Only 2 women appointed to Bangsamoro cabinet

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—The 19 top regional officials appointed by Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) took their oath on Friday and held their first Cabinet meeting, which tackled the immediate need to prepare the 2027 budget.

Only two among those officials are women—Jo Genna Jover, who heads the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs (Mipa) and lawyer Laisa Alamia, director general of the Bangsamoro Planning and Development Authority (BPDA).

READ: Spending program, revenue code top agenda in first BARMM Cabinet meeting

Macacua formed his Cabinet within the first week of his incumbency as the region’s first elected chief minister. The rush, according to the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy (PCID), seemed to have sidelined the region’s hard-won commitment to gender equity.

”Excluding women—who were fundamental in sustaining the peace process and building Bangsamoro’s institutions—from executive leadership undermines democratic representation,” PCID said in a Nov. 6 statement titled “Where Are The Women?”

“Speed in Cabinet formation must not displace equity,” it added.

Earlier milestone

PCID pointed out that women have long served as the backbone of peacebuilding and public service in the region.

READ: BARMM chief forms Cabinet

The policy think tank reminded the BARMM leadership that the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) parliament had previously broken new ground by passing an Electoral Code requiring women to make up at least 30 percent of 40 nominees for political party representatives in every parliamentary election.

While that quota applies strictly to the race for party seats in parliament, the PCID pointed out that the legislative milestone raised rightful expectations that the first elected government would entrust women with substantial executive powers.

Instead, the recent Cabinet appointments so far leave women with “disproportionately limited representation at the highest levels of executive decision-making,” raising troubling questions about the current administration’s commitment to political inclusion.

Amirah Ali Lidasan, spokesperson of Moro-Christian Peoples Alliance, said that women leaders in the region “are not only highly skilled but deeply committed to the pursuit of peace.”

The PCID urged the Macacua administration to revisit its choices and uphold equal representation in all executive appointments.

The slim chances given to women to lead the region’s agencies are actually a lingering trend since BARMM was established in February 2019. The first Cabinet under the BTA, or the interim regional government, was also male-dominated.

Losing space

Of the 19 agencies in BARMM, only the Ministry of Social Services and Development and the Ministry of Science and Technology were firmly under women’s leadership in the last seven years.

For some time, the Bangsamoro Attorney General’s Office, the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism were run by women.

But at most, there were only three women in the BARMM Cabinet at a given time.

With the appointment of Jover and Alamia, it will be the first time for Mipa and BPDA to be led by women.

In the 80-member parliament, women have lost space in the last seven years, even amid the affirmative action legislation on women’s nomination for party representative seats.

When the BTA was constituted in 2019, its first members—all appointed by then President Rodrigo Duterte—included 16 women, or 20 percent of the total seats.

When President Marcos reconstituted the transition government in September 2022, women also filled 16 seats. But when it was reconstituted again in March last year, the number of seats went down to 10.

‘Inclusive governance’

The first elected parliament, which took office on Oct. 30, is composed of 13 women, or 16.25 percent of the total membership. Six of them are party representatives, four parliamentary district representatives and three sectoral representatives.

The six party representatives account for just 15 percent of the 40 parliament seats reserved for party representation, or only half the level intended by the Bangsamoro Electoral Code.

“This underrepresentation raises serious questions about inclusive governance and whether women’s voices, perspectives, and priorities will have sufficient space in shaping government policies and decisions,” said Charlito Manlupig, chair of Kusog Mindanaw, a multi-sectoral platform for dialogue on Mindanao issues.

He added that as BARMM advances the gains of the peace process, the new administration should take concrete steps to strengthen women’s representation in leadership, decision-making, and other key governance structures.

“A government cannot fully claim to be inclusive if women remain largely absent from the spaces where power is exercised and decisions are made. It is not too late to make women’s meaningful participation a genuine priority,” said Manlupig.

Abelardo Moya, director of nongovernment group Pakigdait, pointed out that the spirit of the 30-percent party nominees quota must extend to the high levels of executive decision-making.

Women inclusion in the Cabinet, Moya explained, is part of the transitional justice effort of “actively dismantling historical structures of exclusion—a transformation that hinges on institutionalizing women’s leadership.” INQ

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