABRIELA… Namulat ako dun sa papel ko, bilang babae… kalagayan ko sa lipunan, bakit naging ganito ‘yung
buhay ko… ‘yun ‘yung nadiskubre ko sa GABRIELA na… kasi hindi ka lang basta pupunta sa GABRIELA dahil
hihingi ka ng tulong, kundi… paano ka rin maging makabuluhan sa sarili mo… Siguro yung naani ko lang na
maganda na naitulong ko sa organization, yung parte ng natutunan ko… naibabahagi ko rin sa iba” (Niel 2013a).

366
continues to sow seeds for future change.
In this chapter, I use survey and interview data to more fully explore how GABRIELA
involvement has impacted urban poor women survivors of VAW, from their vantage points.
First, I present survey data illustrating how participation in GABRIELA was correlated with
social networks that gravitated towards other members; heightened awareness and reporting of
VAW (especially of typically underreported forms); willingness to intervene; and disagreement
with victim-blaming. Results suggest GABRIELA has been an accessible support particularly
for those at risk of isolation due to VAW. Furthermore, my quantitative data corroborates how
receiving support later leads to survivors being able to give it.
The second part of this chapter focuses on victim-survivors’ own narratives, highlighting
the personal and interpersonal transformations they experienced as they became organizers.
Survivors frequently spoke of gaining a ‘voice’ through GABRIELA, in both personal relations
and community – as well as new, wider spheres of concern. Political education workshops, skills
trainings, and hands-on collective action changed their understandings of their pasts, social roles,
and capabilities. In turn, altered perspectives on VAW impacted their relationships to
themselves, domestic partners, and larger society. They enjoyed growing confidence, spatial
mobility, and connection with others. Survivor-organizers are a critical glue in GABRIELA who
in turn recruit and support other survivors. I explore how some interviewees described
movement-building as healing for trauma, and discuss their drive to share their experiences. At
the same time, I consider some challenges they have faced navigating their role as survivor-
organizers. Finally, I end with organizers’ reflections on how addressing VAW by organizing
survivors is strength of GABRIELA’s political activity, that furthers movement-building; and
how they themselves distinguish GABRIELA’s approach to VAW from other models.

367
2. A Survey: Impacts of GABRIELA’s VAW Organizing on Participants
In 2013, I surveyed 142 grassroots GABRIELA members, participants, officers, and local
organizers at my research sites in Quezon City, Tondo, and Muntinlupa.
2
Almost all were urban
poor residents of the areas surveyed; three were local organizers active in surveyed
neighborhoods, but who resided in nearby communities of a similar socio-economic profile. In
Chapters 1 and 2, I discussed what the numbers indicate about the demographics and economic
situations of these GABRIELA members, as well as their experiences of VAWC. I now explore
my quantitative data on the impact of GABRIELA’s VAW-related activities on participants.
Evidence illustrates GABRIELA provides a community that especially engages with
VAW survivors, supporting them to become agents of change. Below, I first profile
respondents’ roles and involvement in GABRIELA; as well as their participation in VAW-
related activities. Paying attention to how VAW survivors fare, I then present data on how
GABRIELA involvement has reconfigured social networks; and affected awareness, willingness
to intervene, victim-blaming attitudes, as well as dissatisfaction with community reaction
regarding VAW. I briefly discuss survey results on perceptions of community impacts.

2.1 Who Were the Respondents? Roles and Engagement in GABRIELA
Length of Membership
Reflecting their different histories, my three sites varied greatly in terms of respondents’
average length of membership in GABRIELA. As I will illustrate, however, longer membership
was closely related to increased participation in VAW organizing activities – and thus, the
effects of these activities on members’ attitudes. Average lengths of membership were 6.6 years

2
See Chapter 5 for profiles of the sites. See Appendices B and C for more detailed discussion of survey methods
and results. All respondents were women or female-bodied; and they ranged in age from 18 to 66 (median age 38).

368
in Quezon City (n=49), 4 years in Tondo (n=33), and 2.7 in Muntinlupa (n=44).
3
The oldest
members surveyed had been in the organization 16 years, since 1997.
4

Role in the Organization
Most respondents were ordinary members; the others were local organizers, officers, and
volunteers (see Fig. 7.1). However, almost all the organizers who participated in the survey
were located in Quezon City; unfortunately, no organizers in Tondo were available, and instead,
five officers at that site participated. As a result, my sample may somewhat underrepresent the
impact of VAW organizing in Tondo as compared to Quezon City. Organizers tended to have
been in the organization longer than officers, and were more experienced regarding VAW
trainings. Meanwhile, Muntinlupa is overrepresented among officers; slightly more than half of
officers surveyed were in Muntinlupa (see Fig. 7.2).
How Respondents Joined GABRIELA
The role of social networks beyond organizers in recruiting new members suggests
GABRIELA’s reach. While half (51%) of respondents said they were invited to become a
GABRIELA member by an organizer, a significant proportion, 37%, were primarily invited by a
friend (n=136).
5
Meanwhile, 21% (n=29) said they joined GABRIELA because they were
seeking help. Of these individuals, 41% listed economic issues like livelihood, housing,
andhunger as their reasons for initially approaching GABRIELA; 21% sought help for health
issues; while 17% approached due to interpersonal violence whether a ‘fight,’ domestic violence,
or sexual abuse. (Initial reasons why respondents might approach GABRIELA differ from

3
Most Muntinlupa respondents had been in GABRIELA for less than three years.
4
The differences between sites reflect how GABRIELA’s community-based organizing in Muntinlupa chapters was
relatively more recent, dating from after 2007; whereas GABRIELA had established chapters in my Quezon City
and Tondo sites since the 1980s and early 2000s respectively.
5
Overall 43% said a friend played some role in inviting them.

369
Fig. 7.1: Role in GABRIELA

Fig. 7.2: Role in GABRIELA by Site

extent of support around VAW or other problems they might end up receiving after joining.)
Maintaining Close Communication
GABRIELA’s community-based organizing strategies rely on constant, in-person
communication and active outreach to members, including in lieu of meetings when members are
90
15
7
20
9
3
0
50
100
Member Active
Member
Volunteer Officer Organizer N/A or
Other
Role in GABRIELA (n = 142)
31
27
32
6
3
6
3
2
0
4
5
11
7
0
2
0
1
2
0
10
20
30
Quezon City Manila Muntinlupa
Role in GABRIELA by Site
(n=142)
Member
Active Member
Volunteer
Officer
Organizer
N/A or Other
61%
12%
6%
8%
13%
0%
Quezon City (n=51)
71%
8%
5%
13%
0%
3%
Manila (n=38)
60%
11%
0%
21%
4% 4%
Muntinlupa (n=53)

Tondo

370
unable to attend. A full 71% of ordinary members
6
said face-to-face, one-on-one interactions
was the most common way they communicated with organizers (n=105). Respondents who
indicated how often said they met one-on-one with organizers an average of three times per week
(n=21)! Over half of respondents kept in communication through activities and meetings, while
only 26% used text messages or phone (n=134). Active members tended to attend chapter
meetings several times a month.

2.2 Participation in VAW Activities
Participation Rate by Site and Length of Membership
Most respondents (53%, n=142) had participated in GABRIELA activities responding to
VAW – whether a workshop, one-on-one discussion, giving or receiving support, joining a VAW
Response Team, or attending a rally against VAW. However, participation varied greatly by
site; and increased in likelihood with length of membership. Thus, 71% of respondents in
Quezon City, compared to 58% in Tondo, and just 32% in Muntinlupa, had taken part in some
form of VAW response activity (see Fig. 7.3). Older members were more likely to have
participated in an activity responding to VAW: 75% (n=27 out of 36) of members in the
organization for at least six years, compared to just 44% (n=38 out of 86) of those in the
organization five years or less, said they had done so. Nevertheless, 75% (n=3 out of 4) of the
newest members in GABRIELA, who had been involved less than a year, had also taken part,
reflecting GABRIELA’s recent systematization and integration of VAWC orientations for new
members.

6
And 69% of respondents overall (n=134). But one-on-one communication varied greatly by site, with 70% of
Quezon City respondents (n=51), but only 54% of Manila and 59% of Muntinlupa respondents saying they kept in
touch with organizers this way.

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Fig. 7.3: Participation Rate in GABRIELA Activities Responding to VAW, by Site

Have you participated in a GABRIELA activity responding to VAW? By Site

Forms of Participation
Of those who had taken part in a VAW-related activity (n=100), the most common forms
of participation were attending a workshop or discussion (56%), speaking with an organizer
(55%), or attending a rally against VAW (41%) (see Fig. 7.4). (Meanwhile, 26% had
encouraged a friend to join GABRIELA, presumably in relation to VAW;
7
23% received
counseling or support; at least 17%
8
gave help or advice; and 12% served on a VAW Response
Team.) By site, Quezon City and Tondo respondents were especially likely to have attended
VAWC workshops or discussions: nearly two thirds reported having done so, for both areas. In
contrast, in Muntinlupa, the most common form of participation was talking with an organizer
about VAW, but even so, only 45% had done so (compared to a majority in the other sites).
Interestingly, a higher proportion of Quezon City respondents had taken part in many categories
of activity: by site, they were most likely to be interconnected with others in both giving and

7
Respondents may not necessarily have interpreted the question this way.
8
Deflated due to a survey error where this option was omitted from 41 Quezon City surveys.
Yes
71%
No
14%
N/A
16%
Quezon City (n=51)
Yes
58%
No
26%
N/A
16%
Manila (n=58)
Yes
32%
No
49%
N/A
19%
Muntinlupa (n=53)

Tondo

372
Fig. 7.4: Activities in Response to VAW Which Respondents Participated In

* Deflated due to survey error where 41 respondents did not have option to indicate this activity.
Fig. 7.5: How GABRIELA Responds to VAW in Community

56%
55%
41%
26%
23%
17%
12%
3%
0% 20% 40% 60%
Workshop or Discussion
Conversation with Organizer
Rally against VAW
Encouraging friend to join GABRIELA
Receiving Counseling or Support
Giving Help or Advice*
VAW Response Team
Other
Percentage of Respondents
Which activities in the response to VAW did you participate in?
(n=100)
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Educating Women
Supporting Women & Child Victims
Advice or Counseling
Helping Seek Medical Care or Legal Aid
Educating Community
Helping File for Barangay Protection Order
Talking to Perpetrators
Intervening After Incidents
Intervening During Conflicts
Other
N/A
67%
53%
52%
42%
40%
36%
23%
20%
17%
8%
7%
Percentage of Respondents
How does GABRIELA respond to VAW in your community?
(n=142)

373
receiving support around VAW;
9
as well as to have mobilized for rallies against VAW (50%,
n=44). Such results suggest links between tight support networks and VAW organizing.
Awareness of VAW Activities
Regarding GABRIELA’s local VAW activities, the most common ways respondents said
GABRIELA addressed VAW in their communities were by: educating women (67% of
respondents); supporting women and children victims (53%); giving advice or counseling (52%);
helping arrange medical care or legal aid (42%); educating the community (40%); and helping
file for barangay protection orders (36%) (see Fig. 7.5). Some respondents also reported
GABRIELA’s direct intervention with perpetrators or in conflicts: 23% of all respondents said
GABRIELA talked to perpetrators; 20% said it intervened after incidents; and 17% said it
intervened during conflicts. (Unfortunately, a weakness of this survey question was it did not
include ‘getting the community involved’ as a possible response.) However, organizers, officers,
VAW Response Team members, volunteers, and VAW workshop attendees tended to be more
aware of GABRIELA’s involvement in every category of activity. VAW Response Team
members overwhelmingly reported GABRIELA engaging in responses across the board
(including intervening during conflicts and talking to perpetrators) – suggesting their centrality in
carrying these activities out.

2.3 From Support to Organizing
Membership in GABRIELA dramatically impacted respondents’ social networks.
GABRIELA emerged as an especially prominent support for those who had experienced physical

9
In Quezon City, around 39% reported receiving counseling or support (n=44), and 44% reported giving help or
advice around VAW (n=9; unfortunately for the latter figure, 41 Quezon City surveys that erroneously did not
contain this option as a response were omitted).

374
abuse or sexual assault, in particular. Moreover, my survey results underscored links between
receiving and giving support: organizers (and to some extent active members) were especially
likely to both receive and give counseling, as well as other forms of support for VAW. As I
continue to return to throughout this chapter, GABRIELA has helped break VAW survivors’
isolation and activate them to address VAW in their communities. Receiving support around
VAW can fuel organizing, rather than simply being a resource drain.
Reconfiguring Social Networks
Comparing respondents’ social networks before and after joining GABRIELA,
GABRIELA members played an increasingly prominent role in each other’s support systems –
especially regarding ‘personal problems.’ Before joining GABRIELA, most respondents (58%,
n=138) would approach household relatives for help if they or a family member fell ill; but after
membership, they most commonly approached other GABRIELA members (49%, n=121).
10

This effect was even more pronounced regarding ‘personal problems:’ after joining GABRIELA,
other GABRIELA members surpassed ‘close friends’ as the most likely go-to-persons to confide
in about such issues. A majority (52%, n=123) of respondents said they now would approach
other GABRIELA members about ‘personal problems,’ whereas most reported seeking out close
friends before membership (see Fig. 7.6). Meanwhile, before and after membership, the most
common source of loans remained friends and moneylenders; but the percentage of respondents
who reported approaching other GABRIELA members to borrow money more than doubled to
22% (n=118) after membership, compared to just 10% (n=139) before.
Quezon City respondents were the most interconnected with other GABRIELA members

10
GABRIELA membership also slightly increased the likelihood that respondents would approach politicians for
help regarding illness: 15% (n=121) said they approached politicians after joining GABRIELA, compared to 12%
(n=138) before joining. This suggests their increased facility at trying to access support.

375
Fig. 7.6: Sources of Support, Before and After GABRIELA Membership

– interestingly, both before and after joining the organization: 76% of Quezon City respondents
would reach out to other GABRIELA members for support on personal problems after
membership, compared to 43% before; 73% would approach other members for help with illness
after membership, compared to 44% even before; while 31% would approach other members to
GABRIELA Member
GABRIELA Member

376
borrow money after membership, compared to 15% before. Residents of my Quezon City site
may already have been more unmeshed in networks of mutual support;
11
or given GABRIELA’s
longer local history, the organization may have achieved a greater level of saturation and reach.
Vital Support for VAW Survivors
Survey results illustrate how GABRIELA is a key source of support for respondents who
reported experiencing VAW.
12
Its prevalence in members’ support networks highlighted its
accessibility, particularly for those who had experienced domestic, sexual, or childhood abuse.
Respondents who said they had suffered any form of VAW were asked what support they
received, if any; as well as where they received it from. While they did not need to specify
exactly which kind of violence they received support for, important patterns are still evident.
First, as already noted in Chapter 1, support from the government is direly lacking. Only
16 percent (n=20 out of 122) of respondents said they ever received support from a government
agency;
13
almost all survivors of sexual assault had never been assisted by police.
14
For
respondents overall, the most common sources of support ever received were family and friends
(46%), followed closely by GABRIELA (43%, n=122). A quarter of respondents (n=122) said
they had received no support whatsoever for violence they suffered at some point (see Fig. 7.7).
In contrast, for those who reported physical abuse or sexual violence, GABRIELA was
the most common source of support – more likely than family and friends, or the state.
15
For

11
Quezon City respondents were more likely to rely on household relatives than a moneylender for loans, both
before and after membership.
12
The survey recorded lifetime histories of violence, broadly defined to include lack of healthcare access, disaster,
discrimination, and interpersonal forms of VAW; see Chapter 2 and Appendix B.
13
Not necessarly in connection to VAW; of these, only two individuals actually accessed social services which may
have been geared specifically at gendered violence, e.g., through a women’s desk or the DSWD.
14
Just three percent of all respondents had ever received help from the police at any point.
15
Regarding sexual violence, this was so both for those who had experienced sexual assault, and those reporting
sexual harassment at work or school. One respondent sexually assaulted by a school authority only reported help
from GABRIELA, not the state or police, and accessed medical care and counseling through GABRIELA.

