Lead Like the Babaylans, Filipinas!

By: Gabriel Christian Santos

Every March, as the world marks International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we celebrate the victories of women who fought for their rightful place in society. These victories—whether the right to vote, to study, to work professionally, or to lead in politics and public life—are often framed as modern achievements.

For Filipinas, however, women’s leadership is not new. It is ancestral.

Long before colonial rule reshaped the archipelago, women in what is now the Philippines held authority, dignity, and independence equal to men. They owned property, led households and communities, mediated conflicts, and actively participated in trade and governance.

At the center of this social order stood one of the most powerful figures in early Filipino society: the Babaylan.

The Babaylan was more than a spiritual leader. She was a healer, historian, philosopher, and protector of the community’s moral and cultural life.

In many ways, the Babaylan embodied what leadership should look like. But history took a different turn.

When colonizers from Spain arrived in the 16th century, they brought with them a rigid patriarchal order that clashed with the relatively egalitarian systems of pre-colonial Filipino societies.

Colonial rule gradually dismantled the social influence of women.

Babaylan—once respected leaders—were pushed aside, demonized, or erased from official history.

What replaced them was a system that confined women to silence and submission.

Centuries later, traces of that colonial mindset remain. Even today, Filipinas are often told that leadership is not meant for them.

Yet the irony is impossible to ignore: Filipino history itself contradicts that belief.

The Babaylan proves that women have always been capable of guiding communities with wisdom and strength.

Leadership, for Filipinas, is not a borrowed idea from modern movements—it is a cultural inheritance.

This is why remembering the Babaylan matters.

She represents a forgotten truth about Filipino identity: that women were once central to the moral and social leadership of their communities.

The spirit of the Babaylan lives on in every Filipina who leads with courage, wisdom, and compassion.

Lead like the Babaylans, Filipinas.