The Filipina Athlete’s Continuing Fight for Parity and Recognition
Despite delivering medals, milestones, and massive crowds, Filipina athletes continue to face an uneven playing field.
Published on Mar 26, 2026
The past couple of weeks have seen Filipina athletes make waves in the international arena.
Alex Eala continues to validate her ascent to global stardom with solid results. She has reached at least the Round of 16 in three of the four WTA 1000 events. She is just one among nine players and the only one outside the world top 20 rankings who has finished no lower than the Round of 16 in at least three WTA 1000 events.
The Philippine Women’s National Football Team proved that their historic 2023 World Cup qualification was not a one-off, duplicating the feat by bagging one of the six slots in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
Three-time world champion Rubilen Amit and two-time world champion Chezka Centeno combined with Carlo Biado and Jefrey Roda to bag for the Philippines the 2026 WPA Teams 10-Ball World in Last Vegas.
An undersized Gilas Women scored their first ever win over a non-Asian team in their last game in the FIBA Women’s World Cup Qualifiers. They ended their campaign in the competition by beating world no. 19 Colombia, 74-59.
Tallulah Proulx became the first Filipina to represent the Philippines in the Winter Olympics. The 17-year-old Alpine Skier bannered the country’s flag in the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy.
All these accomplishments augur well in cementing the rightful place of female athletes in the landscape of Philippine sports. After all, Filipina athletes have contributed just as much to Philippine sports in recent years.
In the 2025 Southeast Asian Games held last December in Bangkok, Thailand, three of the Philippines’ 50 gold medals were won in mixed-gender events. 23 of the remaining 47 golds were delivered by female athletes. In the 2022 Asian Games, 2 of the 4 gold medals the country won came from Filipinas. Hidilyn Diaz won the country’s first ever gold while Nesthy Petecio earned a silver in the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021. Petecio and Aira Villegas both boxed their way to bronze medals in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Filipina athletes have for the longest time practically begged for fair treatment and attention in a field that has always been male-dominated. The different National Sports Associations are mostly run by men who prioritize male athletes in terms of funding and exposure.
The long-held belief is that fans prefer watching male spectator sports, so attention and even sponsorships are funneled more toward them. Economics fuels the sports engine, and it makes sense for private companies and conglomerates to gravitate toward athletic figures who can put fans in the stands and draw in viewership.
This view by some may already be obsolete.
Filipina athletes have proven that they, too, are crowd drawers. The Premier Volleyball League, the country’s top-flight women’s professional league, regularly generates fan attendance that the once-undisputed sports entertainment entity, the PBA, can now only dream of—except when Ginebra is playing.
The WTA 125 Philippine Women’s Open held early this year attracted massive crowds, and it was not only because of the presence of Eala. The fans piled into the venue even in matches that did not feature Eala. They continued to show up even after Eala was already eliminated.
When the Filipinas won their first ever AFF Women’s Championship in 2022, there were 8,257 fans who packed the bleachers of the Rizal Memorial Stadium in the finals against Thailand.
All these are massive improvements in a country where Filipina athletes even in recent memory were not only forced to take a backseat to their male counterparts, but were also looked at as sideshows, supporting cast, or in some cases, mere novelty.
This kind of treatment by the sports patriarchy was at its most evident in the 2016 PBA. The league, run by officials from a seemingly primeval era, wanted to fool fans by projecting the PBA as a champion of women empowerment. They organized a 3×3 competition for female players and promoted the event with marketing materials labeling the players as “Baller Hotties.” They also disallowed players from wearing long shorts and having short hair so as to accentuate their femininity. This type of misogyny has no place in sports or in a decent society. That the PBA did not know better how badly they airballed this lame and rather deplorable attempt at promoting women in sports speaks of how much sports officials have had to and probably have to continue to learn and unlearn.
The local media play a huge part in the objectification of female athletes. Reading and watching reports by sports journalists of a “beauteous Kayla Sanchez” copping multiple gold medals, or the “charming Agatha Wong” continuing her dominance in the SEA Games are then mirrored by fans and vloggers whose adoration for sportswomen become more focused on aesthetics than athletic prowess.
There have been improvements and positive signs. The Philippine Football Federation hosted the FIFA Women’s Futsal World Cup from November 21 to December 7. The Philippine Sports Commission, in collaboration with the Philippine Commission on Women, has for three years now been honoring Filipina athletes in the All-Women in Sports Awards. This year, 85 women athletes were feted in ceremonies held at the PICC.
But much more have yet to be done. There is still that sense that Filipina athletes need to outdo themselves and achieve something spectacular just to gain recognition from fans, sponsors, and sports officials. Because they know they work from a position of deficit, Filipina athletes often have to work doubly hard just to give themselves a chance to be noticed, especially when it is not March and Women’s Month.