Why are the Filipino girls interested in getting married to Westerners?

Adelaimar C. Arias-Jose

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Registered and licensed attorney in the PhilippinesUpvoted by 

Jennifer Bulasa

, lives in The Philippines (1999-present) Updated 1y

Originally Answered: Why are the Filipino girls interested in getting married to Westerners?

Whoa!

Not all Filipino girls are interested in marrying Westerners. I'm not. But, sure, a lot of Filipino women are open to the idea of marrying Westerners. Here may be some reasons why:

1. Familiarity with foreign cultures because of colonization. Spain colonized the Philippines for 330 years. During all that time, the colonizers have lived here as masters and they have imposed on our people the idea that they are superior because their skin was white, their hair and eyes were light. We Filipinos have been told by the Spaniard colonial overlords that because we were brown skinned therefore, we were stupid and inferior. So, Filipino women desire to marry someone “above their social rank” when they marry Westerners, especially the Filipino women who come from poverty. If they marry Westerners, their offspring will no longer be treated as inferior. Their offspring would be tall, fair complexioned and they may well have Caucasian features.
2. American colonization and export of American culture. The Philippines was next conquered and colonized by the Americans. They deny “colonizing” us, but they did. Americans came and established the public school system. The public school system equated intelligence with English-speaking proficiency because the medium of instruction in the public schools was and still is English. If a mother wanted her child to do well in school, she would want her child to learn English. I learned English because my parents read to me. They read the King James Bible to me. My mother allowed us to watch only American TV shows like Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Eight is Enough, Little House on the Prairie, Charlie's Angels, etc. Best of all, we lived next door to American missionaries who had kids our age. We hung out and we just “picked up” their twang. Just imagine how many doors this language proficiency opened for us! Reading books became fun and pleasurable because of it. Filipinos who don't have this same language proficiency, I imagine, don't have very many doors of opportunity opened to them. So, if Filipino women marry Westerners, their children will grow up bilingual or trilingual. Their children may have more doors of education and employment opportunities open for them.
3. Filipino culture is heavily shaped by American colonization. The US imposed their political and court system on the Philippines. We inherited our civil and personal laws from Spain, but our procedural laws, our constitutional laws and our business and corporate laws come from the US. The official languages in the Philippines include English. Our court reports and laws are in English. The older generations of Filipinos have always desired to be “little brown Americans”. The biggest dream for them was to go to the US and have green cards. Once one Filipino goes to the US, that one Filipino will endeavor to bring in his entire family there. The American dream — that's the Philippine dream. But immigration to the US is becoming increasingly restrictive. Fewer and fewer immigrant visas through employment are available. Immigrant visas through business are not obtainable for most Filipinos who are financially challenged. The next best thing, I suppose, is for Filipino women to enter the US, Canada, or Australia on a fiancée visa or a spouse/partner visa. So, marrying a Westerner may be an acceptable thought.
4. American military presence from 1945 until the 1990s. The United States established two huge military bases in the Philippines. Whole cities catered to the needs and whims of the G.I.s who lived and worked in those bases. Bars, restaurants, and other places of adult entertainment flourished in those cities. Prostitution was common. Lonely G.I.s, far away from home, found comfort in the arms of Filipino women. In those cities where the US based were, did you know what thrived as well? Comedy clubs. The comedians had to speak English to draw the G.I.s looking for a good comedy act. Filipino women are accustomed to interacting, even entertaining, foreign men. A lot of Filipino women work in the hospitality and tourist industries. Marrying foreigners is a lot better than being pregnant by them and then being abandoned. Being married to a foreigner is more acceptable than simply living in with the foreigners.
5. In marrying Western men Filipino women hope to give birth to lighter-skinned and taller children. Filipinos are short. The average Filipino woman is 5′0″ - 5′2″ feet tall. The average male is between 5′3″- 5′5″ tall. If a Filipino woman married a Westerner, their children may be taller. Their daughters may qualify as supermodels, flight crew, even actresses or beauty queens. Their sons may qualify for the US Armed Forces or work as models, actors, or work as part of a flight crew as well. A lot of work positions in the tourism industry in the Philippines have a height requirement. Taller children would have more employment opportunities. Flight crew, soldiers, firefighters, police officers — they need to be at least 5′5″.
6. The Philippine economy is highly dependent on the dollars earned by Filipino migrant workers. Yes, Filipinos try to mitigate the intergenerational poverty in their family by going abroad to work. Filipino women work as domestic helpers, caregivers, midwives, therapists and nurses in Europe and the Middle East, in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong. The money they earn go towards the education of their children at home. Their children in the Philippines study to become engineers, accountants, architects, nurses, and doctors who will then try to go abroad and work there but working abroad is difficult. The Filipino abroad needs to acculturate and acclimatize. They experience racism, maltreatment, sexual harassment, and even rape. So, when Filipino women working abroad meet Westerners who want to marry them, they would have a family there, a home abroad. They might get a better immigration status by marriage and thus, better working and earning opportunities. For some women in the Philippines, marrying a Westerner who wants to retire in the Philippines is better than risking their lives and health by working as domestic helpers abroad. They get to stay closer to their families; they do not need to acculturate or acclimatize, and the work they would do as a domestic partner for the Westerner would be the same if they worked as a domestic helper, caregiver, or nurse if they worked abroad.
7. In marrying foreigners, Filipino women hope to move out of intergenerational poverty. Filipinos are poor. If one daughter married a foreigner, a Westerner, that would mean a sure increase in the family's wealth. One US dollar is equivalent to at least P50, one Euro is equal to P65, one GB pound is equal to P73. So, imagine if a retiree lives in the Philippines and spends his retirement pension here — he'd live like a prince here. Now, imagine if the Filipino woman married a Westerner, and she lived and worked abroad. She would send dollars, euros, or pounds to her family back in the Philippines. The daily minimum wage in the Philippines comes to about $7-$10. So, if she sent just $10 to her family, that one hour’s minimum wage in the US would mean one day's earnings for her family in the Philippines. And what is $10? It's the price of 2 cups of coffee at Starbucks in New York. So, if a Filipino woman married an American, and she migrated to the US, if instead of buying coffee at Starbucks, she sent it to her family back in the Philippines — the family would be more comfortable. The Filipino woman, although far from her family in the Philippines, would still be taking care of them as her culture and tradition dictate.
8. Filipinos are highly adaptable and resilient. Having learned how to deal with foreigners on our shores, we have learned how to be social chameleons. Filipinos easily learn foreign languages, we learn how to blend in. We easily understand how to ease a Westerner's feelings of isolation or loneliness. We are fun loving, and we can have fun in the Philippines by simply going to the beach (there are a lot of beaches here). Having fun in the Philippines need not cost much. So, Westerners feel easily at home here. They come here to meet Filipino women, because they've met other Filipino women abroad and found them to have a certain homey allure. They find women with whom they can have conversation in English. I imagine, love follows.
9. Most Filipino women are family oriented. They are generally caring and nurturing of their families. I can imagine this is intriguing and inviting to Westerners who are individualistic. To Western men who are products of divorced homes and who have experienced divorce themselves, Filipino women who are nurturing and compliant make for pleasurable company. Western men intrigue Filipino women as well because they can live alone, independent of their family. This is alien to Filipino culture, so, I imagine, this intrigues Filipino women.
10. Marrying a foreigner may be aspirational. Supposing a Filipino woman married a Westerner, a retiree, how long would the retiree live? If the retiree were 65 and the Filipino woman is in her twenties, if the retiree died at 75, the Filipino woman would be in her 30s — she can still remarry and even have children. If the retiree died at 85, the woman would be in her 40s. If by marrying the Westerner she obtained a green card or citizenship in another country, she'd be free and living well there. If the Westerner left her his possessions, she could retire in the Philippines a wealthy woman. If the Filipino woman had not had much of an education, marriage to an older gentleman whose retirement or pension benefits will be theirs upon the death of the older gentleman, why, that would be a better prospect, would it not?
11. Some Filipino women marry foreigners to escape traditional Filipino gender roles. Filipino society is largely sexist. Traditional gender roles cast Filipino women as pulling double burden: they work outside the home as professionals and still care for their families full time as soon as they get home. They drop by the grocery or market to buy stuff for dinner which they will make as soon as they get home. They help their kids with their homework, tidy up the house, do the laundry, etc. Imagine how relieving it is for a Filipino woman to find a foreigner who will wash dishes, change diapers, and babysit their kids — male Westerners are more accustomed to feminist ideas, they would be more willing to share domestic chores than a Filipino male would be. They will not mind if their wives worked outside the home, had her own set of friends, managed her own money. So, marrying a Westerner may mean that they are choosing for themselves a better social situation than they would have had had they married Filipino males and lived fulfilling traditional gender roles.

