Women should speak up for rights

Supreme Court Associate Justice Maria Filomena Singh yesterday strongly called on the country’s women “to never give up and speak up for your rights and for what you believe that you deserve.”

This was Justice Singh said as she guested during the flag-raising ceremony at the Department of Justice in Manila on Monday, 4 March as she was invited to speak on the country’s celebration of Women’s Month.

Singh said a woman does not have to be a particular advocate of feminism or women’s rights. By birth right, we need to promote or endorse each other,” she said.

She is co-chairperson with Associate Justice Henri Jean Paul Inting of the SC’s Committee on Gender Responsiveness in the Judiciary.

Before her promotion to the SC on 18 May 2022, Singh was a metropolitan trial court and regional trial court judge, and an associate justice of the Court of Appeals.

Singh on her promotion to the SC, the highest court of the land, said: “I felt that I had to do everything a hundred times better than my male contemporaries. And even when I did, I would still get rejected many times.”

Singh recalled: “I know that during those times, as compared to the others, I was at least equal to them but I still did not get the position. But I did not let that get me down. I did not let that stop me from what I wanted to achieve. And that is my main message to everyone here…. If I can do it, you can also do it.”

Sharing a study on why only a few women are appointed to the SC, Justice Singh said “Women themselves do not put themselves up for the vacancy.”

She said “Some found the work too demanding for women because women have other personal duties as a wife, a mother, a sibling, and so forth and so on.”