The Philippines Already Did This

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — February 15, 2026

🎯 Say it plainly: sexism mattered. Twice.
A lot of voters would rather risk authoritarianism than accept a woman in power.
That bias didn’t disappear — it just hid behind “other reasons.”

The Philippines does not have to theorize about whether a woman can run a country. It has already lived the answer.

In 1986, Corazon Aquino became president during a fragile democratic transition after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos. It was a high-risk moment: contested legitimacy, economic strain, and a military shaped by dictatorship. Aquino governed anyway. The state endured. Democracy did not collapse because a woman held executive power.

This is not an argument that Aquino’s presidency was perfect. No presidency is. It is a narrower point, and it matters: a woman leading the Philippines did not create instability by itself. The debates centered on policy, legitimacy, and results—not on the idea that her gender made the office unsafe.

Years later, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo also held the presidency through years of turbulence and controversy. People can argue her decisions, alliances, and legacy. But again, the core fact is unavoidable: the Philippines did not treat female leadership as a constitutional risk. Political conflict focused on outcomes, not biology.

That contrast with the United States is blunt.

In the U.S., the public language often claims the barrier is “electability,” “tone,” or “trust.” Those words can reflect real concerns. But they also function as camouflage. The pattern is what matters: when the highest office is at stake, a significant share of American voters still treats a woman as a gamble—and then insists the conclusion came from “other reasons.”

The Philippine experience makes that excuse harder to sustain. A country with fewer resources and greater political volatility has already demonstrated, in practice, what the United States continues to frame as unresolved.

Female executive leadership is not novel. It is not inherently destabilizing. It is normal governance.

The question is not whether women can lead.
The question is why the United States still struggles to admit what is blocking it.

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This essay will be archived as part of the ongoing WPS News Monthly Brief Series available through Amazon.

References

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2026, January 5). Corazon Aquino. Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2025, December 26). Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Catt Center for Women and Politics. (n.d.). Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Iowa State University.