377
Fig. 7.7: Sources of Support

* ‘Violence’ was broadly defined to include lack of healthcare access, disaster, discrimination, and forms of VAW.

Sources of Support
†
for Respondents Who Reported:

† Support was not necessarily for the specific form of violence highlighted.
‡ Not including reports of sexual assault that were ambiguous or incomplete. A total of 37 responses identified perpetrators of sexual assault,
but were incomplete or reported answers of ‘don’t know’ regarding whether rape had occurred; for these respondents GABRIELA was still the
most likely source of support (51%), and even more so for those who listed an acquaintance, family member, employer, or authority as the
perpetrator (rather than a stranger).

instance, 69 percent of sexual assault survivors received support from GABRIELA at some
point, a much higher proportion than respondents in general (although it is unclear if this support
was specifically for sexual assault) (see Fig. 7.7). Furthermore, GABRIELA was consistently
accessible for survivors of childhood abuse, and witnesses of physical violence at home, who
tended to be less likely than other respondents to name family and friends as support.
16

16
I.e., those who had witnessed physical violence at home, experienced sexual assault by a family member, or
experienced childhood sexual abuse were less likely than respondents overall, to name friends and family as sources
0% 20% 40% 60%
Friends or Family
GABRIELA
No Support Received
Government Agency
Church
Police
Other
46%
43%
25%
16%
15%
3%
7%
Percentage of Respondents
Where did you receive support from,
in response to violence* reported in this survey? (n=122)
GABRIELA GABRIELA GABRIELA

378
GABRIELA, and not the state, was a vital source of assistance for respondents with histories of
physical, sexual, or childhood abuse; and it was accessible especially for VAW survivors
otherwise at high risk of social isolation.
17
(Such findings have added significance given that
those recently experiencing domestic or sexual abuse were also more likely to have lacked access
to healthcare in the last year, as reported in Chapter 2.)
Connections Between Giving and Receiving Support
The majority (70%, n=37 out of 55) of those receiving support from GABRIELA in
response to violence were ordinary members. However, organizers were most likely to receive
some form of assistance from GABRIELA, followed by members: 56% of organizers (n=5 out of
9) said they received support from GABRIELA, compared to 41% of ordinary members (n=37
out of 90). Furthermore, at least 67% of organizers (n=6 out of 9) had ever received
‘counseling,’
18
in contrast to just 14% of members (n=13 out of 90). More specifically,
organizers were the most likely to have received counseling or advice around VAW from
GABRIELA, with 44% of organizers (n=4 out of 9) having done so; while active members were
next most likely (27%, n=3 out of 11). In turn, organizers were most likely to give help, advice,
or support around VAW, followed by active members and then officers, with ordinary members
being least likely.
19
For instance, organizers were most likely to staff a VAW Response Team
(with one third doing so, even if they were the minority of VAW Response Team members).
In contrast, volunteers and members were much more likely than organizers and officers

of support. But these respondents still remained almost as likely, or even more likely, to name GABRIELA as a
support.
17
Even though the survey did not measure what trauma the support received was specifically in response to, these
results still indicate GABRIELA’s overall prevalence in members’ support networks.
18
Here, counseling includes that provided through GABRIELA, as well as other sources. 55% of organizers (n=5
out of 9) received counseling from an indeterminate source, and support from GABRIELA, at some point.
19
At least 33% of all organizers (n=3 out of 9) reported giving help or advice around VAW, but this number is
likely deflated since 41 Quezon City surveys erroneously omitted this option as a possible response.

379
to receive medical support,
20
reflecting how GWP’s financial aid for this is disbursed based on
need; whereas counseling is more specifically geared towards those desiring emotional support
for intimate partner and sexual abuse. The discrepancy between who was likely to receive
counseling compared to medical assistance suggests a lack of favoritism for organizers and
officers in GABRIELA’s medical assistance program; as well as that organizers’ relative access
to counseling was not necessarily due to their being in a position of influence in the organization.
Rather, I continue to show how access to support around VAW has helped enable local women
to become organizers assisting others.

2.4 Changing Awareness and Attitudes towards VAW
I now discuss GABRIELA’s impact on respondents’ awareness of and attitudes towards
VAW and victim-blaming. Survey results suggest that GABRIELA’s VAW organizing activities
were effective in raising participants’ awareness of VAW in their communities, social networks,
and own lives – as well as making them more critical about the need for greater response.
Participation in GABRIELA’s activities responding to VAW – particularly as an organizer,
member of a VAW Response Team, or VAW workshop or discussion attendee – was linked to
greater recognition (and disclosure) of VAW, especially overlooked forms such as emotional
abuse or acquaintance rape; willingness to counter victim-blaming in the community; and
dissatisfaction with state and church negligence.
Increased Awareness of VAW
Respondents’ reporting of their own experiences of VAWC, as well as incidence in their
neighborhoods, corresponded greatly with the length and depth of GABRIELA’s VAW-related

20
Includes medical support from GABRIELA as well as other sources.

380
activities in their area. In communities where GABRIELA members had been active longer,
respondents were more likely to report both personally experiencing and knowing of others’
experiences of VAW. Moreover, rates of reporting varied strikingly by whether the respondent
had attended GABRIELA’s VAWC-related activities, and by role in the organization.
Those who had attended a VAW discussion or workshop were more likely to report
experiencing violence, for every single category;
21
those who said they served on a VAW
Response Team, or who had had a conversation with a GABRIELA organizer about VAW, also
reported personally experiencing violence at higher rates. While this may suggest those seeking
out GABRIELA’s VAW activities were already more likely to have had a history of violence
themselves, I argue taking part probably also increased respondents’ likelihood of recognizing
their experiences as violence. For instance, VAW discussion or workshop attendees said they
witnessed physical violence at home within the last year at a rate almost comparable to non-
attendees. However, they were roughly two times more likely to report ever personally
experiencing emotional abuse (48% of discussion or workshop attendees, compared to 27% of
non-attendees) or acquaintance rape (20% of attendees, compared to 8% of non-attendees) (see
Fig. 7.8). These latter forms of violence are more likely to be overlooked, excused, or
underreported. Such discrepancies suggest VAW workshops played a role in sensitizing
respondents to recognize these as abuse. (Along similar lines, most respondents (84%) were
familiar with the term ‘VAW’; but familiarity was even higher (97%) for those who had been to
a VAW workshop or discussion (n=56), participated in a GABRIELA activity responding to
VAW (92%, n=75), or had a conversation with an organizer about VAW (91%, n=55).)
22

21
Looking at lifetime experiences of violence.
22
By site, Manila respondents (90%) were most likely to be familiar with the term, followed by 87% of Quezon City
and 77% of Muntinlupa respondents.

381
Fig. 7.8: Differences in Reported Violence, VAW Workshop or Discussion Attendees v.s. Non-Attendees

By role in GABRIELA, organizers were usually the most likely to report personal
lifetime experiences of violence, particularly with regard to domestic violence, sexual assault, or
childhood abuse.
23
But regarding violence within the last year, active members were most likely
to report being physically abused (an alarming 47%, n=15).
24
In contrast, organizers remained
more likely than other groups to report being emotionally abused, both ever (78%) and in the last
year (56%, n=9). Again, these discrepancies suggest that organizers had a higher level of
awareness regarding emotional abuse (see Fig. 7.9). Finally, by site, Quezon City respondents
consistently reported experiencing violence at higher rates, across almost all categories. I argue
that this likely reflects an underreporting of violence at the other sites, rather than actual
incidences of violence in Quezon City necessarily being higher – especially given the

23
They tended to report these at a slightly higher rate compared even to VAW Response Team members.
24
In comparison, 22% of organizers reported being physically abused in the last year, and 44% ever (n=9).
Emotional Abuse
Sexual Abuse
Sexual Assault
Sexual Assault by Acquaintance
Felt Unsafe at Home
Sexual Assault by Acquaintance
Witnessed Violence or Battery at Home

382
Fig. 7.9: Differences in Reported Violence, By Role

aforementioned large difference in participation rates in VAW activities between sites.
25

Similarly, when respondents were asked to rate the prevalence of domestic violence,
sexual harassment, sexual assault, and prostitution in their community, perceptions varied by role
in organization, and length of GABRIELA involvement (resulting in aggregate differences by
site). Organizers were much more likely to say these occurred frequently, perhaps in part
because they were directly familiar with incidents through their day-to-day organizing work;
while Quezon City respondents also rated these higher on average. Over half (51%) of all

25
Differences in the survey populations, correlated with higher rates of reporting, should be taken into account.
Quezon City respondents were members of GABRIELA for significantly longer on average, and were also much
more likely to have taken part in GABRIELA’s VAW-related activities. Additionally, most respondents who were
organizers were in Quezon City. Yet because organizers were still only 13% of Quezon City respondents, I argue
that perhaps the most important factor in regional reporting differences was participation in VAW activities (i.e., see
Fig. 7.3). To the extent such participation is related to sensitizing respondents to report violence, the length and
nature of GABRIELA’s organizing in a community likely had a notable effect on reported violence.
Emotional Abuse
Abuse
Emotional Abuse
Abuse
Physical Abuse
Abuse
Physical Abuse
Abuse

383
respondents said they currently know someone experiencing a form of intimate partner violence
(whether physical, emotional, sexual, or financial). But Quezon City respondents (61%) were
most likely to know someone, compared to 47% in Tondo and 43% in Muntinlupa. All Quezon
City organizers, and all Tondo officers, knew of someone experiencing abuse; but in Muntinlupa,
active or ordinary members were more likely than officers to know someone. These variances
suggest awareness not only has to do with actual prevalence, but also how established and
responsive organizing infrastructure is.
Furthermore, participation in GABRIELA VAW activities was strongly related to greater
recognition of a wider variety of forms of abuse being suffered by others in one’s community.
Organizers, those on the VAW Response Teams, older members in the organization for at least 6
years, and VAW workshop or discussion attendees
26
were more likely to know someone
experiencing abuse, for every single category of abuse. Organizers were the most likely to see a
range of forms of ongoing abuse (i.e., rather than simply reporting knowing someone being
physically abused, most reported awareness of multiple forms of ongoing abuse). Similarly,
VAW Response Team members reported awareness of more ongoing forms than non-Team
members,
27
with most reporting at least two forms. Long-term members in the organization at
least 6 years reported more forms, on average, than newer members (as well as workshop
attendees). And those who attended VAW workshops or discussions reported a larger variety of
forms of ongoing abuse experienced by those they knew, on average,
28
compared to non-
attendees – suggesting the workshops might have helped raise participants’ consciousness about

26
Listed roughly in order of who was most likely to know of a variety of abuse cases. Length in organization and
VAW workshop or discussion attendance were a close tie.
27
The difference between Team and non-Team members was statistically significant (using a difference of means
test).
28
The difference compared to non-attendees was statistically significant (using a difference of means test).

384
Fig. 7.10: Awareness of Abuse, VAW Workshop or Discussion Attendees v.s. Non-Attendees
Do you know someone who is currently experiencing intimate partner violence?
Proportion who indicated ‘Yes’:
Physical Emotional Sexual Financial
VAW Workshop or
Discussion Attendees
(n=56)
27% 36%
14% 34%
Non-Attendees
(n=86)
12% 23% 6% 24%

recognizing abuse (see Fig. 7.10).
29

Changing Attitudes: Gender Equity, Politicizing VAW, and Victim-Blaming
The survey measured GABRIELA’s impact on members’ attitudes towards gender
equity, intervention against VAW, and internalization of victim-blaming. The vast majority of
respondents, 71-82%, strongly agreed with statements supporting gender equality in the
household (such as equal decision-making; shared household chores; equal child-rearing
responsibility; and equal treatment and opportunities for boys and girls). But interestingly,
VAW workshop or discussion attendees were even more likely to strongly support gender
equality on all indicators – especially the statement on ‘equal roles in household decision-
making’ (91% in strong agreement, n=51 out of 56).
Overall, respondents tended to strongly support community response to VAW, but
wavered more when it came to taking a personal role in challenging others’ attitudes. However,
again, participation in VAW activities was linked to heightened willingness to take a personal

29
Most attendees still reported just one form. However, with regard to whether they knew someone experiencing
physical abuse, the difference between VAW workshop or discussion attendees and non-attendees was statistically
significant (with attendees more likely to know someone).

385
stand. Seventy-seven percent of those administered the question (n=99)
30
‘strongly agreed’ with
the statement, “Community members should support the safety of those experiencing abuse.”
31

A smaller majority agreed with active intervention: 56% ‘strongly agreed’ that “in a situation of
domestic violence (spousal assault), people in the community should intervene to prevent
harm”
32
(n=99). Nearly half took personal responsibility for countering victim-blaming: 49%
‘strongly agreed’
33
or ‘agreed’ that “If people blame someone I know who is a victim of abuse, I
should intervene so they don’t blame”
34
(n=99). Officers, VAW Response Team members, and
VAW workshop or discussion attendees
35
were even more likely to strongly support active
solidarity and intervention on all these indicators. (A majority of 71% of VAW Response Team
members, 69% of officers, and 63% of workshop or discussion attendees strongly agreed they
would personally counter victim-blaming.) Meanwhile, most respondents wanted the church to
actively oppose domestic violence.
Involvement in GABRIELA’s VAW activities was related to decreased victim-blaming
attitudes, but room still remains for education to counter such reactions among GABRIELA
members, particularly regarding sexual assault, and cycles of domestic violence. The survey
asked respondents to rate their agreement or disagreement with statements designed to measure
victim-blaming. Least controversial were general statements that no one deserves to be harmed.
Nevertheless, when statements described specific abuse situations, overall respondents tended to

30
Questions on solidarity and intervention were added to the survey after July 31, 2013; unfortunately, most Quezon
City respondents were not included in these results.
31
“Dapat suportahan ng mga nasa komunidad ang kaligtasan ng mga nakakaranas ng pang-aabuso,” in the survey.
32
“Sa mga pangyayari na may pananakit sa asawa, ang mga tao sa komunidad ay dapat mangialam para walang
mangyaring masama,” in the survey.
33
42% in ‘strong agreement.’
34
“Pag may naninisi sa isang kakilala ko na biktima ng pang-aabuso dapat ay mangialam ako para hindi siya sisihin
ng iba,” in the survey.
35
Unfortunately, most organizers were not administered this portion of the survey, because most Quezon City
respondents did not receive these questions.

386
be unsure if the woman was to blame after all; sizable minorities blamed the victim, even as
larger minorities vehemently opposed blame. Additionally, respondents tended to hold domestic
violence victims at fault for staying in an abusive relationship. However, evidence suggests
VAW workshops can help shift some of these attitudes.
For instance, 89% of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ that “no one should experience
physical harm,”
36
and nearly as many ‘strongly agreed’ “no one should experience emotional
abuse.”
37
But 43% were ‘unsure’ whether “if a woman is raped, she probably did something to
provoke it;”
38
and while 41% ‘strongly disagreed,’ rejecting the victim was at fault, 11% still
‘strongly agreed’ she was to blame (n=130). Regarding domestic violence, 39% were ‘unsure’
whether “if a woman is in an abusive situation, she probably provoked getting hurt;”
39
32%
‘strongly disagreed,’ rejecting victim-blaming, but a sizable minority of 21% ‘strongly agreed’
she provoked being abused (n=125). In contrast, however, almost all organizers strongly
disagreed with all of these victim-blaming statements. VAW workshop or discussion attendees,
officers, and VAW Response Team members also were more likely to disagree, compared to
respondents in general (but still tended towards being unsure regarding the above statement on
domestic violence in particular). These results – and the discrepancy between workshop or
discussion attendees and non-attendees – suggest how VAW workshops may play an important
role in changing these attitudes.
Respondents strongly rejected enduring domestic violence. Perhaps representing a
significant deviation from mainstream cultural attitudes, 63% of respondents ‘strongly disagreed’

36
“Walang sinuman ang dapat makaranas ng pisikal na pananakit,” in the survey.
37
“Walang sinuman ang dapat makaranas ng emosyunal na pang-aabuso,” in the survey.
38
“Kung nagahasa ang babae, malamang nagpakita siya ng motibo,” in the survey.
39
“Kung babae ay nasa isang mapang-abusong sitwasyon, malamang may ginawa siya para masaktan,” in the
survey.

