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Women’s Rights Facing Hypermasculinist Leadership: Implementing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda Under a Populist-Nationalist Regime

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Abstract

Populist-nationalist ideologies pose a threat to women’s rights. This article examines to what extent national institutionalisation of international frameworks promoting women’s rights can weather the misogynistic political climate accompanying the global rise of populist nationalism. The post-2016 situation in the Philippines offers a testing ground for this problem due to the co-existence of President Duterte’s hypermasculinist national leadership with a strong history of institutionalisation of the UN’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Drawing from an analysis of WPS policy and institutions in the Philippines between 2009 and 2019 and from field research and interviews with government agencies, local civil society organisations and international partners, this article argues that the WPS agenda will likely survive in the hostile environment. But it also finds that institutionalisation alone does not guarantee successful implementation. While the WPS agenda may ostensibly remain a national priority under populist-nationalist regimes, its progression has been halted.

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Notes

  1. I.e. UNSCRs 1325, 1820, 1888, 1889, 1960, 2106, 2122, 2242, 2467 and 2493.

  2. The full list of the Steering Committee’s members includes: the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP), the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW), the Department of National Defence (DND), the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) and the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF).

  3. These include: the Department of Education (DepEd), the Department of Health (DOH), the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), the Department of Agriculture (DA), the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PHIC), and the National Electrification Administration (NEA).

  4. The positive attitudes towards the role of international actors in the implementation of the WPS agenda in the Philippines, reported in the interviews, may have been influenced by the fact that many of my informants perceived me as “an international”.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are given to Associate Professor Katrina Lee-Koo, Doctor Maria Tanyag, Doctor Melissa Johnston and Doctor Sam Cook for their input to various iterations of this research. I would also like to extend my thanks to two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Feminist Legal Studies for their constructive comments and suggestions.

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    Barbara K. Trojanowska

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Trojanowska, B.K. Women’s Rights Facing Hypermasculinist Leadership: Implementing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda Under a Populist-Nationalist Regime. Fem Leg Stud 29, 231–249 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-021-09464-4

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