IT was March 16, this International Women’s Month, and we were on our way to the Senate to honor Teddy’s Lola Eva. I mulled over the confluence of life’s finer details as something bittersweet — the last time we walked these halls was for her necrological ceremony on June 1, 2017 — with our little girl, my Mom, and his.
It was the ceremonial presentation of the coffee table book “Laws, Lives and Legacies: Women of the Philippine Senate” to the families and descendants of the subjects of the book, a project of the Senate’s GAD Focal Point System chairs, lawyers Sheela Millera and Maria Cruz. I learned later from Teddy of the GAD’s painstaking effort to research material over several years.
I had always thought it a shame that there were not more women in power, as I would love to see unleashed that particularly female predilection to birth and multiply mechanisms that are life-giving, order-bringing, fostering connection and responsible stewardship. It is bounty — a spirit of plenty, a spark of the Divine. I knew this as chief of staff to my mother, the first woman deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Amelita Villarosa. As a leading light in the securities industry, there was my mother-in-law, Mrs. Trinidad Yujuico Kalaw, the first woman president of the Philippine Stock Exchange.
We are fond of beauty queens. Even family history attests to our high regard for intelligent, well-spoken beauties. In 1908, at age 22, Teddy’s Ilongga “lola,” Pura Villanueva Kalaw, was crowned the first Queen of the Manila Carnival (the precursor to “Miss Philippines”). She is said to have used the platform provided as Carnival Queen to amplify what was then considered a radical message: “What a man can do, a woman can do just as well.” She was a writer, just like her husband, lawyer Teodoro M. Kalaw, and she organized and advocated for the women’s right to vote.
By 1908, she convinced Rep. Filemon Sotto to file the first women’s suffrage bill in the Philippine Assembly. She lobbied for more than 30 years until women won the right to vote in 1937. Senate President Vicente Sotto III (the grandson of Representative Filemon) shared this story during his opening remarks. A welcome presence, he was also there for the family at Lola Eva’s Senate necrological honors in 2017. Teddy says he was also a school friend of his dad, Teddy III. Former senator Nikki Coseteng delivered an impassioned speech, and Sen. Risa Hontiveros rounded out the day’s ceremonial messages.
As our daughter sat beside me listening to this ode to and program on these exceptional women leaders, I hoped and prayed it would inspire her and her generation to take up space and stand their ground in any field they so wish. I wished for her to learn from their example, and to contribute to making our country, our world, a better place to live.
It was a point of reflection that while the Philippines is known as a country that upholds “gender equality” in Asia, there are still many ways to improve the frameworks of access to economic and political leadership participation, as cultural and societal norms still tend to shut women out of the top.
While the Philippine Senate was established by the Jones Law in 1916, the first Filipino woman senator was elected only 31 years later in 1947. Lola Eva was the first woman senator to be reelected to a second term. There has been so much talk lately of dynasties, but I have a greater interest to see how a more gender-equal Senate or House would perform. Historically, we’ve elected from 5-7 women to 17-19 men to the Senate; and, in the present Lower House, we’ve a similar ratio — with 89 women to 225 men.
At the National Women’s Month kickoff on March 6, 2026, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the Philippines was a respectable 20th of 148 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index, but women remained “underrepresented in governance.” A review shows that several landmark statutes authored by our women senators remain “paper tigers” due to either lack of funding, no implementing rules and regulations, or institutional resistance. These include the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (Sen. Loren Legarda), the Safe Spaces Act (Senator Hontiveros), the Philippine Center for Disease Control Act (Sen. Pia Cayetano).
As to the management of the budget and their allocation, I daresay that nary a woman in power would not agree with the sense of Lola Eva’s response (as documented in the book) when requested by “...President Marcos in 1966 to spend P35 million for a military contingent to participate in the Vietnam war. She instead proposed to send doctors, nurses and engineers.”
As she said, “I am neither a dove nor a hawk, I am a Kalaw, a truly Filipino bird.”
Mariliza ‘Bunny’ Villarosa Kalaw is a lawyer, arbitrator and advisor. She is a founding partner at KPH Law; a trustee and senior vice president for advocacy of the Philippine Institute of Arbitrators (PIArb); and trustee and corporate secretary of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Alumni Association Philippines Inc., even as she co-heads the Philippine chapter of the HKS Women’s Alumni Network.