THE first thing I noticed this morning when I walked into ISUFST was not the usual chatter of teachers and staff rushing to their 8 a.m. reporting for duty, but the bright wash of orange across the hallways. Some wore shirts, others had orange overalls. It wasn’t just orange clothes. It was a reminder of a global plea to stop violence against women—a plea that feels personal when most of the love, discipline, and wisdom in your life came from women. I work with women daily, and I go home to a mom and a daughter who carry their strength lightly. When women are hurt, the whole society staggers.
The data tells the story. Across the globe, one in three women has suffered violence. In the Philippines, 17.5 percent of women aged 15 to 49 have been harmed by someone they loved. These are not numbers—they’re wounds. Those digits land differently when you think of the women you know: your former student who hesitated before saying she needed a recommendation letter because she was moving away from a controlling partner; the staff member who joked too lightly about “pasaway ako, sir, kaya gin-amo ako sini niya” (I was “stubborn,” sir, so he hurt me), hoping humor could dilute her fear; the teenage girl who went to the VAW desk alone because her family believed she should “just understand” her uncle’s temper, or, worse, sexual proclivities. According to Claudio (2019), violence is not only widespread but normalized, embedded in traditions that praise male dominance and assign women to the quiet corners of patience and self-sacrifice. These traditions are not abstract ideas. They show up in classrooms when boys are excused for “being boys,” in barangays where gossip turns victims into culprits, and in families where daughters learn early that speaking up invites punishment.
The silence surrounding violence is often louder than the violence itself.
I remember a student years ago who showed up to class with a bruise she tried to hide under her bangs. She laughed when her classmates asked what happened, saying she tripped over a dog, even though she did not own one. Students and teachers often know when someone is not telling the real story, but our cultural instinct to stay out of “away mag-asawa” keeps many of us quiet. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) notes that only two in five abused women seek help. Shame, fear, and distrust in institutions form the perfect storm for silence. Sabrina Gacad of Lunas Collective (2023) describes it as the “pause your bias” moment—when each of us, whether friend, teacher, colleague, or counselor, must step back from our assumptions and notice the distress in front of us before we say anything that could either help or harm. In many cases, survivor narratives do not fit the dramatic images people expect. A woman may speak calmly while her world is falling apart. She may still smile because she has learned to survive by masking. The role of a caring community, Gacad argues, is not to interrogate pain but to expand the survivor’s power by offering empathy, presence, and believable support.
Digital spaces have turned into another battleground. The UNiTE campaign’s focus this year on digital violence is painfully relevant. Students in Iloilo joke about “revenge porn”—the non-consensual sharing of someone’s intimate images or videos, usually by a former partner, to embarrass, humiliate, or harm them—without understanding that it is a crime. Teachers receive anonymous messages after reporting misconduct. Young women active online are easy targets for harassment, deepfakes, and doxing. Over half of young women globally have gone through this, the Web Foundation reports. Here at home, online harm rarely stays online. It often becomes stalking, coercion, or threats. Violence has simply evolved faster than our laws, and the platforms that claim to “connect” us can just as easily be tools of destruction.
Ending violence requires more than policy, but policy still matters. Laws such as RA 9262 (Anti-VAWC Act), RA 10398 (National Women’s Day Law), RA 9710 (Magna Carta of Women), RA 8353 (Anti-Rape Law), RA 11313 (Safe Spaces Act), and mechanisms like the Barangay VAW Desk provide a legal backbone for protection. Yet implementation remains uneven. Survivors often recount hearing, “Sigurado ka gid?” from officers who are supposed to help them. The Gender Social Norms Index (UNDP, 2020) found that 99.5 percent of Filipinos carry biases against women. Bias is not always loud. Sometimes it hides in jokes, in hiring practices, in the way we teach boys to equate control with masculinity, or in how we caution girls more to “be careful” instead of teaching everyone more to be respectful. Indeed, we all need sessions to remind us that preventing violence is not just about responding to harm but reshaping the culture that enables it. Prevention, as UN Women (2023) argues, remains the most cost-effective solution. And prevention starts in the daily decisions we make when no one is watching.
Still, the heart of this issue is not law or theory. It is the everyday stories of women whose lives narrow because someone believes he owns her time, body, silence, or choices. I once worked with a mother in a localization FGD who told me, “Sir, wala ako kahibalo kon safe kami pirmi, pero ginapilit ko gid magpabilin para sa akon mga kabataan.” She stayed, not because she wanted to, but because survival for her children demanded endurance. In the lens of human development, this is what violence steals—possibility. It shrinks futures, drains dignity, and shapes generations who inherit unresolved trauma. A young student who witnesses abuse at home often carries that fear into the classroom. A teacher who hides her bruises behind a shawl carries them into her teaching. Violence, in other words, travels.
An orange shirt won’t fix the world, but symbols matter. Even in bad weather, our faculty and staff wore them—not because of a memo, but because each knows a woman living with quiet pain. That’s the power of showing up. It tells women they’re not alone and reminds men to stand as allies who listen, not dominate. I think of my daughter’s fearless steps, my mom’s soft resilience, and the students who trust us with their hopes.
Violence persists because many think it’s someone else’s issue. Yet every school and home has untold stories. Ending violence starts with small, daily acts of safety. When the orange shirts are folded away, the question is whether we keep the spirit alive. Will we build a world where every woman—our daughters, co-workers, students—can move freely without fear? Safety need not be earned. It should be a quiet, ordinary right.|
