From Gold to Growth:
PCW Message on its 51st Founding Anniversary
Fifty-one years ago, the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) was established with a transformative mandate: to position women at the heart of national development by harnessing their full potential as leaders and active contributors to positive change. Through the years, the Commission has made a transformative impact in Philippine governance, bridging gender divide and laying the foundation for a society where women are empowered and enjoy equal opportunities in all aspects of life.
Today, as we celebrate our 51st anniversary, we do more than honor a legacy of “gold”—we celebrate a Commission that, through decisive leadership and strategic foresight, has evolved into an effective catalyst for gender equality and women empowerment in the Philippines and a leading voice for gender mainstreaming in the ASEAN region.
2025: A Golden Year of Herstoric Milestones
The past year has been defined by bold, decisive actions that solidified our influence within the bureaucracy. True to our mandate of advancing policy reforms that respond to the realities of women’s lives, the past year marked the official endorsement of the Women’s Priority Legislative Agenda (WPLA) for the 20th and 21st Congress. This landmark agenda, comprising 18 essential measures, carries the collective aspirations of women across sectors and regional island groups. It is clustered into three strategic pillars, namely: Dismantling the architecture of discrimination by amending or repealing biased and archaic laws; Building new pathways to progress by enacting enabling legislation for women’s empowerment; and Institutionalizing and promoting gender-responsive governance. To complement and further strengthen the National Care Economy Framework which we birthed during the year, the WPLA also includes a proposal to enact a National Policy on Valuing and Investing in the Care Economy. We also successfully launched the National Action Plan to End Violence Against Women or NAP-EVAW, together with the Inter-Agency Council on Violence Against Women and Their Children.
In the pursuit of changing mindsets and challenging harmful stereotypes and cultural norms, the Commission continued to provide gender and development (GAD) technical assistance services and GAD public advocacy initiatives—from formal in-person training sessions, to webinars, to major on-ground advocacy events like the National Women’s Month, Pakiglambigit, and the 18-Day Campaign to End VAW, to our weekly Radio-TV Program Tinig ng Kababaihan, and the various mass media guestings. We received accolades from various government agencies that valued our partnership and mentoring; we reaped four national and five international awards for our advocacy short film on Anti-Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation that we produced with DDB Philippines; and was recognized by the Presidential Communications Office as Freedom of Information or FOI Champion 2nd runner up in the 2025 FOI Awards. All these, while we maintain and get recertified for ISO 9001:2015 for our Quality Management Systems.
Our golden year also marked the conclusion of the Philippine Plan for Gender-Responsive Development (PPGD) 1995-2025. The Commission successfully conducted nationwide consultations to ensure that the three decades of progress are not only preserved but used as the foundation for a more progressive, decolonized, and transformative future for every Filipino woman. Our leadership in the ASEAN Committee on Women and the hosting of high-level regional meetings last November further strengthened our country’s position as “Vision Lead” for gender mainstreaming in Southeast Asia.
2026: Pioneering the Future
As we look toward 2026, the PCW is prepared to scale even greater heights. With the Philippines assuming the ASEAN Chairship, PCW also takes on a renewed leadership role as Chair of the ASEAN Committee on Women with a visionary theme: “Shaping the Future of ASEAN: Women’s Leadership in Advancing People Empowerment, Regional Security, and Economic Prosperity.” This responsibility strengthens the country’s voice in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment at the regional level, and affirms the Philippines’ commitment to inclusive and rights-based development within ASEAN.
On the domestic front, 2026 will usher in an era for greater GAD budget accountability. We are beefing up our monitoring and evaluation systems in our efforts to move beyond mere compliance towards demonstrating how the GAD budget truly transforms the lives of Filipino women. We will continue to ground our work in the “bibingka principle”—where top-down policy excellence meets the bottom-up realities of the women whom the government must serve. We will continue to cultivate and expand partnerships with the private sector, non-government organizations, civil society groups, and women’s organizations, recognizing that lasting change is built through collective action.
Growth is not a passive process; it is a result of relentless leadership and the courage to redefine power and find balance. True to our Babaylan heritage, the Commission offers this 51st anniversary as a tribute to the courage of the Filipino women and the innate visionary leadership that empowers them to empower others. We remember that growth is found in the courage of a woman speaking her truth, in the strength of communities rising together, and in the quiet, persistent power of dreams that refuse to be silenced.
Fifty-one years into this journey, we stand more hopeful and focused than ever. Together, we are building a Bagong Pilipinas, where women do not just occupy space, but co-create solutions and innovations towards a just, inclusive, and prosperous future.