387
that “a woman should endure abuse to preserve the family”
40
(n=130). Still, regarding cycles of
violence, respondents’ rejection of victim-blaming was more mixed: 44% of respondents said
they ‘strongly agreed’ that “if a woman stays in an abusive relationship, it’s her fault for
allowing it;”
41
meanwhile, 25% were ‘unsure,’ and only 26% ‘strongly disagreed’ or ‘disagreed’
that accepting abuse would be her fault (n=125). Ironically, this range of attitudes perhaps
reflects GABRIELA’s ethic of prioritizing survivors’ leadership, of both encouraging and relying
on survivors’ decisions to resist, when it comes to ending abuse. However, holding survivors
responsible for resisting can be a double-edged sword; the burden on them to do so can slide into
blame for not taking action. The tendency to hold women personally responsible or at fault for
staying in an abusive relationship may augment frustrations towards victims, or lay the
foundation for unwillingness to provide continued support, during cycles of violence. In
contrast, survivor-centered decision-making ideally should not tend towards blaming victims for
remaining in abusive relationships.
Interestingly, organizers were on average even more vehement in ‘strongly agreeing’
with the above statement that holds women in abusive situations at fault for staying. But officers
in Tondo deviated from this approach: 60% ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement (in Chapter
6, I featured how Tondo organizers attentively cultivated survivor-centered attitudes towards
weathering cycles of violence). VAW Response Team members were also more likely than
organizers to disagree, with 42% either ‘strongly disagreeing’ or ‘disagreeing’ (n=5 out of 12).
42

Thus, while members generally considered VAW a public concern, and GABRIELA offered
survivors a rare community with more supportive attitudes, contestations over victim-blaming

40
“Dapat tiisin ng babae ang pang-aabuso, para manatiling buo ang pamilya,” in the survey.
41
“Kung ang babae ay nananatili sa isang abusadong relasyon, kasalanan niya kasi hinahayaan niya,” in the survey.
42
Likewise, VAW workshop or discussion attendees were more likely than non-attendees to disagree that women
who stayed in abusive relationships were at fault for allowing it.

388
especially, remain ongoing.
Dissatisfaction With Community Reaction
When asked about victim-blaming in their community, VAW workshop or discussion
attendees (n=56) were more likely to perceive this as prevalent compared to non-attendees. For
instance, 43% of attendees said emotionally abused women were ‘often’ or ‘always’ blamed by
community members, 34% said this was the case for women physically assaulted, and 32% said
this was so for rape victims.
43
Meanwhile, VAW Response Team members (n=12) were
especially likely to perceive victim-blaming in cases of emotional abuse, with 50% saying it
happened ‘often’ or ‘always.’ Forty-four percent of organizers (n=9) said community members
‘often’ or ‘always’ blamed rape victims.
VAW Response Team members, and workshop or discussion attendees, were more likely
to report state inaction and church apathy. That is, 58% of VAW Response Team members
(n=12), and 43% of VAW workshop attendees (n=56), said government officials and police
‘often’ or ‘always’ ignored VAW, or fail to challenge perpetrators. Twenty-five percent of Team
members, and 20% of attendees, said church leaders ‘often’ or ‘always’ did so.

2.5 Perceived Community Impacts of VAW Activities
The majority (70%, n=142) of respondents agreed that GABRIELA’s organizing against
VAW in their community made finding help or support earsier for victims. Significant
minorities said talking about VAW was easier, and that GABRIELA had affected community
and victims’ attitudes (see Fig. 7.12). (Unfortunately, though, again this question about
community impacts did not include ‘increased community engagement’ as a possible response.)

43
For respondents in general (n=142), 32% said community members ‘often’ or ‘always’ blamed emotionally
abused women, 28% said this was so for women physically assaulted, and 23% said this was so for rape victims.

389
Fig. 7.11: Perceived Impact of GABRIELA’s Organizing Against VAW

The proportion of respondents who felt GABRIELA had an impact was higher among
VAW workshop or discussion attendees, where for instance, 45% (n=25 out of 56) said
GABRIELA had changed community attitudes; and among those who had spoken with an
organizer about VAW, where 42% (n=23 out of 55) said GABRIELA had changed the views of
victims. Moreover, a larger proportion of Quezon City respondents reported an impact in all
areas; in Quezon City, nearly half said talking about VAW was easier, and 37% said
GABRIELA had changed community attitudes.
There was not majority consensus on GABRIELA’s impact on actual VAW incidence
rates in respondents’ communities. Thirty-seven percent of respondents believed physical abuse
had decreased after GABRIELA’s activities, but even more were unsure or didn’t answer the
question. In Quezon City, the largest proportion of respondents, a minority of 41% (n=21 out of
51), said physical abuse had decreased (compared to 16% who said it stayed the same, 16% who
said it increased, and 10% who were unsure).
44
Regarding other forms of abuse, respondents
were even less sure about a decrease (although more reported decreases than increases).

44
The remaining 18% did not answer the question.
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Finding Support Easier
Talking about VAW Easier
Changed Community's Attitudes
Changed Victims' Attitudes
N/A
70%
37%
30%
29%
9%
Percentage of Respondents
What are effects of GABRIELA's organizing against VAW in your community?
(n=142)

390
Alarmingly, Quezon City respondents were also most likely to report increases in violence; a
sizable proportion of roughly 20% said sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and financial abuse had
increased. It is unclear whether reported increases might be due to changing conditions or
heightened awareness.
The above data illustrates how GABRIELA has influenced those it has been able to
directly reach and engage. It has made significant differences in survivors’ and members’ lives,
even as larger community-wide effects remain challenging or under contestation. I next explore
survivors’ own narratives to delve deeper into their experiences of becoming organizers.

3. From ‘Victim-Survivor’ to Organizer
In Chapters 5 and 6, I detailed how Niel’s collective supported her in separating from an
abusive relationship. A runaway and migrant from the provinces living in an urban poor
neighborhood in Quezon City, she and her daughter Xian both eventually became local
GABRIELA organizers. Niel described being somewhat wary when she first joined
GABRIELA: “Before I became a GABRIELA member, at first I really thought… they were just
going to use me… and afterwards that’s the end of it.”
45
But as she became more involved, she
found her experiences transformative, not least regarding her self-perceptions.
For Niel, organizing with GABRIELA helped restore a sense of respect, dignity, and
meaning to her self and life, both as a VAW survivor and urban poor woman. Niel had actively
sought GABRIELA out because of its reputation as a woman’s organization, hoping to find
protection, as well as insight into her own experiences of domestic and sexual violence. She
wanted to come to terms with why, it seemed, she had been ‘singled out’ for sexual abuse

45
“Bago pa man ako maging member ng GABRIELA, di una, iniisip ko talaga…ang purpose lang nila gagamitin
lang ako… tapos na rin, dun na lang natatapos, dun sa ganoon” (Niel 2013c).

391
repeatedly, from childhood to adulthood. In the process, she gained broader insight on her social
and political context – on the conditions shaping her experiences of both interpersonal gendered
violence and economic hardship. She says,
I was curious to know… how they can help someone like me… Then my mind became
open… not only about violence but about different national issues...
Before what I just think about was only for myself... ‘I can eat three times in one day,
what do I care about them?’… Before you’re just attached to… house-chores… but now
you care for the society you’re part of…
You’re not just a GABRIELA because you seek something in return. Instead [you ask]
what you can contribute to your generation… [how] you can help not just women, but
children, elderly… the whole nation.
46

Gradually, Niel overcame her past at times overbearing shame as an abuse survivor, as an urban
poor woman, and as someone with limited formal education. She continued, “You contribute or
help others, because the situation of each is also like this, too: ‘Why, ate [sister], are we poor?
Why is it we cannot afford our day-to-day expenses, even for buying food?’… Why is our
government like this?”
47
As for other organizers, the direction she found was bound up in
helping others to address the roots of violence they suffered, together. Becoming active in
GABRIELA as survivors – of both neoliberal imperial structural violence and interpersonal
gendered violence – became a radical act of reclaiming humanity.
GABRIELA organizers’ approach to survivors has activated connections between giving
and receiving support. As my survey data corroborates, many organizers are survivors
themselves who have received or continue to receive support around domestic or sexual

46
“Curious akong malaman… paano ang katulad kong matulungan nila…. Tapos… nabukas yung isip ko… na hindi
lang tungkol sa karahasan, kundi iba’t ibang isyu ng pambansang isyu… ang iniisip lang kasi dati, pansarili lang…
‘Kaya ko namang kumain tatlong beses sa isang araw, pakialam ko ba sa kanila’… dati natatali ka lang sa…
gawaing-bahay… pero ngayon, may pakialam ka sa lipunan na kinabibilangan mo… Hindi ka lang GABRIELA
dahil may hinahangad kang kapalit, kundi kung ano ang maiambag mo sa henerasyon mo, na makakatulong ka hindi
lang sa kababaihan, kundi sa bata, sa matanda… Sa buong bayan” (Niel 2013c).
47
“Makaambag ka o makatulong ka sa iba pa, dahil sa ganito ring kalagayan ng bawat isa na ‘bakit ate, mahirap
tayo, bakit ultimo pambili ng pagkain hindi nating kayang ma-sustain sa araw-araw’… bakit ganito ang takbo ng
gobyerno” (Niel 2013c).

392
violence. GABRIELA offered urban poor women an unusual political space that broke their
isolation as VAW survivors, while taking the development of their political leadership seriously.
In time, those whom GABRIELA helped regarding abuse sometimes sought to pass assistance on
to others – although not simply with respect to the problems of interpersonal gendered violence.
Survivors’ inroads to movement-building for revolutionary change may have been gendered, but
they did not live single-issue lives; they recognized their experiences of VAW were deeply tied
to questions of decolonization, economic justice, and the nature of the Philippine state. In
offering urban poor women roles in movement-building regarding a spectrum of issues, local
organizing harnessed the fire of those who wanted to take interpersonal gendered violence on,
while helping buffer survivors who desired respite from re-traumatization related to such abuse.
I now discuss urban poor women’s experiences of becoming organizers, even as
GABRIELA has engaged them as survivors of intimate partner and sexual violence.
48
Below, I
first explore survivors’ experiences of finding community through GABRIELA; how
involvement changed their understandings of VAW in their own lives, while politicizing them
more broadly; and how urban poor survivors took on new roles and challenged gendered
dynamics in their personal lives and beyond, as they voiced their evolving perspectives. I
discuss the place of movement-building as ‘medicine’ for survivors. I end by exploring the
vitality survivors have brought to organizing: the relationships between survivors serve as a glue
solidifying community, even as they help make GABRIELA relatable to urban poor women.

3.1 Breaking Isolation
Numerous GABRIELA members and organizers I interviewed spoke of their relative

48
While I focus on survivor-organizers, I interweave their accounts with those of urban poor women organizers
more generally to illustrate GABRIELA’s impacts regarding their responses to VAW.

393
social isolation as urban poor women before joining GABRIELA. Specifically, their routines as
‘housewives’ revolved around the home and household chores. They might speak to neighbors,
but not go beyond the household sphere on a day-to-day basis. They explained:
I was really… that ‘typical housewife,’ I don’t go out of the house, don’t mix [with
others]… even if I send my kids I can’t, since they take the school bus… I’m just not
exposed to people then.
49
(Angela 2013a)

Before… I’m always in the house. I don’t mingle with other mothers… They really said
I have my own world… I preferred to just stay inside… since there’s gossip out there…
Actually… you should go out so you know what that world outside is.
50
(Jona 2013a)

I became close to people [through GABRIELA]… When you’re a mother you’re just
there in the house.
51
(Darna 2013)

Others described having friends to socialize with, but still hiding domestic violence from peers.
One organizer recounted, “I didn’t like to talk as I’m really ashamed… They only knew we had
a fight when they saw my bruises… I’m keeping my problems inside.”
52
She explained
neighbors only overheard the abuse once, because she would stay silent even while being beaten:
“You can’t overhear… maybe they could hear there’s thumping, but not actual screams.”
53

Many abuse survivors said other GABRIELA organizers were the first people, or among
a handful of others, they had ever confided in about such experiences. For instance, an organizer
who suffered sexual abuse as a child, related, “When I hadn’t yet joined GABRIELA, I wasn’t
open to anyone about that… I kept it to myself… Even my family doesn’t know… There was

49
“Mas ano lang akong yung… typical housewife, hindi lumalabas ng bahay, hindi nakikihalubilo… pag yung…
nga maski paghatid ng anak ko hindi kasi naka-school bus sila eh… hindi lang ako exposed sa tao n’un.”
50
“Nung… nasa bahay lang ako palagi. Hindi ako nakikipaghalubilo sa ibang mga nanay… sabihin nga nilang may
sarili akong mundo. Kasi mas gustuhin ko lang dito sa loob ng bahay… kasi tsismis nga dun sa labas… Hindi pala.
Dapat pala lumabas ka, para malaman mo kung ano yung mundo sa labas.”
51
“Naging malapit ako sa tao.’yun…. pag nanay, nandun lang sa loob ng bahay.”
52
“Ayoko magsalita kasi nahihiya nga ako… dun na lang talaga nalalaman na nag-away kami nung nakita na nila na
may pasa ako… Dinidibdib ko yung problema ko” (Dina 2013).
53
“Hindi naman dinig… siguro may maririnig nga silang bulabugan, pero hindi yung aktwal talaga na
magsisigawan” (Dina 2013).

394
fear… shyness… That changed, I can voice out all the bad experiences I was hiding.”
54
After
attending a VAW training, she felt encouraged to confide in two other organizers about the
abuse. She says, “When I started attending trainings, I learned to mix with [other] people, which
I didn’t really do before... I also learned to share my feelings, problems… That training was
right.”
55
Now she feels, “You don’t need to be silent about whatever happened to you… If you
have a friend or someone you can go to, say what you’re feeling to ease the burden… If there’s
something that happened to you, report it because there’s organizations ready to help you.”
56

Angela, a former officer in Tondo, used to be deeply ashamed of her husband’s infidelity:
At first, I didn’t tell [anyone] since it’s an embarrassment… you get insecure…
It’s only when I joined GABRIELA I realized it’s not something to be embarrassed about
after all… what’s there to keep?...
Later, I knew people with the [same] experiences – my friends, acquaintances, their
husbands dupe them, too... But at first I was really ashamed. Maybe that’s why I didn’t
quarrel with [Joe]... I was afraid my neighbors would know.
57

She reflects that before joining GABRIELA, she already had a sense she shouldn’t be ashamed
(“I wasn’t the one duping him”);
58
but that after joining, “I got braver… my eyes got opened…
59

I thought I was the only one experiencing that, because I didn’t get to talk to other people.”
Through GABRIELA, members and organizers found rare spaces of confidence, as well
as solidarity, around experiences of interpersonal gendered violence. Organizers spoke about

54
“Kung hindi pa ‘ko sumali ng GABRIELA, hindi ko pa ‘yan ilalabas kahit kanino. Kasi sa sarili ko lang ‘yon
eh… ultimo mga pamilya ko hindi alam eh… nando’n ang takot… ang hiya…‘Yung nagbago, nagagawa ko ng
ilabas lahat ng mga naitago kong bad experience” (Aljhen 2013).
55
“Simula no’ng nag-training ako, natuto na ako na makisalamuha sa mga tao na dati hindi ko naman ginagawa…
Natuto na rin akong mag-share ng mga nararamdaman, mga problema… Tama naman ‘yung sa training” (Aljhen
2013).
56
“Di mo kailangang manahimik kung ano man ‘yung nangyari sa ‘yo… Kung meron ka mang kaibigan, ‘yung
pwede mong malapitan, sabihin ang mga nararamdaman para gumaan ang bigat… kapag may nangyari sa ‘yo, mag-
sumbong ka kasi mayro’n namang tutulong sa’yo na organization na handang tumulong” (Aljhen 2013).
57
“Yun una… hindi ko sinasabi… kasi kahihiyan yan eh… nagiging insecured ka... kaya lang… yung na-nasa
GABRIELA na’ko na realize ko na hindi pala yan kahihiyan… bakit ko kikimkimin?... tapos may mga na-e-
eksperyensya ako mga kaibigan ko, mga kakilala ko, yung mga asawa din nila nagloloko… pero nung una talaga
nahihiya ako kaya nga siguro ‘yung si [Joe] hindi ko inaaway kasi ayokong malaman ng mga kapitbahay” (2013a).
58
“Hindi naman ako’ng nagluko” (Angela 2013a).
59
“Akong nagkaroon ng lakas ng loob... nabuksan na ‘yung mata ko” (Angela 2013a).

