1. Introduction The commitment of the Philippines to gender equality is enshrined in its legislation and institutional frameworks. Republic Act(RA) 9710, or the Magna Carta of Women, is a comprehensive women’s human rights law that works in tandem with the Philippine Commission on Women—the advisory body on Gender and Development(GAD) plans— to advance gender mainstreaming as the state’s core strategy for addressing gender inequality across institutions(Rodriguez, 2025). These efforts have positioned the Philippines as one of the leading countries in global gender parity indices and the top-ranked nation in Asia for gender equality(Philippine Commission on Women, 2025). However, these formal commitments do not reflect the deeper realities of how power is organized and exercised within governance. Beneath these indicators, governance structures remain centralized, elite-driven and exclusionary of vulnerable sectors(Choi, 2018). Current approaches often equate gender parity with statistics without interrogating the elite bargains and patriarchal norms that shape the practice of politics. Power continues to be maintained through extractive traditions that concentrate authority at the top(Allen, 2022). Institutions reinforce one another in a“matrix of domination”(Kelly-Thompson et al., 2023, p. 26), where each level of government—from national to local— replicates domineering relationships toward particular social groups, such as women, through a“cage-like constellation of norms, laws and social practices” that renders gender itself a source of oppression. In the Philippines, this domination manifests in gendered spaces as coercion, corruption and the marginalization of vulnerable voices through social, infrastructural and financial barriers. National agencies overshadow local governments, while fragmented bureaucracies weaken the ability of governance to be genuinely responsive (Marquardt, 2017). Rather than empowering communities, the current political architecture in the country prioritizes elite legitimacy and the preservation of centralized power. These structural dynamics have concrete consequences for women’s political representation and participation. Women make up more than half of the country’s electorate (ANFREL, 2025) but hold only 24 per cent of elected posts, among which a significant portion are from family dynasties(Philippine Institute of Development Studies, 2025). While mainstream strategies have emphasized strengthening women’s participation in politics, this“mix­and-stir” approach—expecting an unequal system to correct itself through limited inclusion of women—merely reproduces gendered hierarchies within the state(Winsor, 1988). Without transforming the systems that shape gendered behavior, women in public office are compelled to assimilate into and reproduce“the male paradigm of raw, coercive, and competitive politics”(Veneracion­Rallonza, 2008, p. 213). In the Philippine context, women often enter politics as extensions of male relatives—as wives, daughters or widows— sustaining dynastic power. Their visibility, though significant, frequently functions to preserve elite dominance and familial interests rather than advance women’s collective interests (Veneracion-Rallonza, 2008). Electoral incentives that reward patronage, coercion and dynastic continuity further discourage transformative leadership(Lambert et al., 2023). Women’s representation without systemic transformation ultimately reinforces the very gender-oppressive dynamics that exclude vulnerable and marginalized voices from meaningful participation in governance. The entrenchment of these power relations sustains dynastic and patriarchal networks that resist reform, embedding hierarchies in both political systems and cultural attitudes toward gender(Lambert et al., 2023). Gender blindness—the institutional tendency to overlook gender in assessing policy effectiveness—remains pervasive (Rodriguez, 2025). This neglect perpetuates and deepens gendered vulnerabilities, reflected in rising cases of gender­based violence such as trafficking, rape, domestic abuse and a high incidence of childhood pregnancy, as well as severe mental health outcomes including depression and suicide(Alibudbud, 2022; Davies et al., 2016; Mella, 2022; Tsai et al., 2021). The 2028 national elections present a critical opportunity to reshape this trajectory. Beyond representation, governance must prioritize a transformative gender agenda that defines priorities, allocates resources and enforces accountability based on impact on the most vulnerable. Effective governance requires centering gender equality in all its processes so that the structural and intersectional roots of inequity become visible and actionable. This paper advances a framework for gender-just governance that redistributes power across Philippine state institutions and society. It argues for restructuring Claiming Power and Reshaping Governance: A Feminist Framework for the Philippines 7