Through the rivers and up the mountains, in Barangay Sapangdaku, Cebu lives Manang Celia*. For health matters like fever, fractures, or even getting poisoned, locals go to her for treatment. In the midst of the pandemic, her neighbors come to her for cures of COVID-19 symptoms since modern medicine is quite inaccessible for them, both geographically and financially.

Apart from her panambal or healing, she tends to her six children and five grandchildren while trying out other side hustles like panghihilot or traditional massage, and acquiring ornamental plants for sale to make ends meet.

When depicting women leaders, a traditional healer like Manang Celia is not the picture that comes to mind. The media often turns to the image of a girl boss—sharp heels, sleek designer bags, crisp business suits.

While this vision is a long way from the Maria Clara narrative, it still does not fully encapsulate what an empowered woman looks like. It breeds the idea of a woman being capable of leadership only if she holds certain masculinity as set by patriarchal social standards, when in fact, women vary from status to status and culture to culture.

In this pandemic, for example, the leadership roles that women have long assumed, although often overlooked, have become more apparent—especially in healthcare. The UP Population Institute has found out that in 2020, women dominated the health profession in the Philippines by 75 percent.

As with modern medicine, traditional healing, an aged-old form of medical practice popular in far-flung areas, continues to be women-led. Traditional healers like Manang Celia have descended from a long history that dates back to the pre-colonial era and have adapted and evolved since then.

The herstory of Philippine healthcare

In Cebu, traditional healers are known as the mananambal. They gain their status through apprenticeship, ancestry, or even epiphanies and mystical experiences. These epiphanies often come in the form of dreams where the Holy Spirit bestows healing powers upon them.

“My lola was a mananambal. She used to lecture us on which plants can cure illnesses. She told us to use them when we cannot afford anything else. Whenever I see those trees, I remember her,” Celia said in Bisaya.

In the pre-colonial era, it is the babaylan or the priestess who deals with the religious and the health matters of the barangay. Like the mananambal, the role is passed on by apprenticeship, usually to women, although, there may also be men healers or the bayugin.

The babaylan is considered as one of the three most important authorities in the barangay. In the absence of the datu or the chieftain, the babaylan acts as the interim head of the community, which shows how women were originally treated with high regard in the pre-colonial Philippines. 

Centuries have passed and women still dominate the health profession in terms of population. However, the roles of women have greatly changed since then.

In 2020, the World Health Organization discovered that while 70% of the global health workforce are women, only 25% of the senior roles are given to them. This gap in leadership is caused by stereotypes, discrimination, and power imbalance.

Moreover, the gender pay gap in health is at 26 percent, which is higher than the average for other sectors. This gap is attributed to occupational segregation where men hold a majority of the higher-status roles while women are left to do the lower-status and lower-paid roles. Men are often in charge of surgery while women are deemed “more suitable” to be nurses. 

Due to the disparity in job opportunities, more women are forced to work in the informal economy, such as domestic or home-based work. They also work in industries with less pay and are experiencing more layoffs during the pandemic, such as in customer service and retail. 

Still, women are survivors. With the different challenges the patriarchy has posed throughout history, a woman thrives in whatever job she is put in—be it taking care of the family or earning a living—and Manang Celia is proof of that.

A woman evolved

Before she became a full-time mananambal, Manang Celia was a victim of domestic abuse. Her husband used to come home at midnight drunk and then beat her. “This is why I lost my tooth. When I opened the door, his foot hit my mouth,” she said, pointing at her front teeth.

“I used to always pray: God, give me a way to earn on my own so that I will not have to rely on my husband anymore,” she recalled. “I’m grateful that God gave me knowledge on herbal plants and paghilot,” she added.

Her gift of traditional healing paved a way for Manang Celia to feel empowered. Every day, people would go to her when they get sick and she would tell them to come back after an hour, when she already has gathered the needed herbs. Sometimes, this would take longer as she has to get them from farther places in their barangay.

Her doors are always open for those who needed help. She has treated babies as young as four months old and has performed panghihilot on pregnant women. 

She considers this as her way to give thanks and to offer indulgence to God. In fact, despite panambal being Manang Celia’s main source of income for the longest time, she does not charge anything to those who ask for her help. It is up to the clients how much they can pay her which usually ranges from 100 to 150 pesos.

Recently, her main source of income is paghilot for injuries or stress. She charges 150 pesos for a full body massage because she has to go to the houses of her clients to perform this service. 

At the start of the quarantine, she also sold ornamental plants all over their barangay.  While she was able to make a decent amount of money from it, walking tirelessly under the scorching heat of the sun to market her products has made her health suffer so she had to stop.

Contrary to the traditional role of belonging to the kitchen and only tending to the home, women are as capable as men in providing for the family—and Manang Celia with her three jobs all while being a full-time mother is proof of that.

Pandemic and panambal

With the quarantine guidelines and lack of public transport, access to healthcare has become an even greater luxury than it already is for a mountain barangay like Sapangdaku. They rely on traditional healers for first aid and treatment of the COVID-19 symptoms. Because of this, Manang Celia’s clientele has grown in number during the pandemic.

“I have treated a lot of people, especially those who cannot afford to go to the hospital. I prepare herbs for them and with God’s grace, they get cured,” she said.

When people with COVID-19 symptoms like fever, dry cough, or tiredness come to her, she performs a traditional healing practice called tuob or steam therapy.

At the beginning of the pandemic, tuob was a controversial topic after Cebu’s governor made it seem like a cure for the disease. Various medical experts debunked this claim stating that tuob is ineffective in killing the virus, and may even be harmful since the hot steam poses risks of burn injury.

According to Manang Celia, the traditional tuob is not harmful to the lungs because the steam does not get inhaled. Contrary to the popular tuob practice of enclosing your whole upper body, including your head, with a steaming pot of herbal plants in a sheet, the traditional tuob makes you put your head out. After the ritual, Manang Celia makes the sick person drink the steamed herbal plants. 

While she knows that tuob is not the cure for COVID-19, she continues to perform it to help relieve the people of their fever because she knows how costly hospitalization may be.

The people of Sapangdaku are confident in Manang Celia’s ways of panambal. Not only is her knowledge on traditional healing that of ancestry, it is also mixed with the teachings of modern medicine from the seminars she has taken. 

Four years ago, their barangay’s Women’s Association conducted a seminar taught by the doctors from the Cebu City Health Department for health volunteers about first aid and massage. From there, she learned how to measure blood pressure and provide first aid for fractures. She learned the massage techniques from the students of the University of Cebu. 

Apart from panambal, Celia also extends her knowledge in traditional healing by helping in the health committee of their Women’s Association. She shares what herbs could be used to cure different illnesses to the members of their organization. She believes that as a community, it is their responsibility to help each other as much as they can.

Women hold the foundational pillars of society: mothers, teachers, health workers, sari-sari store owners, and all the other women-dominated jobs. As ordinary as they seem compared to the girl boss narrative, or even the leadership stories told by Fortune 500 CEOs, these jobs require a great deal of hard work and sacrifices, maybe even more.

Because, even with the whole of history going against her, it is in a woman’s nature to be a leader—and Celia is proof of that. ●

*Not her real name. Manang Celia was granted anonymity for privacy concerns. 

This article was originally published on April 5, 2021.