395
what this type of space meant to them. In Tondo, Neng underscored how she valued
GABRIELA because it allowed her to confide about conflicts with her husband: “You can’t just
express… a problem with your husband. I can’t express it to my husband, [just] here;”
60

GABRIELA organizers were her main confidantes. She was touched when another organizer
offered to talk to him: April “told me her husband used to be like that, too… I felt happy because
somehow… someone can understand me.”
61
Still another organizer recounted that when she was
dealing with her husband’s infidelity, “The support, moral support of GABRIELA was a big
thing for me… If I hadn’t found them, I might have headed towards suicide… I didn’t tell even
my parents.”
62
She worried about her sister’s marriage and hoped she could organize her next.
An organizer and domestic violence survivor, Queenie, described how much it affected her to
hear others’ struggles: “It makes you cry, especially when you have kasamas who’re also going
through something – I’m even more motivated [to join].”
63
That GABRIELA offered these
spaces of sharing helped fuel her commitment, despite her husband’s opposition.
GABRIELA helped break urban poor women’s isolation around domestic and sexual
abuse not only because it offered connection, but also because of the kind of community
coalesced: its spaces politicized VAW, providing survivor-centered solidarity to guide how
members should respond to each other’s experiences of abuse. One organizer, severely
physically and sexually abused since she was a teen, had finally fought back and injured her
husband, accidentally causing his death. She described how difficult it was for her to find
understanding from her church community. She recalled constantly crying and feeling ashamed
during Bible study discussions about family, so that she was unable to even speak of her past.

60
“Hindi mo naman mailalabas yan sa... problema sa asawa. Hindi ko na ilalabas yan sa asawa ko. Dito” (2013b).
61
“Ganun din daw yung asawa niya noon… natutuwa kasi kahit papano may nakakaintindi sa akin” (Neng 2013b).
62
“Iyong suporta, moral support ng GABRIELA, malaking bagay sa akin… kung hindi ko siya natagpuan, baka
tutungo sa pagpapakamatay… kahit sa magulang ko, hindi ko sinabi” (2013b).
63
“Yun nakakaiyak lalo na pag may kasama ka na sila ay may mga ano na. Lalo akong naeengganyo” (2013a)

396
she felt wary they might talk badly about her behind her back. Local organizers in GABRIELA
were among the few she felt comfortable sharing with about her experiences of domestic
violence, without judgement: “If it is in GABRIELA, at least they accept my story, my life.
They ask why it was like that… I tell them the whole [reason].”
64
She noted the GABRIELA
organizers acknowledged her past was painful, while also affirming the awareness and
understanding she gained through her experiences. Now she feels she has a community to share
problems with. She continued that personally, she wishes had found GABRIELA sooner:
“GABRIELA should have come into my life before… I say, ‘Why didn’t it coming to my life
when I was still young?”
65
She reflects that perhaps, she could have been ‘rescued’ like others.
GABRIELA encourages domestic violence survivors to share their examples of
resistance with others. Ella spoke about how when she was still a teen, local organizers and
survivors, whom she met because she was active in the GABRIELA-affiliated youth
organization, Anakbayan, inspired her. She recounted,
[Andy], she always tells us that story about how they’re fighting each other...
I really appreciate those mothers who even if their husbands cheated on them and left
them, became successful, were even able to raise their children alone... That’s what I tell
other women… that we have lots of stories of women who lived on… without men –
after all that’s just one part [of life].
66

Ella adds that now, when she discusses VAW with mothers, she tries to help them see their
reliance on men is “because men are the ones with economic power,”
67
but even so, “there are

64
“Kung sa GABRIELA yan, at least tanggap naman nila… yung kwento ko, yung buhay ko. Bakit daw ganun,
noon kasi e... kinwento ko naman sa kanila ng buo kung bakit nagaganun.”
65
“Dapat noon pa dumating sa buhay ko ang GABRIELA… sabi ko ‘bakit di pa noon dumating sa buhay ko na
bata-bata pa ako?’”
66
“Si [Andy] nga eh, lagi niyang kinukwento yan, pano yan, nagbubugbugan sila ng ano... Malaki din talaga yung,
yung appreciation ko dun sa mga… nanay na sa kabila ng sila’y niloko, iniwan ng mga asawa, naging tagumpay,
yung napalaki pa rin nilang mag-isa yung kanilang anak… Yun nga yung sinasabi ko dun sa mga babae… na yung
marami tayong kwento ng mga kababaihan na binuhay… pagiging pagkawala ng mga lalake, isang bahagi lang
naman yun eh” (Ella 2013).
67
“Dahil lalaki ang may economic power” (Ella 2013).

397
still women with how many children” who were able to support themselves.
68

When she became an organizer, Angela said she learned, “Actually you cannot just live
on your own in the world. We should join together… Together we can do more.”
69
The
importance of creating new connections (and breaking free from the domestic sphere) is a
deliberate narrative within GABRIELA about how to movement-build among urban poor
women; in turn, these networks offered survivors meaningful emotional support. In the words of
Len, a member in Quezon City,
In GABRIELA, I got to gain… more friends. The kind you’ll feel aren’t being fake…
There’s no shame… They support me for who I am… If you have a problem, they’ll
help… They’re like family to me… besides my [real] family is far…
And – all of them have what you call ‘attitude.’
70

3.2 The Interpersonal is Political: Changing perceptions of VAW
As noted in Chapter 3, GABRIELA has systematized a political education curriculum for
members that includes modules on VAWC, women’s status, Philippine history and society,
organizing, electoral politics, theories of social change, and more. At the local level, organizers
regularly schedule workshops and keep close records on which members have attended modules,
to plan for subsequent activities. GABRIELA’s systematic political education around VAW,
integrated in workshops and events, complements the support organizers directly extended
towards survivors, and reinforces politicization around VAW in more informal spaces.
Xian described how GABRIELA’s discussions opened her eyes to understand more
deeply how the abuse she grew up with as normalized should not be acceptable. Organizers

68
“May mga nanay naman na ilan pa nga ang anak pero kinayang buhayin” (Ella 2013).
69
“Hindi ka pala mabubuhay sa mundo na ikaw lang mag-isa. Dapat sama-sama… kapag sama-sama mas
maraming nagagawa” (Angela 2013b).
70
“Sumabak ako sa GABRIELA… marami din akong mga naging… mga kaibigan. ‘Yung tipong sa kanila
mararamdaman mong hindi ka pa-plastikin. Yung walang hiya-hiya… Kung ano ako, andyan sila naka-alalay…
‘pag may problema ka, handa kang tulungan… parang pamilya na din kasi sa ‘kin… bukod sa malayo ‘yung
pamilya ko sa ‘kin… Tsaka lahat sila may mga attitudes na masasabi” (Len 2013b).

398
invited her to workshops tackling issues of gender roles and inequality: “what are your rights as a
woman… you shouldn’t be just for the houshold,”
71
she recalls; that women have equal
capabilities as men and shouldn’t be discriminated against or told, “don’t expect you can do that
kind of [work].”
72
The workshops challenged her acceptance of patriarchal family relations:
Before, it was okay that… ‘He’s the father. So… he’s always the one to follow.’ As if,
whatever he says… he’s right.
I didn’t know there’s something like… ‘rights’ for women and for youth… I was amazed
– ‘ah, there’s actually something like this, we only knew it now’…
We were just saying ‘yes’ to him… because he’s ‘padre de pamilya.’
73

Xian recalled that acceptance of such family relations was widespread among her high school
peers, even if not all experienced the severity of abuse she dealt with:
Your friends, classmates, when chatting… they’ve a lot to say about fears. Fear of their
father, and their mothers can’t protect them... Your background and your classmates’ is
like that, so we’ve nothing to say to each other [to challenge it]. It’s all the same.
That’s why it’s like such a great leap that there’s something [else].
74

GABRIELA changed her perspectives by showing possible alternatives to this status quo. Even
as Xian herself had suffered from her father’s domestic abuse, she began to recognize and reject
ways she had internalized an emotional complicity (despite not being responsible for his
violence). She recalled that although it was “painful to realize,” she came to see that her past
“attitude,” of childish delight when her father beat her older sister, “was wrong:”
75
“When I
wasn’t yet organized, it was okay for me my sibling gets hurt… I was even amused… when

71
“Ano ang karapatan mo bilang isang babae …hindi ka dapat parang ikaw ay pangbahay lamang” (Xian 2013).
72
“Wag ka nang umasa pa na magagawa mo yung ganung gawain” (Xian 2013).
73
“Dati, OK lang na... ‘oh sige tatay siya. Sige siya na lang laging masunod.’ Kung baga, kung anong sabihin, ah
sige tama siya. Di ko alam na may ganun… pa lang rights para sa mga kababaihan at para sa mga kabataan… na-
amaze ako – ‘ah may ganito pala, ngayon lang nating alam’… oo na lang kami ng oo na dahil siya ay padre-de-
pamilya” (Xian 2013).
74
“Pagkunwari mga friends, classmate pag nagkakwentuhan…Andami nilang sinasabi, yun mga takot. Takot sa
tatay, hindi sila kayang protektakan nanay nila… yun yung background mo na dahil ganyan yung mga classmates
mo, wala kaming nasasabing paliwanag kapag kami kami. Pareha parehas, kaya nga parang ang laki ng pag-igpaw
na ay may ganito pala” (Xian 2013).
75
“Ansakit lang na narealize ko na mali pala yung dati kong ugali na ganun” (Xian 2013).

399
she’s at fault. But, it’s not supposed to be like that, how to discipline a child.”
76
Similarly,
organizers repeatedly told me how their GABRIELA involvement changed their approaches to
childrearing, so that they tried to refrain from corporal punishment.
VAWC workshops made participants more aware of interpersonal gendered violence they
had previously taken for granted – including emotional and financial abuse, marital rape, and
sexual harassment. In Muntinlupa, Jona observed,
Ever since I took those trainings on VAW, I starting thinking there’s really a lot of
violence happening even inside the house… Before, I just thought it’s normal… [like]
with my children or nieces… especially when it’s with body language… ‘Kiss me first,
then I’ll give you one peso.’ Those forms of [violence].
77

Jona came to a perspective on sexual harassment, as well as women’s and children’s rights over
their bodily autonomy, that caused her to be sensitive to coercion in everyday interactions.
Likewise, Niel recalled that GABRIELA’s discussions made her more aware of verbal abuse:
“For us… that is… only an expression, when they say, ‘Your mother’s a whore! Demon!’
78
…
But when GABRIELA taught us, about… different forms of violation, we [realized] that it is a
form… words we encounter everyday, every night” (2013c). April reflected, she experienced a
“big change” in “how I see myself, as a woman:” “Where my place is or isn’t, the things that are
allowed… for yourself or for your family. Something decided by your husband, you can say no
or yes to, right? That was a big thing for me.”
79
(She recounted GABRIELA’s discussions led
her to recognize and resist marital rape: “I insist now that you can’t do that, you can go to jail for

76
“Noong di pa ako organized na dati OK lang sa akin na saktan yung kapatid ko… natutuwa pa ako… pag siya
yung may mali. Pero hindi naman talaga ganun yung pamamaraan, yung pagdidisiplina ng bata” (Xian 2013).
77
“Mula nung nakuha ko yung mga trainings ng tungkol sa VAW, doon ko na naiisip na andami palang karahasan
na nangyayari kahit mismo sa loob ng bahay… dati parang normal lang… kung sa anak yan o sa pamangkin… lalo
na kung may kasamang body language na…‘kiss muna, bibigyan kitang piso.’ Yung mga ganung porma na ano”
(Jona 2013a).
78
“Putang ina mo! Demonyo!”
79
“Malaking pagbabago;” “ung pagtingin ko sa sarili ko, bilang babae;” “kung saan o, saan o hindi dapat ang
kalalagyan, ng mga bagay na pwedeng… para sayo o para sa pamilya mo. Bagay na desisyon ng asawa mo, na
pwede kang humindi o um-oo di ba? Malaking bagay para sa akin yun” (April 2013a).

400
that, [file] a case… Sometimes I say, death is the penalty there, right?”
80
) As explored in
Chapter 3 and my discussion of survey results above, VAWC workshops and trainings helped
participants reject victim-blaming, too.
Yet VAWC workshops were not the only spaces of these tranformations. Some came to
new perspectives on gendered violence even through GABRIELA’s more general orientations on
women’s status, Philippine history, and organizing because these incorporated discussion of
VAW, as well. Although they had not attended workshops on VAW specifically, the extent that
GABRIELA has integrated the topic of domestic and sexual violence into its political education
overall has made an impact. Additionally, interviewees recounted how their views on VAW
changed through casual conversations. As a newer organizer in Quezon City, Dina had not yet
attended a VAWC orientation; but hearing organizers share about how they handled a sexual
assault caused her to reflect, “we women, especially us victims… really have… rights that
should be fought for... [we] cannot be silent in a corner.”
81
Len recounted that listening to
overseas migrant workers share at a rally recalled her own childhood experiences as a live-in
domestic. And attending GABRIELA’s activities for the ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign against
VAW helped her more clearly see the responsibility of the employer who had sexually harassed
her when she was a teen: “What I knew back then was… just stay away. But now, I’m more
[aware] that regardless of what he says… even if he just tries to hold you, it’s like there’s already
malice, right? Before… I just brushed it off.”
82

As urban poor women came to recognize the power dynamics behind gendered

80
“Naggigiit ko na hindi pwede yan, na makulong yan, may kaso yan. Minsan sinasabi ko nga, kamatayan pa ang
hatol diyan, di ba?” (April 2013c).
81
“Tayong mga kababaihan, lalo na tayong mga biktima, meron din talaga silang... karapatan na dapat talaga
ipaglaban… Di lang... pwede… tatahimik sa isang tabi” (Dina 2013).
82
“Ang alam ko lang kasi noon, parang… Umiwas na lang. Pero mas ngayon, mas naano ko na kahit sabihin na
anohan ka parang hahawakan ka lang, parang may malisya na ‘di ba? Dati… balewala lang” (Len 2013b).

401
interactions they had taken for granted, they viewed their own pasts differently. One former
officer had been coerced into marriage when the man courting her tricked her into ‘eloping;’
although she did not wish to marry, she later accepted because he was a reliable provider.
(Besides, she feared if she returned to her family in the provinces, she might only be pushed to
marry quickly there, too.) She reflected she only began to think of what happened as a form of
VAW after attending trainings with GABRIELA.
The perspective GABRIELA’s political education gave interviewees on their own
experiences politicized them around economic justice concerns, alongside VAW. Andy recalled
coming to recognize the land-grabbing that had impacted her peasant family as systemic, through
GABRIELA’s workshops. After graduating from high school, Xian got busy working at a
restaurant, and stopped joining GABRIELA events for a time. However, her job only recalled
and concretized discussions she’d had in GABRIELA on worker exploitation. She felt “like
their lowly slave… I cry easily… when being shouted at… There I realized, the aunties were
right, the [political] education they give… how the exploiters use their power against the little
people.”
83
After she was paid only ₱1,000 for the month’s work,
84
with 14-hour work days, Xian
quit her job. She continued attending GABRIELA discussions and became a volunteer youth
organizer.

3.3 Finding a Voice: Organizing and Widening Engagement
Survivors took their transformed consciousnesses and applied them to their own lives and
relationships. Many spoke of greater confidence to actively engage with people around them and

83
“Kasing timawa na alipin ka nila… madali akong umiyak… kapag nasigawan ka… Doon ko naisip na tama sila
tita. Yung mga binibigay na pag-aaral... paano ginagamit ng mga nagsasamantala ang kapangyarihan nila doon sa
mga maliliit na tao” (Xian 2013).
84
Metro Manila’s minimum wage at the time was around ₱400 per day.

