Miss Universe and gender equality

Gregorio Miguel Pallugna .

THE greatest threat to the fight for gender equality are people who advocate limited equality.

Last Monday, the whole world stopped for a few hours to witness one of the most celebrated events in the planet — the Miss Universe pageant. And yes, the Philippines grabbed the crown again after only two years since Kagay-anon Pia Wurtzbach won in 2015. To many, the Miss Universe is considered one of the most powerful movements promoting gender equality, showcasing powerful women who are “confidently beautiful” and ready to take on the challenges of the world. This year, aside from crowning Filipina Catriona Gray, the Miss Universe organization again stepped up its game and allowed a transgender woman to participate as the representative of Spain. Such a bold and progressive move made headlines around a world that has yet to see gender lines blurred so greatly. One would think that this will elicit positive responses from all groups advocating gender equality. Instead, it shed light on the fact that even supposed gender-equality advocates are divided on the extent of equality that they wish to have. More importantly, it has clarified that many members of these groups do not actually want gender equality, but only a limited version of it.

This issue is so relevant that the United Nations has already declared gender equality as a human right. The Department of Justice and Equality of Ireland gives a very clear definition of gender equality as the state where women and men enjoy the same rights and opportunities across all sectors of society, including economic participation and decision-making, and when the different behaviours, aspirations and needs of women and men are equally valued and favored. This is, more or less, the same definition accepted all over the world. Yet, when actual issues come up, it always appears that there is still no universally accepted understanding of gender equality.

Understandably, the definition of gender equality focuses on women being the marginalized gender-sector that has to be protected due to historical abuses and discrimination suffered by women throughout the years and because of the sheer number of women in the planet. But social development has come to show that it is not only strictly women who are marginalized but also other gender-groups like the LGBTQ. Even men will admit that our society has consistently been pro-men, and mostly anti-anything else. If we all agree on this particular fact and wish to change it, then we could all be considered advocates of gender-equality. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

We cannot claim to be pro-gender equality when we advocate only to promote the rights of one or a few gender sectors on particular opportunities, but limit these rights to others. It would be the height of arrogance to insist that only natural-born women have the capacity to advance the rights of women while transgender women could not. That is exactly the mindset which most men used to have in the early years and even up to now, to some extent. It is likewise discriminating to say that only heterosexual men and women are capable of doing productive work and not homosexuals who identify themselves with their biological genders but act and feel the opposite way. These are some of the intricacies of gender-division that people still fail to understand.

When one asks for equality, it must be absolute equality and nothing in between. If you wish equality for women only, then it’s not gender-equality you want but supremacy and dominance – the very evils you pretend to fight against. This is not to say that we should totally disallow women from having exclusive events for natural-born women, or the LGBTQ from having events exclusively for them, or men for themselves for that matter. The Miss Universe pageant is a private organization and has the sole prerogative to set their objectives and criteria for participation. What we wish to see only is that people go back to the very root of this debate on gender-equality, which is the basic proposition that gender is not a factor in a person’s capacity to live a productive life and to achieve whatever any other person may be capable of achieving. Giving birth which, ironically, has been used by one Miss Universe winner to define the essence of a woman, is too shallow a standard to have in describing a woman, and it even further causes gender divisions and discrimination. All persons have different competencies and these differences, including the capacity of giving birth, should be appreciated not as a paramount standard of success of an individual or a particular gender group but as a unique contribution of each person to the collective success of the whole society. Women who cannot give birth certainly are not incapable of positively contributing to society.

Gender equality is a noble advocacy that will ripen into a more accepting, peaceful and productive world. People of any gender must be allowed to live freely without being gauged on the basis of their gender. After all, if feminists agree that there is nothing a man can do which a woman could not, then it must also follow that men can do anything a woman can, and any other gender-sector can do what any other gender-sector can. Equality means that there should be no standards of distinction or gender limitations. It should endeavor to erase the idea of man, woman, queer or whatever stereotypical description we may ascribe to a person and simply consider people as equal beings, capable of the same productivity albeit with different competencies. Not all people can be painters, singers, doctors or lawyers, but painters, singers, doctors and lawyers can come from any gender-sector.

The Miss Universe pageant, to be considered as a platform for gender-equality, must be seen as a competition to showcase the competencies of women but not to establish women as a particular dominant gender-sector. If this is the case, then participation should be based on the competencies of an individual as a woman and not on the fact of her biological composition. If it were any other way, then the pageant would merely be another tool to divide people on the basis of gender. It is about time that the answer to the question of the essence of a woman be changed.

The essence of a woman is the same essence of any other individual – man, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, transgender. It is being capable of love and contributing to the betterment of society through their unique and equally valuable competencies. That is gender equality. Any other definition is an arrogant campaign of bigotry. And, don’t blame yourself if you are gnashing your teeth after reading this, because arrogance and bigotry has been ingrained in our consciousness for the longest time. It will definitely take more than one article to erase it.

(Lawyer Gregorio Miguel H. Pallugna is based in Cagayan de Oro.)