To a lot of non-Filipinos, Filipino women marrying Westerners are making a huge gamble, a desperate act. But seen in the perspective that I explained above, it's a well-thought out and calculated gamble. It is aspirational and rational.

Maybe some Filipino women who marry Westerners truly fell in love, they genuinely love the Westerner, or maybe the Westerner is their ticket out of poverty. If the Filipino woman marries the Westerner and treats him as a source of income, or the goose that lays the golden egg, she may treat him like a king. Maybe the Filipino woman is a gold digger, or maybe she simply wants to rob him blind—who knows?

We cannot overgeneralize. The reasons above merely scratch the surface of motivations why Filipino women would marry a Westerner. They may even be purely anecdotal.

UPDATE: I received a comment that the Spanish colonizers initially treated the indios with disdain but later intermarried with them and produced mestizos. This may be true, but it is also true that Spanish friars and encomenderos raped Filipino women. Peasant Filipino women had to comply when the Spanish encomendero demanded their “droit de seigneur.”

But more importantly, Spanish priests who stayed in the Philippines had mistresses here and sired mestizo children. I should know-my family is mestizo because of an ancestor who was an illegitimate child of a Spanish parish priest. My husband's family also counts as an ancestor, a Spanish parish priest who kept an india for a mistress.

A lot of Filipinos take pride in being lighter-skinned, in having mixed heritage/ancestry because it opens doors and lends so many opportunities that would not be open to them if they did not have mixed ancestry/heritage.

Note also that birth rates in Western countries and in Japan are dwindling. Perhaps Western men seek out Filipina women because they believe most Filipinas want to have children or don’t mind having children.