402
publicly stand up for their views. They were increasingly willing to resist unfair treatment in the
domestic realm, and support others suffering VAW. Skills trainings, as well as collective
support, were vital in these dynamics, as GABRIELA members took on new roles in their
domestic relationships and communities. Their spheres of spatial mobility and social concern
grew, as they directed their own power and potential into social change through collective action.
In GABRIELA, urban poor women found an organization that took their political
education and development as grassroots movement leaders seriously. One Quezon City
organizer shared, “This here is really the organization I’ve been seeking… GABRIELA is
different from other party-lists… Because here… my knowledge widened… Here, you’ll have
education.”
85
She recalled how she joined: “We saw [Clear] in the market… It was really on
point… they were first educating, explaining to people. So I said… ‘This is the partylist I am
looking for.’”
86
Clear’s outreach tactics were no accident, as local organizers related how
trainings emphasize the need to explain what GABRIELA stands for, and make sure potential
members are first on board. Several interviewees who had been part of other political
organizations and trade unions described how even so, their political educations really began
with GABRIELA – in part because of GABRIELA did not marginalize their leadership potential.
New members are tasked with various activities to increase their skills in facilitating
meetings, public speaking, and more. GABRIELA holds regular organizing trainings. Like
Niel, many survivors described growing confidence to engage with others, as they became local
GABRIELA leaders:
At first… I couldn’t speak in front of people… I’ve become a fighter.
87
(Angela 2013a)

85
“Ito ang hinahanap ko talaga na organisasyon dito… iba ito ang GABRIELA san sa ibang PL. Kasi dito…
nadagdagan ang kaalaman ko… Kasi dito… may pinag-aralan kayo dito” (Vengia 2013).
86
“Ito si [Clear] nagkita kami sa palenke... Tamang-tama naman… Yun tinuruan muna nila ang tao,
nagpapaliwanang sila na sabi ko… ito na ang hinahanap ko na partylist.” (Vengia 2013).
87
“Noong una… Hindi ko kayang magsalita sa harap ng tao.... Tapos naging ano ako, naging palaban.”

403
Before, I was very, very scared… of talking… It’s because of my kasamas who believed
in me
88
… [laughs] When I [became] a city-wide president… I realized… I have the
ability… Then I was encouraged by GABRIELA to go ahead.
89
(Shey 2013)

When I became aware… and was given discussions on VAWC, that’s when I gained
confidence. In relying on other people, too… GABRIELA increases your courage…
They showed me what I should do, [what I] could understand… So… I wanted to share
with other people, express, discuss… to change my weaknesses.
90
(Sharon 2013)

In part, women gained confidence through support, mentorship, and trainings – but also because
they were thrust into positions of leadership and public activity. Mercedes, a survivor in Quezon
City, recalled the first time she used a bullhorn:
I was nervous… Later, my neighbor who’d seen me asked, ‘Was that you?’... They heard
me in an outdoor eatery… ‘It really was you! You were shouting with a megaphone’…
They told my husband – ‘Your wife was shouting there…’
‘What?! How will she shout when she’s so shy’… They couldn’t believe it.
I was saying I didn’t want to. But… I had no choice since I was tasked…
I’m used to it now... I even like to add more to what I’m reading out [chuckles]...
I want what I myself feel, to be what I express.
91

Urban poor women conveyed to me that having the confidence to speak publicly, and even
participate in discussions, involved overcoming shame about defying gender roles – as well as
about gendered class indicators, in missing teeth, appearance, and lack of formal education.
Urban poor women took the political analyses GABRIELA offered, and made what they
found relevant their own. Niel discussed how GABRIELA’s mentorship helped her solidify and
share her understanding of how structural conditions impacted her personally:
You’re not just roll-called, ‘Okay, now you have to teach’… You’re asked your opinion,

88
“Dati takot na takot ako e… magsalita… yung… sa mga kasama ko na… may tiwala pala sila sa akin.”
89
“Tapos, yun, naencourage ako ng GABRIELA na sige.”
90
“Yung… alam ko na tapos nabigyan ako papaliwanag din tungkol sa VAWC kaya dun ako lumalakas ang loob
ko. Sa pag-ano asa mga tao din… yung GABRIELA kasi nagpapahayag na… pinapalakas yung loob mo… binigay
nila yung ano ang dapat kong gawin na ano sakin, nakaunawa… kaya… gusto ko rin i-share sa mga tao, ipahayag,
ipaliwanag… magbago yung aking mga kahinaan ko.”
91
“Kinakabahan ako… later nung nakita raw ako ng kapitbahay ko, ‘Ikaw ba yun?’… Naririnig daw nila sa
karinderya… ‘Ikaw nga yun. Sigaw ka ng sigaw sa megaphone’… inano nila yung asawa ko. ‘Yung asawa mo
sigaw ng sigaw dun sa ano.’ ‘Ano?! Anong sigaw mahiyain yun?’ … Hindi makapaniwala na kasi… sinasabi ko
ayoko ayoko. Pero nung… no choice talaga ako kasi task sa akin… nasanay na…gusto ko pang yung binabasa ko…
gusto ko pang dagdagan. [chuckles]… Gusto ko yung sarili kong damdamin ang ipapahayag ko” (Mercedes 2013).

404
how do you explain those three root [causes]... ‘Why is there privatization?’…
It’s like you’re being hanged… There in the tightening of your chest, you’re angry, too,
right? Especially when we talk about health… What will become of us, now that it’s
privatized? ...
You bring it back to who you’re speaking with: ‘Mother, do you like how privatization
works, where what comes first is profit?’
92

Niel found she could lead workshops by voicing the resonance between political analyses of
structural violence, and her own concrete experiences. Meanwhile, trainings helped her learn
“creative means of teaching… are you going to use visuals? Or role-playing?”
93
However, she
explained her own style, to overcome her shyness, was to draw on skills already “natural” to her:
to facilitate “like I’m just having a conversation.”
94
Her own understandings propelled her to
speak out and act: “What you feel about the conditions in society is also what’s pushing you,
that’s why… it just slips out, right? Whatever it is you feel about what’s really happening.
‘Mother, prices are rising, are you still happy about it?’”
95
When they facilitated educational
discussions, I observed local organizers were often highly skilled at connecting with participants
and bringing topics to life through interactive communication and concrete examples.
96

Both GABRIELA’s stances and collective backing around VAW opened new horizons
for members, giving what many termed “a voice” at home and beyond. In pointing out what
principles of GABRIELA impacted her, Mercedes named:

92
“Hindi naman basta-basta … isasalang ka na ‘o, ikaw na ang magturo niyan’… Kinukuhaan… yung opinyon para
doon sa paano mo ipaliwanag yung tatlong ugat… ‘Bakit pribatisasyon?’… Napapalawig na lang… dun sa tulak ng
dibdib mo, na sa galit din di ba? Lalo na kapag pinag-uusapan na ang kalusugan... ‘Paano na kapag pribado na?’....
maibabalik mo doon sa kinakausap mo e. ‘Nanay nagugustuhan niyo ba yung pagpapatakbo ngayon ng
pribatisasyon, na ang pangunahin ay ang naglalako?’” (Niel 2013a).
93
“Creative na pamamaraan sa pagpapadaloy ng pagtuturo… kung biswal mo ba siyang ibigay? O pagsasadula?”
(Niel 2013a).
94
“Parang feeling ko lang nakikipagkuwentuhan” (Niel 2013a).
95
“Yung nararamdaman mo sa kalagayan ng lipunan, yun din yung magtutulak sa iyo, kaya… namumutawi na lang,
di ba? Kung ano ang nararamdaman mo sa totoong nangyayari. ‘Nanay, tumataas na ang presyo, natutuwa pa rin ba
kayo?’” (Niel 2013a).
96
Some shared they had sat through both less than lively workshops, and other discussions with passionate sharing;
from such experiences and trainings, they sought to improve their facilitation techniques.

405
Women’s rights…. Women are not just for housework... She can’t just be saying yes to
her husband. We can’t just be tied to one responsibility. Another is… how you’re
oppressed even if it’s only verbal [abuse].
97

She continued,

You can’t speak, fight – but when I joined GABRIELA, I did what I wanted to, because I
gained great assurance… I’m confident because I have supporters… By being in
GABRIELA, I got a voice.
98

Niel recalled how organizers’ solidarity around her husband’s violence and control boosted her
own courage to resist: “I gained strength by the intervention of… others in GABRIELA… who
went to my house, even though I said, ‘Don’t come because my husband will curse at you’… It
opened my mind – they really aren’t scared, so why am I scared? They are there behind me.”
99

GABRIELA helped members take on new roles in part because it gave them a sense of greater
power and hope for change, in their domestic relations.
Organizers described shifting marital dynamics as well as domestic struggles. In
Muntinlupa, Jona shared,
Before… if you’re married, you can’t refuse… You don’t want… to make a scandal…
[you’ll] just go along even if it really burdens you. But when I learned we can demand
what we want, there are times… even if… my husband says it’s your obligation… We
really need this for ourselves, need to stand by what is right.
100

Mara, a Quezon City officer, mused that now she has more courage to defend her beliefs; but
since her husband opposes her involvement, they are often in conflict:

97
“Yung karapatan ng kababaihan… ang kababaihan hindi lang pala siya pambahay... Hindi siya pwedeng um-oo na
lang sa asawa niya. Hindi na lang pwedeng magpatali kami sa isang responsibilidad… Saka isa pa doon ay yung
inaapi ka kahit berbal lang” (Mercedes 2013).
98
“Hindi ka pwedeng magsalita, lumaban pero noong nasa GABRIELA ako nagawa ko yung gusto kong gawin kasi
malaki ang tiwala ko. Kumbaga ang lakas ng loob ko dahil may kakampi ako… Kumbaga nasa GABRIELA na ako.
May boses na ako” (Mercedes 2013).
99
“Lumakas kasi ang loob ko sa pamamagitan ng…yung mismong GABRIELA… ang pumupunta sa bahay namin.
Kahit sabihin kong ‘huwag kayong pumunta, kasi mumurahin kayo ng asawa ko’… nagbukas sa isip ko, na ‘sila
nga, hindi natatakot, ba’t ako matatakot’ Nandiyan naman sila sa likod ko” (Niel 2013a).
100
“Dati...kung bilang mag-asawa iyan, bawal ka tumanggi. Dahil sa ayaw mong… mag-iiskandalo, sige na lang
kahit nahihirapan ka. Pero nung nalaman ko na pwede tayong mag-demand kung ano iyong gusto natin. May mga
ganoon na time na, ay kahit… Sasabihin ng lalaki, obligasyon mo iyan….kailangang talaga din na kung sa sarili,
kailangang paninindigan kung ano iyong tama” (Jona 2013b).

406
When we argue, he says, ‘You have lots of guts, huh, why are you so proud? You’re so
proud of GABRIELA?’… ‘I’m not proud,’ I say, ‘I just have the courage not to lose to
you… Why don’t I have rights to get out of this house?’ … I’m a fighter now.
101

Struggles regarding partners’ opposition to their intense political commitment were exacerbated
for those in abusive relationships. Because of GABRIELA’s collective support behind her, Niel
recounted that for several years before finally separating, she tried to ignore her husband’s
intimidation: “I’m just pretending… I don’t mind him… If you punch me, punch! ... I’m not
afraid… My husband always threatened… ‘If you go there, I will… make [a] scandal’… But... I
do what I want then. GABRIELA supported me, that’s why I’m… brave.”
102
To some extent,
finding community in GABRIELA helped survivors cope with and resist ongoing abuse.
Some stressed their rejection of control was not only due to GABRIELA’s politicization,
but also because of their weariness with actual, oppressive domestic relations. Isabel, who had
long resisted her husband’s jealousy and hostility to her GABRIELA involvement, explained:
“It’s not only because I became a ‘Gabriela’ – yes, there’s a part like that, too... But… enough
already. I’m not doing anything so why do you have to curse at me, shout…? Maybe, it’s
[feeling] sick and tired with what your husband is doing… It’s too much.”
103

Still, organizers connected their wider political work to their domestic spheres,
expressing a responsibility to model the changes they were working for in their own relations.
Isabel explained she felt some pressure to be a role model, in-line with GABRIELA’s reputation:
‘If I can’t emancipate myself from this situation, how can I help other women?’… I had a
mindset like that… because of the educational discussions I got. How can we make other

101
“Pag… nag aaway kami… yung sabi nun ‘ang tapang tapang mo na huh, bakit sinong pinagmamalaki mo?
Pinagmamalaki mo GABRIELA?’… Di ko pinagmamalaki sabi ko, nagkaroon lang ako ng lakas ng loob na hindi
magpapatalo sa inyo… bakit wala ba kong karapatan na umalis ng bahay? Ngayon palaban na ko” (Mara 2013).
102
“Malakas ang loob” (Niel 2013c).
103
“Hindi lang siguro dahil naging GABRIELA ako. Oo may part na ganun din... Pero... tama na. Wala naman
akong ginagawa bakit kailangang murahin mo ako, sigaw sigawan mo ako, siguro yung pagkasawa atsaka yung
pagkapagod sa ginagawa nung asawa mo na’… sobra na’” (Isabel 2013).

407
women conscious if you yourself, at home, can’t free yourself… from your husband?
104

Likewise, Jona described the obligation she felt to impact her own family and close relations
first: “What I want to happen is, [before] you organize in other places, first organize [those] in
your own place.”
105
She asked, “How can you get [someone] to believe you?
106
… The things
you say, you must start [practicing] in your own home.”
107
She urgently hoped to support
relatives who were going through domestic abuse.
However, rather than simply motivating resistance, the pressure to appear a strong
‘Gabriela’ could also backfire for survivor-organizers, to exacerbate their shame and isolation.
Niel recounted:
During the time you’re being beaten up, you become ashamed of yourself. You can’t
leave the house. They [neighbors] talk about you – ‘To think you’re a GABRIELA, but
you can’t do anything about [it]’… ‘Always giving trainings but when it comes with her
own family, with her own husband she can’t defend herself.’ There’s teasing like that.
108

Her collective’s support was crucial in helping her cope with this added pressure to have already
overcome abuse: she appreciated their “comforting me… I really had no one to go to at that
time,”
109
given such dynamics.
Interviewees described becoming more willing to stand up to others in the community
around them. They shared they were more opinionated about political issues and able to voice
these views to others:

104
“Kung ako nga yung sarili ko, di ko mapalaya sa ganung sitwasyon paano ako makakatulong sa ibang babae…
may ganun na rin akong kaisipan noon e, dahil… sa mga pag-aaral na nakuha ko. Paano tayo maakakapagmulat ng
babae kung ikaw mismo sa sarili mo, sa loob ng bahay di mo mapalaya… yung sarili mo sa asawa mo” (Isabel
2013).
105
“Ang gusto ko lang mangyari, yung sinasabing makapag-organisa ka sa ibang lugar, organisahin mo muna yung
lugar mo” (Jona 2013a).
106
“Paano mo naman siya mapapaniwala” (Jona 2013a).
107
“Kung ano iyong sinasabi mo, kailangang mag-umpisa sa loob ng bahay” (Jona 2013b).
108
“Yung panahon na binubugbog ka, nahihiya ka sa sarili mo, hindi ka makalabas ng bahay, pinag-uusapan ka,
‘tapos GABRIELA pa. Pero wala ka namang magagawa sa... Bigay ng bigay ng pag-aaral pero sa sarili niyang
pamilya, sarili niyang asawa, hindi niya maipagtanggol yung sarili niya,’ may ganung pagkutya eh” (Niel 2013a).
109
“Yung pag-comfort nga sa akin… wala talaga akong matakbuhan sa panahon na yun eh” (Niel 2013a).

