UP Diliman spent a mere P9.17 million, or 0.19% of the campus’s total budget, on gender and development (GAD) initiatives—far below the mandated 5% spending, according to the Diliman Gender Office (DGO).

The paltry spending points to a lack of GAD infrastructure and services, such as physical and online gender helpdesks, gender neutral bathrooms, and health services, partly due to underfunding.

But as the office that collates all the supposed GAD initiatives of offices, colleges, and organizations across the university, DGO has also pointed to a lack of awareness and underreporting of budgets, projects, and accomplishments from local units.

“So yun yung direction ngayon ng DGO. Stepping back and analyzing what went wrong. Ano yung disconnect, ano yung lacking from us, ano yung lacking from the community, to have a better strategy,” Anna Villanueva, DGO coordinator, told the Collegian.

Budgets and projects

Republic Act 7192, or the Women in Development and Nation Building Act, mandates that government agencies allot at least 5% of their total yearly budget to implementing gender-inclusive programs.

This allotment, however, does not have to be solely for GAD programs. Instead, offices can tag existing projects as GAD initiatives or modify them to include gender in a strategy called gender mainstreaming.

“For example, sa colleges, they can insert gender perspective in their curriculum. … Let’s say for Diliman Information Office, if they do write, gamitan lang nila ng gender lens. In everything, na mga gawain ng tao sa UP, dapat nakapaloob yung gender lens at gender aspect,” Villanueva said.

Reports on the implementation of these projects by separate offices are collated in an annual GAD accomplishment report by the DGO, which gave a copy of such to the Collegian.

The actual cost for some items, such as the budget for the Office of Anti-Sexual Harassment, were less than what was approved due to less money being spent than expected. But most projects simply had no available data in their implementation: A repeating line in the GAD accomplishment report was that projects had “no reported results and expenses.” 

The lack of data has severely affected the office’s ability to justify GAD spending. “Kung nakita [ng administration] na [ang programa] ay kasupo-suporta, then they would. Kaso nga lang, you have to be able to collect all the data, to present to them that this matters. So it’s up to [DGO] pa rin to present that,” Villanueva said.

Furthermore, many projects directly implemented by the gender office, such as advocacy materials and research, have already been shelved due to limited funding, according to the report.

Ironically, projects that would have made it easier for units to report GAD spending, such as manuals and a proposed GAD data system, have also been delayed, still subject to follow-ups and approval of the Office of the Chancellor.

Reporting and connecting

Offices should already have gender mainstreaming in mind when crafting their budgets. Reporting on those budgets falls on the shoulders of GAD focal point persons and committees, which should be chaired by college or unit heads.

But it is unclear how many colleges and units have fully functional GAD focal point committees. Aside from UP offices, the GAD report enumerated only eleven colleges that consulted with the gender office in 2024. Even fewer have listed GAD projects in the report.

Despite a requirement that student councils and organizations have at least one GAD representative, DGO did not know who they were or whether anyone was assigned at all. A planned GAD student formation, the General Assembly for Gender Advocates, had already been approved by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs in 2024, but its implementation was pushed back to this year.

The absence of focal point persons means that the university’s GAD practice is not equally felt by members of the UP community. For example, infrastructure such as gender neutral bathrooms was only proposed by the College of Business Administration. Helpdesks were contained to the Colleges of Fine Arts and Music. Gender orientation seminars were limited to only specific colleges and organizations that requested them.

But Diliman, in fact, already has a robust GAD focal point system compared to other campuses, according to the UP Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (CWGS), the GAD office of the UP system. 

“The campuses are not all on the same stages or the same capacity or skills and knowledge. … Yung isa ding pinaplano is that we really have to intensify and also strengthen the capacity of the campuses to do the harmonized GAD guidelines,” Gina Rose Chan, Publication Production Chief I, said.

Community and diversity

Guidelines on GAD initiatives are not just for the sake of bureaucracy, according to the CWGS. These policies work toward gender equality on campus and have resulted in tangible victories still felt now by the common UP student and employee—the use of pronouns, the right to wear gender-affirming clothes, child-rearing facilities for faculty, and awards and research grants for women.

But hurdles remain—misgendering of students, strain on counseling services, bureaucratic handling of sexual harassment cases, and unresolved abuse or harassment cases from or within student organizations and party formations.

Both the CWGS and the Office of Anti-Sexual Harassment have hinted at upcoming revisions to the Anti-Sexual Harassment Code to keep the code up to date with the Safe Spaces Act and to explicitly include anti-SOGIE discrimination provisions.

DGO also plans to continue pushing for a revised GAD manual and policy to give local units a standard procedure on forming a GAD committee and reporting on gender-inclusive projects done on campus.

This year, the gender office is projecting a P132.63 million budget for GAD initiatives, corresponding to 2.47% of the total budget. It remains to be seen whether the target will be met by campus offices, colleges, and units.

“Kailangan magtrabaho ng lahat. Kasi yung making a safe space, and everybody contributing to that, hindi lang siya top-down or hindi lang siya one perspective. It should be a lot of perspectives,” Villanueva said. ●

With reports from Vyan David Abella. First published in the June 28, 2025 print issue of the Collegian.