This wasn't supposed to be a political post.
I began writing this draft years ago, reflecting on what it means to be a young woman stepping into a new decade. Four years later, it feels like I've learned so much about gender and womanhood, yet I am no closer to finding my answers than when I started.
The 2024 U.S. election results have resurfaced these reflections.
Since I know very little about how politics in America work, I thought about school elections instead.
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I grew up with an inclination toward leadership roles. I'd been class president several times since age 10 without actively campaigning for myself. Getting good grades and being well-liked was enough to gain the trust of my peers. I took the responsibility seriously too, yet I felt this lingering resentment.
I didn't even have real power. No one at a small private school in a suburban city does. All I had was a title and the responsibility of writing down who was "noisy" and "standing" when the teacher stepped out of the room.
But I was made to feel that I was taking a position meant for someone else. It somehow felt "wrong" for me to hold office, even if the office itself was meaningless.
In high school, my best friend nominated and openly voted for a guy who had never held any elected position in class, only because my best friend felt like I needed to "give other people a chance." Nothing against the guy, but his campaign hinged on the idea that people should vote for him because he’d never been an elected officer before. No platforms, no promises—just empty rhetoric that he would "listen" to the class.
In sophomore year, when I ran for batch representative, I discovered that a sample ballot had been distributed to members of the varsity teams with my opponent's name on it. When asked, one of the players said it was because the guy I was running against played sports, and since I got medals for my grades and not for games, that apparently made me a buzzkill.
Since then, I've turned down offers to run for the student body and opted to be a campaign manager instead, because I didn't want to be accused of once again not giving other people a chance to lead.
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I remember being called a "bossy know-it-all" in an open forum—those Filipino classroom “honesty sessions” where kids gather in a circle of arranged chairs to say mean, hurtful things to each other in the guise of honesty. It’s supposed to promote transparency, but Filipino kids know that these forums are actually spaces where you surrender any right to defend yourself from criticism, no matter how hurtful or invalid, because at least your classmates aren't "backstabbing you and saying these things behind your back."
There I was, in the middle of the classroom, being called "bossy" and seeing nods of agreement shared across the circle. (This was before we reclaimed that word. Before Beyoncé and other female celebrities echoed the phrase "I'm not bossy, I'm the boss.")
Back then, I didn’t have the words to ask my classmate whether he'd call a guy who acted like me "bossy" too. I just sat there, saying, "Thank you for the courage to say that," like a well-behaved school girl is supposed to.
As young girls, we’re conditioned to be polite, to build camaraderie even when dissent is needed. We’re taught not to take up space or to give it up for others, even when they are less than qualified. Being in a position of power earns men respect and adoration; it earns women resentment and scorn.
This isn’t about whether a woman would have been a better president. It’s about why, after all these years, we’re still expected to “give other people a chance.” It's about having to accept that to be a good leader we have to be faultless, but for a guy to be a leader, he just has to have a penis.
Not to liken petty Filipino high school politics to the American elections, but isn't it crazy how even in one of the world's oldest modern democracies, women still face criticisms rooted in gendered stereotypes? Kamala Harris was called “too ambitious” or "unlikable"—yet Trump, a convicted felon, a guy whose campaign ran on bigotry, hate speech, and disinformation, somehow isn't.
Trump can motion to give a microphone a blowjob and win the presidency but we still hold Harris to the impossible standard that America Ferrera's Barbie monologue was all about. Women in leadership—even in a presidential race—are scrutinized and demeaned in ways men often are not.
A female leader will be seen as a female first before she is considered a leader, regardless of her qualifications.
Looking back, I can’t help but feel that the world doesn’t allow women to forget where it thinks we belong. In the classroom or the Oval Office, the message is often the same: be quiet, wait your turn, and if you must lead, do so with a deference men are never asked to show. So today, the highest glass ceiling remains unshattered but every time a woman dares to challenge sexist worldviews, we chip away at these impossible standards, and one day see them crack and break apart. And to quote former District Attorney, former Senator, Vice President Kamala Harris "Sometimes the fight takes a while."
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