408
Before… I was like someone who didn’t care about the world… like it was just air that
passed in front of me… I felt alone… Now… I learned… to talk back when I know
they’re wrong… I became braver... I can show what I really feel.
110
(Len 2013b)

Survivor-organizers discussed changing priorities, and actively engaging their communities:
Before I don’t do anything except play bingo [laughs]. Bingo and more bingo. But now,
I’ve changed a lot... I started to protect myself… Unlike before… I just keep still, keep
quiet, because I just want it to be over… Now, even I can make a disturbance…
I learned to help others in my surroundings.
111
(Aljhen 2013)

[Now] there’s something… saying inside me that you have to be involved, you have to do
something… At least if I could just speak to the person, maybe the wife... even in a small
way. It felt so different. (Jona 2013b)

In standing up for themselves and their beliefs, GABRIELA members did not necessarily seek to
pick fights with others. Rather, another common theme interviewees stressed was that through
organizing, they developed more patience to explain and engage with others, alongside more
openly expressing themselves, including regarding disagreements. Organizers were politicized
to take a stand, to realize neutrality is elusive, and to take responsibility for the broader political
implications of their actions.
Likewise, organizers gained greater willingness to assist those experiencing VAW around
them, influenced by trainings and their own changing consciousnesses. Now, Jon says she tries
to make each conversation she has with others meaningful: “Every time that I'm talking to them,
it means something… I’m trying to give out some information,” whether sharing on VAW,
health, or disaster issues (2013). Shey observed that when neighbors experienced VAW,
“Before… I just guide them. I just tell them what to do, but now… I want to be able to help

110
“Dati… akong… parang walang pakialam sa mundo... Parang hangin lang ‘yung dumaan sa harap ko…
pakiramdam ko nag-iisa lang ako… ngayon… ‘Yung natuto na ‘ko… sumagot-sagot na ‘pag alam kong mali… mas
naging matapang ako… Naisiwalat ko ‘yung talagang nararamdaman ko.”
111
“Dati wala akong ginawa kundi mag-Bingo. [Laughs] Bingo ng bingo. Pero ngayon, ang laki na ng pinagbago
ko… magmula no’ng kaya ko ng ipagtanggol ang sarili ko… Unlike dati…‘di lang ako kumikibo, tahimik lang. Kasi
iniisip ko para lang matapos… ngayon kahit ako makipag-bangayan… natuto akong tumulong sa mga naka-paligid.”

409
personally.”
112
Even organizers who had previously been civically engaged in other women’s
groups or local Homeowners Associations (HOA) prior to joining GABRIELA, said
GABRIELA increased their confidence engaging others, speaking publically, and challenging
VAW. They contrasted GABRIELA’s politicization of VAW with the other groups they were
part of. (Those who did not report personally experiencing domestic or sexual abuse, similarly
spoke of how GABRIELA influenced them to be responsive to VAW in their communities.)
Urban poor women enjoyed greater spatial mobility because of their involvement in
GABRIELA, not only outside of their homes, but outside of their communities to places they had
never been, as they conducted outreach and attended events. This increased mobility included
transgressing barriers of class segregation: attending protests in Makati’s business district or
talks at UP Diliman, shouting on bullhorns at executives, meeting face-to-face with politicians.
Andy recalled, “Especially after becoming a full-time organizer… I became good at facing
people… We had a lot of experiences… facing the higher-ups in the government.”
113
Echoing
others who recounted confronting police during demonstrations, including regarding sexual
harassment, she added, “If I didn’t become a ‘Gabriela,’ I would still be afraid of police.”
114

Parallel to their widening spatial spheres, organizers explained how their politicization
through GABRIELA resulted in widening domains of solidarity. In being exposed to diverse
social contexts, organizers came to a deeper awareness of societal patterns: both commonality
with others, and inequalities. Andy said,
When I wasn’t a member yet… you don’t care what’s happening in the Philippines...
You just watch TV… But when I became a member, that’s when I found out there’s
many people suffering poverty, not just us…

112
“Dati… naguguide lang ako, nagtuturo lang ako na ganito gagawin mo, but now…gusto na ako na mismo
tutulong sa kanila” (Shey 2013).
113
“Lalo na nagiging full-time ako… marunong na akong humarap sa tao… Kasi marami na rin kaming karanasan
na… humaharap kami ng matataas na mga katungkulan sa gobyerno” (Andy 2013b).
114
“Kung hindi ako nagiging GABRIELA, takot ako sa pulis” (Andy 2013b).

410
Before… I didn’t have awareness. All I knew is just eat, work, like that.
115
(2013a)

Another organizer in Tondo described her prior internalized stigmatization of those who were
worse off, despite coming from a poor family herself:
When seeing people who live at the riverside… we feel we’re rich, we in the building
units… I became kind of… annoyed, maybe disgusted also, because of their appearance.
But eventually after joining SAMAKANA, I realized… you living in the units, you’re
poor too, your situation is in common. It just happens they have it more severe.
116

She visited the riverside residents because SAMAKANA was providing solidarity against an
impending demolition in the area. Still another organizer, who grew up in a Quezon City
informal settlement, found visiting the dilapidated housing projects in Tondo, as well as peasants
organizing in Hacienda Luisita, eye-opening and politicizing.
Organizers and survivors described how GABRIELA gave them a transformed sense of
their capacity to help effect social change. Many experienced this power to be politically
involved in term of breaking gender roles. Shey explained,
In households… it’s the man who decides, the woman who’s just there... That’s really
common… in our system, women don’t have voices…
Before it was work, house, work, house. And sometimes… happenings like gambling.

But I realized… I can do more than gambling… I can convince them your place is not
just in your home... You’re not there just to wash clothes, cook, feed your husband, feed
your children… Also intervene in what’s happening around you.
After joining GABRIELA, all the wives… go… outside their houses to share with us…
what’s the problem in our community. Like now, we don’t have a bridge… we discuss...
In the community, I can do that, after all.
117

115
“Nung di pa ko member.… wala kang pakialam kung ano mangyayari sa Pilipinas, sa atin e… nanonood ka lang
ng TV... Pero noong nagiging … member na ako, doon mo nalalaman yung tungkol dun na maraming tao na hindi
lang kami naghihirap… dati… wala akong alam. Basta ang alam ko lang, kakain, trabaho, ganun lang.”
116
“Tas makakita sila nung mga taga-Riverside ... tas parang, ang yaman kami, taga-unit kami… naging
bahagyang… naiinis, siguro nandidiri na rin kasi yung itsura nila pero, nung eventually ko na na-realize nung may
SAMAKANA… nakatira ka nga sa unit, mahirap ka rin naman di ba, iisa lang din naman yung sitwasyon niyo eh.
Nagkataon lang na mas malala sila eh” (Ella 2013).
117
“Sa pamamahay… kailangan ang lalake magdecide, ang babae andito lang… Kalimitan naman talaga sa natin,
ganun ang sistema, ang babae, walang boses… dati, trabaho, bahay, trabaho, bahay. Tapos… sometimes,
happenings na gambling gambling but… I realize… na pwede pala akong hindi lang hanggang sa gambling ang
gagawin ko… maconvince ko sila na hindi lang ganun ang posisyon mo sa bahay mo… Na hindi lang laba, luto,
pakain ng asawa, pakain ng mga anak… makialam ka rin sa nangyayari sa paligid mo… after nung… nagkaanuhan

411
Yet even if rejecting previous gender roles was part of their politicization, survivors’ organizing
belonged to a broader political awakening and sense of political responsibility transcending
gender issues alone. Shey asserted, “The government is denying our voices… I’ll join protests
so… my voice can be heard, since I also have an idea what they’re doing. Like… the people’s
poverty, they set it aside.”
118
She continued, “If only few people join… the government won’t
listen… So my mind has changed: it’s really that intense. I also know some things. Why won’t
I share it? … Should I put it in a small jar and just seal it? No.”
119

3.4 Healing: Movement-building as Medicine
Some organizers, including survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, found movement-
building healing for past or ongoing trauma. Besides enjoying GABRIELA activities and
community, in movement-building, survivors found a sense of their significance to others, as
well as their power to help change conditions that harmed them, countering the isolation and loss
of agency caused by abuse. At the same time, I discuss particular pressures survivor-organizers
have faced to manage movement-building goals alongside harms they still suffer.
Mercedes shared, “I like organizing… GABRIELA is fun, it’s challenging… To awaken
women… to teach them to be braver.”
120
While Darna did not report experiencing interpersonal
gendered violence, her family struggled economically; when participating in GABRIELA
activities, she said, “It’s like I lose my tiredness here… I don’t worry too much… about

ng GABRIELA, all the wives… go out, outside their house to share with us… What’s the problem in our
community. Kagaya ngayon, wala kaming tulay… usap usap... sa community na, kaya ko pala yun.” (Shey 2013).
118
“Dadalhin ko sa protest ang sarili ko para… maririnig na boses kasi may alam din ako na ganun ang ginagawa
nila. Yung kumbaga… ang mga kahirapan ng mga tao. Sineset aside nila” (Shey 2013).
119
“Kung kokonti lang ang tao na sasama… hindi yun papakinggan ng government… kaya nagbagong isip ko sige
ganun pala katindi. May alam din ako. Ba’t naman ko hindi ishashare? … I put it in the small jar tas kumbaga
tatakpan ko na lang. Hindi kuwan.” (Shey 2013).
120
“Gusto ko na ding mag-organisa… ang GABRIELA masaya eh. Challenging siya… para imulat yung
kababaihan… Para turuan din silang maging matapang” (Mercedes 2013).

412
poverty… here we’re happy… I say… that only just now, I’ve become free.”
121
Echoing the
sentiments of other survivors about the joy of expanding horizons, Shey shared, “I am happy…
when I go with GABRIELA. I join the mobilizations. Ay! I can go outside Muntinlupa. I go
outside my city [laughs]. I’ve been to places I didn’t know.”
122
While in hiding, Niel described
her travel to new areas as both challenging and fulfilling: “The collective first thought of sending
me away temporarily. But, I got used to it… They were mistaken I might not be able to handle
new companions in a new area (here, I know almost every mother)… I was able to manage the
new barangay being organized.”
123

In Muntinlupa, Sharon spoke of how organizing helped her cope with past trauma:
So I don’t dwell on my past… I want to enjoy myself... I like giving discussions on issues
and… problems in the area… chatting… They also open up about their problems, so… I
forget my past experiences.
124

If she were to just stay inside her house, “you get annoyed… remembering everything. That’s
why I want to go outside, to the areas.”
125
Furthermore, gaining the confidence to express
herself was healing: “What’s inside me, I let out… If I won’t do it, I’ll feel more weak… I want
to express my experiences… in my family;” she was motivated to organize because “I don’t
want… them to experience what I [did].”
126
Sharon found fulfilment being heard by other
mothers, and boosting their confidence: “It strengthens [me] when they seem to listen… You

121
“Dito ay … parang nawawala yung pagod ko, hindi ako masyadong nag-iisip ng… yung kahirapan… eh dito mga
masaya naman dito… sinasabi ko… ngayon lang ako magiging malaya” (Darna 2013).
122
“Masaya akong [laughs]… when go with GABRIELA. Sama ako sa mob. Ayy, nakalabas na akong Muntinlupa.
[everybody laughs] I go outside my city. [laughs] Narating ko yung lugar na hindi ko alam” (Shey 2013).
123
“Naisip naman yun ng collective na ilayo muna ako, pansamantala. Pero nasanay din naman ako… akala nila
kasi, baka hindi ko kakayanin na panibagong pakikisama doon sa panibagong lugar… dito, halos kilala na yung mga
nanay… nakayanan ko naman yung panibagong hawak ng ano barangay yung inoorganisahan” (Niel 2013a).
124
“Para hindi ko maalala yung nakaraan… gusto ko… enjoy ko… Gusto ko yung magbigay ng ididiscuss, yung
mga isyu tapos tungkol sa mga kung anong mga problema nila sa erya… nagkwentuhan… nagbubukas din sila
tungkol din sa kanila, ng problema. Kaya… nakalimutan ko na yung nakaranasan ko noon.” (Sharon 2013).
125
“Nainis ka rin kapag… naalala mo lahat. Kaya gusto ko yung lumabas, mag-erya” (Sharon 2013).
126
“Kung ano yung nasa loob ko, nilabas ko… kung hindi ko gagawin to, lalo akong manghihna… gusto ko
ipahayag din kung ano yung naranasan ko… sa pamilya ko;” “ayaw kong… yung naranasan ko maranasan din nila”
(Sharon 2013).

413
think how you can help people… You’ll draw your strength from them, in how you give.”
127

Xian likewise described how she found organizing a healing and growing process, even
as she sought to share her own family’s experiences of breaking free from domestic violence.
She explained,
I said, ‘I cannot endure it alone’… I felt movement is what really can help you recover…
If you just freeze in something that happened, and think about it over and over, really
you’ll get hurt over and over.
But when you organize and have things to do, there are many from the masses, many
people you meet. You can adopt what happens to them, their joys.
128

Being part of movement-building helped Xian not “surrender”
129
to her traumatic past.
Moreover, she added, “One of the inspiring parts of movement is the mothers’ regard for you.
That is one of the biggest happinesses... You won’t give up… You’ll be inspired to move
because they need you… that potential you have to also help them”
130
After all, she reflected,
one part of “keeping [it] healthy”
131
were talks in her collective about “how we can deepen our
organizing with the broader masses;”
132
she felt encouraged because gaining the respect and trust
of the urban poor mothers was an indication she was doing something right. Meanwhile, Xian
said she also felt inspired because of “the life my mother and I now have… it’s already
happiness… we move freely to do whatever we want.”
133

127
“Lakas ng loob na parang nakikinig din sila… Iniisip mo yung kung paano ka makatulong sa tao… dun
mahuhugot sa kanila yung lakas ng loob mo e kung paano mo ibigay sa kanila” (Sharon 2013).
128
“Sinabi ko ‘hindi ko siya kinaya mag-isa,’ na dun ko naramdaman na ang pagkilos ay talagang nakakatulong
sa’yo e para makarecover. Kasi kung ikaw ay nakapondo lang sa isang pang yayari at ulit ulit mong iniisip, talagang
masasaktan ka ng paulit-ulit. Pero kapag ikaw ay nag-oorganize at may ginagawa ka, andyan ang maraming masa at
maraming taong nakakasalamuha mo. Pwede mong maadopt kung ano ang mga pangyayari sa kanila, yung mga
kasiyahan” (Xian 2013).
129
“Susukuan” (Xian 2013).
130
“Isa sa mga nakakainsipire na ‘pagkilos ay yung mga pagtingin sa’yo ng mga nanay. Isa yun sa mga malaking
happiness… hindi mo susukuan… maiinspire ka na kumilos dahil kailangan ka nila…Yung potensyal mo para
makatulong din sa kanila” (Xian 2013).
131
“Pagiging malusog” (Xian 2013).
132
“Paano pa natin higit na mapapalalim ang yung mga ating pag-oorganisa sa mas malawak na masa” (Xian 2013).
133
“Buhay namin ngayon ng nanay ko na... ano e, yung happiness na… maluwag nakakakilos kami ng kahit anong
gusto namin” (Xian 2013).

414
At the same time, organizers sometimes encouraged survivor-organizers to view
interpersonal conflicts within a hierarchy of strategic priorities. Organizers suffering ongoing
abuse could experience pressures to not let their feelings get in the way of movement-building.
For instance, Jona she found other organizers’ moral support invaluable when she was coping
with her husband’s infidelity. Nevertheless, she recalled another organizer once joked, “Ay…
the government really has such big problems – even you can too? It’s like that?”
134
Jona
explained the joke implied, “if we compare it to our government today, what’s causing me
trouble really doesn’t deserve focused attention.”
135
The joke also suggested it should not be
surprising that Jona would experience hardship given widespread, systemic violence.
The joke stung, but Jona said the organizer’s words made an impact because she
understood them to be true. Rather than feeling angry that it treated her problems with her
partner dismissively, she says, “Her words… really struck… I was thinking about it... I
compared myself to others experiencing even more severe violence… For me, that was my only
problem… There you’ll see where you should put your attention.”
136
While perhaps hinting at
links between systemic violence and Jona’s personal experiences, the joke reinforced a hierarchy
between ‘personal’ and other more important political issues. Jona acknowledged the joke
hurt.
137
Still, she described finding it an important reminder to consider the roots of problems
and to empathize with others. (As illustration, she explained that, while furious at the woman
whom her husband cheated with, she tried not to judge her; and sought to prioritize her
organizing work with GABRIELA to expand the organization.) However, she admitted her

134
“Ay..ang gobyerno nga ang laki ng problema, ikaw pa kaya? Ganoon?” (Jona 2013b)
135
“Kung ikumpara natin sa gobyerno natin ngayon, kung ano iyong pinoproblema ko na hindi naman dapat
pagtuunan ng pansin” (Jona 2013b).
136
“Iyong salitang… tumatama sa..doon ko siya pinag-iisip… Kinumpara ko sa iba iyong ano mas grabe iyong mga
karahasan nila... Ako, iyon lang ang problema ko… doon mo maiisip kung ano talaga iyong dapat pagtutuunan mo
ng pansin” (Jona 2013b).
137
“Parang biro-biro lang pero masakit” (Jona 2013b).

415
feelings about her partner’s infidelity remained difficult to resolve; she was able to continue
confiding frequently in another organizer.
Organizers cultivated an attitude of patience and openness to maintain connection and
support with community members they sought to organize.
138
At the same time, though, they
weighed how to maximize strategic relationships. I observed that taking a long-term approach
towards cycles of violence sometimes meant organizers encouraged each other to pick their
battles, especially in cases of emotional abuse. In Chapter 6, I elaborated on organizers’
typically survivor-centered responses towards Neng, a new organizer battling her husband’s
control, to refrain from adding more pressure on her in this difficult situation; but they did not
always avoid doing so. In another episode, several GABRIELA organizers tried to meet with her
husband, but he treated them rudely. Afterwards, Neng fought with him further about his
behavior, and missed attending an event as a result. Another collective member chided her:
‘Why did you fight?’… I said, ‘I introduced you, right?’
‘For only that, you’re taking it to heart?’… I was so ashamed then, I was actually
crying… [She] said, ‘My goodness, don’t bother… We’re used to that.’
139

In Neng’s account, the organizer hinted she should not bother fighting with her husband on their
behalf, in order to prioritize going to the mobilization instead. Yet her husband’s attitude took a
heavy emotional toll on Neng, that was hard for her to just set aside (“When it got late, we’re
still not sleeping [because] it’s not resolved,” she recounted).
140
Arguably, this emotional labor,
of keeping in mind strategic priorities while navigating relationships, is greater for those
organizers who are survivors – even as survivor-organizers are poised to receive more intensive

138
See chapters 5 and 6. Towards survivors, this reinforces survivor-centered decision-making.
139
“‘Bakit kayo nag-away?’… sabi ko, ‘diba pinakilala ko kayo.’ ‘Para yun lang dinibdib mo?’ Naku nakakahiya
talaga umiiyak nga ako nun eh. Sabi naman ni [K], naku wag na yan sanay na kami sa ganyan.’” (Neng 2013b).
140
“Pero nung gabi na yun hindi naman kami natulog na mag-asawa na hindi nagka-ayos” (Neng 2013b).

416
support than survivors who are less involved members.
141

Some survivor-organizers described their fulfillment in taking action against VAWC,
specifically. At times, they sought out volunteering on VAW Response Teams. But in other
situations, collectives delegated survivors tasks not directly related to VAWC, to avoid re-
triggering trauma. Organizers sought to increase the collectivity of VAW Response Teams, as
well, so as not to overwhelm survivor-organizers serving on them. The paths of survivors
towards healing were often not smooth given the constant violence in their lives – but through
movement-building, survivor-organizers were able to find a sense of meaning and power.

3.5 Sharing Lessons: Survivors as Leaders
Urban poor women survivors of domestic and sexual violence play a critical role
mentoring and reaching out to others. In part, GABRIELA has encouraged them to share their
experiences regarding VAW. Survivor-organizers were often eager to support others facing
VAW; and vital in helping make GABRIELA accessible to other urban poor survivors.
Although urban poor women joined GABRIELA for a variety of reasons, not only
because of interpersonal gendered violence, sharing around these experiences was part of the
glue solidifying the relationships that bond members together. Mercedes recounted being drawn
into GABRIELA by an organizer who especially related to urban poor women survivors of
interpersonal gendered violence:
She... embraced me… and many more organizers… Us, battered wives and rape
victims… Because… she’s also part of us, like us
142
… We can relate to her. She was
really good at explaining so she reformed our thinking.
143

141
Other times, survivor-organizers deeply desired to be politically involved, but were unable to break free from
partners’ abuse and control. In such cases, they might be forced back to temporary inactivity.
142
“Mga battered wife, mga rape victims. because… parte rin kasi siya ng katulad namin” (Mercedes 2013).
143
“Magaling kasi siya magexplain kaya napatino niya ang aming kaisipan” (Mercedes 2013).

417
Queenie suggested recounting ‘personal’ experiences helps encourage urban poor women to join
GABRIELA and connect with each other:
‘What is GABRIELA and why do you want me to be a member?’ ... they ask… You
share your life. ‘That’s why I became a member’… Of course, especially while sharing
there, you’re crying, because… something there struck the mothers.
144

When sharing their stories was an inroad for urban poor women to build friendships, and get
politicized regarding larger structural conditions, survivors were crucial movement-builders.
Survivors related their own experiences of receiving collective support, when organizing
others facing domestic and sexual abuse. Some, like Niel and Andy, offered their transformed
situations as examples. Niel spoke about reaching out to other women:
When I'm going to organize mostly women, I always share… myself as an example…
My experience… with my husband and my family… as a farmer… a victim [of] my
employer, and how I escaped…
That [before,] I was shy to come out [about] what happened to myself and my family. I
was an officer [in GABRIELA]… but I'm afraid [of] my husband. (Niel 2013c)

By disclosing not only her transformations, but also her weaknesses and past shames, Niel felt
she was able to encourage others to join GABRIELA, because “maybe they related [to] my
experience… maybe they’re comfortable sharing with me, things that happened to them.”
Likewise, Xian stressed,
The leap to freedom my mother achieved… you can offer and tell others you meet… the
experiences and missteps we learned from… I draw from it with mothers who have
problems like that… ‘This is the action we take for that kind of problem.’
145

Xian felt being able to offer such experience helped her to be a more effective organizer: “the
mothers… admire how you faced problems like that.”
146
Especially for those in her own

144
“‘Ano yung GABRIELA? Bakit niyo ako immyembro ng GABRIELA?’… meron ganyan na nagtatanong…
yung sa buhay buhay para mai-share mo. ‘Kaya nga ako naging member’… syempre lalo na kapag nag si-share ka
na nandun yung umiiyak ka na, kasi… tinatamaan na yung mga nanay na yun” (Queenie 2013a).
145
“Sa pag-igpaw pa lang sa kalayaan na nakamit ng nanay ko… kaya mo nang ibigay at sabihin dun sa iba mo pang
nakakasalamuha… ang mga karanasan at ang mga pagkakamali, na ating natutunan.... nagagamit ko… siya… dun sa
mga nanay na may mga ganung problema… ‘ganito po ang ginawa naming aksyon sa ganyang problema’” (2013).
146
“Ang mga ganung kananay... ay hanga na ganun mo kinaharap ang ganung problema” (Xian 2013).

418
neighborhood who know her story, Niel recognizes her changed situation serves as an
inspiration: “because I am more known here... more people here… are encouraged to stand up
like that against their husbands… stand up for themelves in their role as woman… Here, they
know what I have been through… it’s like I become their inspiration.”
147
On their part, other
local organizers who continued to suffer domestic violence or trauma from sexual abuse told me
Niel or Xian were among their few confidantes. One explained she felt closer to Niel and
another local organizer since they had experienced similar abuse and economic hardship: “I’m
more comfortable talking with them. I want to tell them… ‘What is this life of mine?’… because
they also know.”
148

Survivors-organizers discussed their passion for supporting others going through VAW.
One asserted, “I can empathize more with VAW victims... Because of my own experience.”
149

But urban poor survivors were passionate about sharing experiences and organizing around other
issues besides VAW, as well. Andy explained, “I’ve also experienced what it’s like to be
demolished, and I don’t just want to stay like this, not conveying [it] to my kasamas.”
150
She
spoke of her drive for organizing:
It’s hard for me to stop [organizing] full-time because I want to increase the members…
When there are only a few… I feel low… When we have educational discussions… I get
white hairs from so much stress…
I really push myself to be active, because I can’t really accept there are no active
[members]… especially at rallies… In my experience with rallies, I haven’t failed. I was
able to encourage many mothers [to join]. I’m a good speaker.
151

147
“Kasi mas kilala ako dito eh... Mas dito… ang mas maraming na-encourage sa ganoong paglaban ng asawa
para… manindigan sila sa papel nila bilang babae…dito kilala nila ako kung ano yung pinag-dadaanan ko… parang
ako ang nagiging inspirasyon nila” (Niel 2013b).
148
“Mas komportable akong nagsasabi sa kanila. Gusto ko naman sabihin sa kanila… ‘ano ba itong buhay ko’…
Kasi alam din nila e” (Queenie 2013b).
149
“Mas ramdam ko iyong kung halimbawa may VAW victim... Dahil nararanasan ko” (Jona 2013b).
150
“Naranasan ko rin naman na nagiging nademolish ako, tapos hindi pwede yung ganito nalang ako, na hindi ko
iparating sa mga kasama ko” (Andy 2013a).
151
“Mahirap siya ihinto yung pagkafull-time ko kasi gusto ko rin naman na makarami ng mga ano member… pag
kunti nalang yung member nanghihina ako e… Pag may ed tayo na-ano ako. Inuuban ako dun sa sobrang istress…
pinupush ko talaga na maging active, hindi kasi di ko tanggap talaga na walang mapaactive… lalo na sa rally… sa

419
Local organizers like Niel, April, and Andy played a vital role connecting with grassroots
members in a manner that makes GABRIELA accessible.

4. Furthering Movement-Building by Addressing VAW: GABRIELA’s Importance
VAWC trainings often end with a discussion on the question, what is the importance of a
women’s organization like GABRIELA? This encourages participants to reflect on
GABRIELA’s practical role in challenging gendered violence, as well as its larger political
significance. Organizers often posed GABRIELA’s importance to me specifically in terms of
the need to address VAW. For instance, Ella, who serves as a region-wide officer, replied,
It’s good we really have an organization for women… because we have women who lack
confidence, lack education… They aren’t given proper information on the issue of their
rights, in terms of ‘violence against women’… If it’s just the neighbors they tell ‘I was
beaten,’ their neighbors even spread it as gossip…
And especially as poverty worsens, violence against our women also worsens.
152

Organizers defended the need for a women’s organization focused on addressing gendered
violence as part of a broader political agenda.
I explored whether interviewees thought addressing interpersonal gendered violence
helped movement-building. Ella affirmed doing so helped survivors get politicized and become
leaders; she elaborated,
Their experience of being liberated… [as] VAW survivors, that’s what makes them
become [active] – that’s how it is in real life, there are no more modern martyrs… No
more ‘Maria Clara.’ It must be the era of getting involved, taking action…
That’s what can inspire our women… who were subjected to that kind of situation.
153

bagay karanasan ko talaga sa rally, wala akong napalpak kundi ang dami-dami talagang nahihikayat na mga nanay.
Magaling ako sa vocalist” (Andy 2013a).
152
“Maganda yung ano, may organisasyon talaga ng kababaihan lalo na yung… mga kababaihan natin na mahihina
yung loob, kulang sa edukasyon, hindi sila nabibigyan ng… wastong kaalaman para sa usapin ng kanilang mga
karapatan, in terms ng violence against women… kung sa kapitbahay lang nila ikinuwento yung ‘nabugbog ako’ di
ikinalat pa ng tsismosa nilang kapitbahay… at lalong lumalala yung kahirapan, lumalala din yung karahasan sa mga
kababaihan natin” (Ella 2013).
153
“Yung experience nila na pagiging, naka-alpas o…VAW survivors, yun yung nagiging ano eh, yun yung buhay
na patotoo na wala nang makabagong martir… No more Maria Clara. Dapat panahon nang ma-involved, kumilos…

420
For Ella, survivors held a drive to resist, which addressing VAW could help unleash. She
connected their resistance to common discourses in the ND movement about women’s roles as
revolutionary heroines rather than passive sufferers.
Lisa, a regional-level organizer in Muntinlupa, agreed:
If [addressing] VAWC serves organizing? Of course... That’s what GABRIELA is
known for… Those who became victims are themselves helping alongside us, as they’re
able…
It’s part of… how they overcome those experiences, and they also want to share... They
themselves are our partners in… getting more membership… they give VAW
orientations… If there’s a chapter… they can join committees.
154

Integrated into chapters’ community-based organizing, survivors have a wide range of options
for their roles in movement-building. She continued, their involvement “depends how you’ll
handle [supporting] them to become active… You invite them to GABRIELA activities, until
they eventually can partner in helping with the work.”
155

Others echoed Lisa that tackling VAWC has shaped GABRIELA’s reputation.
Furthermore, local organizers repeatedly noted this reputation for fighting VAW not only
encourages more survivors to resist, but attracts them to join the organization. In Tondo, Angela
observed,
Maybe before, people didn’t put up a fight… since… there’s no one they can run to.
Now… when they fight, it’s even popular for people to run to GABRIELA...
I know even before… there were… many who want to fight back. There was just the fear
there’s no one to go to. Nobody will help them before, right?
156

yun yung… nakakapagbigay inspirasyon dun sa ating mga kababaihan na nasasadlak… sa ganung kalagayan” (Ella
2013).
154
“Kung nagsisilbi ba yung VAWC sa organizing? Oo naman… doon naman talaga tumampok ang GABRIELA e.
Tapos katuwang natin mismo yung mga nagiging biktima kung paano sila mismo… Bahagi ng ano nila yun…pag-
igpaw dun sa ganung naranasan nila at gusto rin nila syempreng mabahagi… Sila mismo nakakatuwang natin dun
sa… membership getting… silang magbigay ng mga VAW orientation… kung may chapter na… papaloob sila sa
chapter sa mga komite” (Lisa 2013).
155
“Depende naman kung paano yung magiging handling para maging aktibo sila… padaluhin mo sa mga aktibidad
ng GABRIELA hanggang sa makatuwang na sa mga gawain” (Lisa 2013).
156
“Noon siguro, ‘yung mga tao kaya hindi pa gaanong lumalaban kasi… wala silang matatakbuhan e. Ngayon…
kapag lumaban sila, kahit nga mga popular na mga tao e, tumatakbo sa GABRIELA… Alam ko naman noon pa…
marami na rin gustong lumaban. Kaya lang ‘yung takot na wala silang mapupuntahan e. Walang tutulong sa kanila.
Hindi ba?” (Angela 2013b).

421
Likewise, Carlos shared, “When the community sees you bring… their issues you gain their trust
and respect… Someone will just walk in GABRIELA because she knows GABRIELA’s
position” (2013b). In Quezon City, Queenie explained,
There’s a family where the mother is being beaten. That’s why they want to join
GABRIELA – to somehow protect themselves…
When you’re recruiting members… if a place has violence… if they know there’s
GABRIELA, ‘I like that because it defends women who are oppressed, so I want to be a
member.’ To… know who they can approach if something happens…
So many mothers become members. GABRIELA really grows.
157

That said, its addressing domestic abuse was not the only reason urban poor women were drawn
to GABRIELA.
Angela thought that in Tondo, there were limits on VAWC becoming the basis of a
community-wide campaign rivalring the vibrancy of housing campaigns, in part because of
pressure to see the problem as a ‘private’ issue, and difficulty for survivors to take a stand. Still,
she considered VAWC a crucial issue for GABRIELA to take up because the problem affects so
many women; and agreed addressing it supports rather than detracts from GABRIELA’s other
organizing. Angela asserted GABRIELA’s willingness to stand up against VAW boosts its
reputation on other issues: “GABRIELA has really put forward more [the issue of] VAWC…
When we’ve handled a case, our thinking is won’t give up… we’ll really fight until the end;”
158

as a result, “GABRIELA was also able to motivate [people] to do something about other issues,
too… because they know, ‘That GABRIELA, when they fight, they really fight.’”
159

157
“Sa isang pamilya ay binubugbog yung nanay. Kaya gustong gusto nila sumali ng GABRIELA. Para kahit
papano maprotektahan sila… dun mismo sa pag nagpamember ka… pag ung lugar na yun may mga karahasan kaya
yun pagnalaman nilang GABRIELA yan, ‘ay gusto ko yan kasi nagtatanggol sa mga babaeng inaapi kaya gustong
kong magpa member.’ Para… alam nila kung sino ang malalapitan nila. Pag may nangyayari sakanila, kaya
madaming nanay nagpapamember. Lumalaki talaga ang GABRIELA” (Queenie 2013a).
158
“Yung na-project talaga ng GABRIELA mas VAWC… kapag nag-handle ng case, ‘yung isip na lang natin na
hindi tayo iiwanan… parang lalaban talaga hanggang dulo e” (Angela 2013b).
159
“Naka-motivate din ang GABRIELA para ma-ano din ‘yung ibang mga isyu... kasi alam din naman na ‘yung
GABRIELA kapag lumaban, laban talaga” (Angela 2013b).

422
Organizers distinguished GABRIELA’s approach to VAW from other institutions’. Lisa
emphasized GABRIELA’s empowerment framework makes it “very different”
160
from the
church and even other women’s organizations:
GABRIELA [seeks] to empower women. In other organizations… it’s like they restrain
you not to fight… The church… restrains you to be submissive… ‘Blessed are those
who suffer’… Other organizations… don’t teach how women can end these different
types of violence.
161

Furthermore, she criticized the disempowering treatment of survivors in the shelter system,
comparing it to imprisonment, being “confined there in one place.”
162
Throughout GABRIELA,
organizers critiqued mere services provision as a ‘dole-out’ and band-aid approach that
patronizes survivors and ignores structural motors of inequality. In contrast, GABRIELA’s
social movements approach potentially fosters survivors’ empowerment through survivor-
centered decision-making, and cultivating support networks outside of institutionalization.
Local organizers attested other women’s civic organizations in their neighborhoods, such
as those formed by local politicians’ wives using funds from the state’s mandatory ‘gender and
development’ budget, were not only less commited to addressing VAW, but also not as
accountable to members’ input.
163
Rosie, a GABRIELA officer who also had joined such a civic
group created by a politician’s wife, contrasted its top-down command structure to
GABRIELA’s participatory decision-making. Although the women’s civic group stressed
collective action (‘sama-samang pagkilos’), she felt, “It’s like the group was just established…

160
“Malaki ang kaibahan ng organization ng GABRIELA dun sa mga ibang women organization” (Lisa 2013).
161
“GABRIELA… to empower women, sa ibang organization naman… pinananatiling parang wag kang lumaban…
Sa simbahan pinananatili nila yung pagiging kimi… ‘pinagpapala yung mapagtiis’… yung ibang organization…
hindi tinuturo kung paano mawawakasan ng kababaihan yung iba’t ibang tipo ng karahasan” (Lisa 2013).
162
“Mananatili lang siya dun sa isang lugar na yun” (Lisa 2013).
163
As noted, such women’s groups have been critiqued for serving as vehicles of traditional politicians’ election
campaigns, more than for social change around women’s rights; see Chapter 1.

423
to say there, we have an organization for women”
164
– without providing a venue for members to
influence its political direction. (Members were simply enlisted to help with activities like
school clean-up drives.)
165

Jon, a VAW Reponse Team member in Muntinlupa, offered a prevalent critique of
NGOs: “NGOs nowadays are also becoming businesses. CMP, NGO… They all have… issues
regarding money or corruption… They all are affected even if you call them ‘non-government
organization.’”
166
Local organizers were wary of the co-optation of NGOs by state-driven and
capitalist agendas, as well as problems with accountability to poor communities.
167
Jon argued
that in contrast, “In GABRIELA we don’t talk about money… We’re not giving assistance [for]
money, so it’s always rights… It’s more broad, more long-term.”
168
Rather than seeking to
evaluate the legitimacy of Jon’s claims, I point out how organizers conceptualize their approach.
Interestingly, Jon offered a prefigurative political vision of community self-reliance. She
commented that GABRIELA differed from NGOs not only because it sought to empower
survivors to become organizers – but because through doing so, it potentially could foster poor
communities’ collective self-reliance and autonomy. She explained, “As much as possible here,
we explain the concept of the stickbroom” – power in numbers through unity. She asserted that
through collective action,
Even just among ourselves here, we can help ourselves…

164
“Parang yung ang samahan… itinayo lang yan… Para may masabi lang na may samahan kami dyan ng
kababaihan” (Rosie 2013).
165
Rosie added that only in GABRIELA did she find support actually challenging VAWC. The other women’s
civic group suggested she ask a priest to meet with her former husband about his infidelity and financial neglect; but
she felt the priest would have stopped them from separating (as she eventually decided to do: “it’s me who can see
what’s happening daily, not them [ako ang nakakakita araw-araw, hindi naman sila]”).
166
“NGOs nowadays nagiging business na rin eh. CMP, NGO... lahat meron nang nasasamang isyung pagdating sa
pera, o sa korapsyon. Lahat meron nang nadadamay kahit sabihin pang non-government organization” (Jon 2013).
167
As discussed in Chapter 3, historically, state agencies have overseen the distribution of development funds to
NGOs and sought to regulate their programming.
168
“Sa GABRIELA kasi we don’t talk about money… we’re not giving assistance to money, so it's always rights…
mas malawak, mas pangmatagalan siya” (Jon 2013).

424
There’s much lacking [when it’s] from outside… if it’s [help] from outside, money is
always a requirement. Even if they’re called NGOs, money is still needed. Here, we can
organize ourselves… Better we are united
169
…
It will be more powerful, we don’t need to go to the outside for assistance.

Jon viewed GABRIELA’s support as more caring, relevant, and affordable than that provided by
many service NGOs or the state, so she stressed the benefits of community self-reliance. At the
same time, however, organizers still sought to make demands on the state, and struggle for an
accountable government.
GABRIELA’s broader political scope has helped make it more responsive to the
economic constraints urban poor women face, and the range of problems affecting them, even in
how it provides services for abuse. For instance, many domestic violence service NGOs do not
take on cases of financial abuse. In contrast, GABRIELA organizers have helped survivors file
for support. GABRIELA has arranged legal advice for those who cannot afford lawyers, besides
organizing mutual aid for immediate needs, as well as health services and flood relief.
Besides political accessibility, GABRIELA’s volunteers do the footwork to offer
survivors spatial accessibility, no small feat in urban poor communities where basic
infrastructure for mobility and transit are lacking. In the words of Greta,
We’re on the ground… We really saturate the community
170
… We involved ourselves in
the community. We are part of the community…
It’s not like the other organizations… where… you have to go that office…
We have members in [the area]... who are accessible, who are easily available to respond.

Not only do GABRIELA’s chapter officers, local organizers, and VAW Response Teams address
incidents, but members are also encouraged to offer mutual aid.
171
Likewise, Jon elaborated that

169
“Kahit kami-kami na lang ang nandito kaya na naming magtulungan... marami nang kulang sa labas eh, kung sa
labas kailangan pa lagi ng pera. Kahit pa sabihing NGOs kailangan pa rin ng pera. Dito mabubuo na namin ng kami-
kami lang, kasi iba pa rin pag buo eh” (Jon 2013).
170
“Nasa ano kami e, ground kami e... Babad talaga sa community” (Greta 2013).
171
As discussed, organizers have recruited local building and Homeowners Association officers to join GABRIELA,
transforming their responsiveness to VAWC in the process; see Chapter 6.

425
for government service agencies, “you must approach;”
172
but with GABRIELA, “we’re the ones
approaching them, what’s the help you need.”
173
Similarly, Rosie contrasted the group with a
domestic violence NGO where she worked: “In GABRIELA, we go to the victims, right? … We
fetch them, accompany them to different agencies,”
174
including to the same NGO where she
served as staff; whereas for the NGO, “the clients approach us.”
175
Despite the presence of the
NGO, GABRIELA members served as a first responders in nearby urban poor communities.
176

Finally, members stress that GABRIELA builds long-term relationships with survivors,
continuing to followup and maintain communication long after other agencies would consider
cases completed. Jon commented,
With the government [agencies]… for them it’s enough they’ve spoken with you… But
they still could visit from time-to-time. How are [the survivors]? What are any changes?
When it’s not yet finished, their feeling is it’s over. They just hop [from case to case].
177

Rosie noted about the women’s domestic violence NGO where she works, “when your case ends,
the service ends… it’s limited;”
178
but in contrast, “GABRIELA is set up… so it’s not just for a
day or two… it’s for a lifetime.”
179

172
“Kailangan mo lumapit” (Jon 2013).
173
“Kami pa ang lalapit sa kanila kung anong tulong ang kailangan ninyo” (Jon 2013).
174
“Dun sa… GABRIELA… kami, pinupuntahan namin ang mga biktima di ba… sinusundo, sinasamahan namin sa
mga agency” (Rosie 2013).
175
“Ang mga kliyente ang napunta lang sa amin” (Rosie 2013).
176
Afterwards, the NGO helps survivors navigate filing a case, sending someone to accompany them in court, for
instance.
177
“Sa government… kinausap nila… feeling okay na sila… pero pwede pa rin namin sila bisitahin from time-to
time. Kumusta na? Ano na yung pagbabago. Hindi yung pag natapos na ang isa feeling nila tapos na. Palipat-lipat
lang” (Jon 2013).
178
“Pag natapos na yung kaso mo, tapos na rin yung serbisyo... Limitado” (Rosie 2013).
179
“GABRIELA na itinayo yan para-- hindi lang isang araw, dalawang araw… kundi, panghabambuhay yan” (Rosie
2013).

426
CONCLUSION

Will the Revolution Come Home?

1. Opening
Will the revolution come home? I ask this question in two senses: from the organizing
experiences of GABRIELA explored throughout this dissertation, what lessons can we cull about
how social movements, especially those for racial and economic justice, can help to grow
revolutions that include addressing interpersonal gendered violence? And, for U.S. readers, in
what ways should the revolutionary politics of a Global South women’s movement at the so-
called periphery of U.S. empire make their way back to our ‘home’ here in the ‘belly of the
beast,’ so to speak? In what ways can they? What kinds of political synergies might radical
transnational solidarities require?
In the Introduction of this dissertation, I explained why my analytical framework has
sought to place GABRIELA’s strategies in dialog with U.S. women of color feminism,
specifically. U.S. communities of color at the intersections of state and economic violence have
faced questions about how to address interpersonal gendered violence without also strengthening
state apparatuses for criminalizing their communities. Such positionalities have prompted U.S.
feminists of color to lead the way in delineating a politics for responding to gendered violence in
conjunction with advancing racial and economic justice; some have proposed ‘community
accountability’ tactics towards domestic abuse that do not rely on police or state intervention. At
the same time, U.S. communities of color are often uniquely positioned to critique U.S. state
violence at home and abroad, because of their relation to its harms.
This Conclusion uses the project of addressing interpersonal gendered violence as a lens
or inroad into imagining and seeking solidarities between anti-racist and anti-imperialist political

427
projects that target U.S. state violence. GABRIELA’s national democratic (ND) politics
complicate feminist of color conceptions of decolonization, and vice versa, while gesturing
towards possibilities for alliance. I offer the term ‘intersectional materialism’ to name a possible
bridge of commonality: concern with how gender, racial, colonial, state, and economic violence
reinforce one another. Then, I lay out key points of difference and synergy between GABRIELA
and U.S. feminists of color, regarding how to approach domestic and sexual abuse as part of
organizing for broader structural change. Next, I explore practical lessons from GABRIELA’s
strategies relevant to feminist of color ‘community accountability’ projects. Along the way, I
suggest directions for future inquiry and research. I end with a discussion of urban poor
women’s visions for freedom; the role of both sacrifice and support in movement-building; and
finally issues of knowledge-production and positionality.

2. GABRIELA’s VAWC Organizing in Conversation with U.S. Feminism of Color
2.1 Intersectional Materialism
GABRIELA shares special affinity with strains of U.S. feminism of color that emphasize
a materialist analysis of diverse forms of intersecting power relations. Despite their differences,
I argue generative conversations and forging solidarities is vital. I offer the term ‘intersectional
materialism’ to name a bridge of commonality between GABRIELA’s politics – as a Third
World women’s liberation organization that does not necessarily call itself ‘feminist’ – and the
above lineages in feminisms of color. By ‘intersectional materialism,’ I refer to a politics that
combines intersectionality with attention to material dimensions of exploitation.
U.S. women of color feminists have spearheaded an ‘intersectional’ analysis of how
gender, race, and class oppression are not only irreducible to one another, but also interlinked

428
and mutually reinforcing (e.g., Crenshaw 1989; Beale 1970; Davis 1981; Moraga and Anzaldúa
1981; Hull, Scott, and Smith 1982; Shah 1997; De Jesus 2005). Transnational and Third World
feminists put forward intersectional analyses that also grapple with imperialism and colonialism
(e.g., Amos and Parmar 1984; Alexander and Mohanty 1997; Aguilar 1998). ‘Intersectionality’
challenges us to recognize multiple forms of oppression that simultaneously affect people’s lives;
and allows us to identify diverse positionalities through which oppression is experienced. Some
have elaborated its use a tool to expose power relations and logics of oppression, not only
pluralism of experience (Hong 2006; Smith 2008a).
Scholarly literature on intersectionality has at times focused on how oppression acts
through prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination – through ideologies of inequality reinforced
by institutional power. Such

Abstract (if available)

Abstract “The Revolution Will Come Home” explores how urban poor women in Metro Manila are challenging interpersonal gendered violence—such as domestic abuse or sexual assault—within the communities they organize, while building a broader movement against neoliberal capitalism and U.S. empire. GABRIELA, the largest women’s federation in the Philippines, fights for ‘home’ on multiple scales—offering a case study of a ‘social movements approach’ to gendered violence that draws on and adapts grassroots traditions, local and transnational feminisms, as well as Third World nationalist and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organizing legacies. As U.S. empire and neoliberal restructuring enact gendered violence, often under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid’ and ‘gender-responsive’ development, GABRIELA challenges a ‘neoliberal imperial’ feminist order, reconfiguring its logics. ❧ Using oral history, survey, and archival methods, this dissertation considers how addressing interpersonal gendered violence can support, rather than hinder, movement-building, grassroots leadership, and the transformation of participants. Instead of writing off trauma as drama, local organizers treat processes of interpersonal and societal change as interdependent. Collectives offer spaces of healing and constrained accountability for intimate partner and sexual violence, while organizers adapt an ethic of ‘serving the people’ to provide survivor-centered support that tides over cycles of violence. A ‘social movements approach’ towards interpersonal gendered violence and trauma not only can provide more accessible and transformative assistance to those affected—but moreover, has societal transformation as its goal, treating survivors as potential organizers in a movement for collective change, rather than as passive service recipients. I place strategies of this Third World women’s organization in conversation with U.S. women of color feminist critiques of carceral responses to gendered violence—and with their calls for ‘transformative organizing,’ ‘community accountability’ tactics that do not rely on state structures, and decolonization, as alternatives.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Chew, Huibin Amelia (author)

Core Title The revolution will come home: gendered violence and transformative organizing from the Philippines to the U.S.

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program American Studies and Ethnicity

Publication Date 05/14/2017

Defense Date 04/12/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag carceral feminism,community accountability,community organizing,community-based responses to domestic violence,domestic violence,Filipino women's organizing,GABRIELA,gendered violence,Global South women's organizing,intimate partner violence,Metro Manila,national democratic movement,neoliberal imperialism,OAI-PMH Harvest,Philippines,social movements,survivor-centered,transformative organizing,urban poor social movements,violence against women,women of color feminism

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Pulido, Laura (committee chair), Kelley, Robin D. G. (committee member), Parreñas, Rhacel (committee member), Wilson Gilmore, Ruth (committee member)

Creator Email hchew@post.harvard.edu,huibinch@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-676459

Unique identifier UC11335942

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Legacy Identifier etd-ChewHuibin-4866-2.pdf

Dmrecord 676459

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Chew, Huibin Amelia

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

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