BAGUIO CITY—As the adage goes, “put yourself in someone else’s shoes,” policemen and jail guards wore high heels as a show of support to women.
It was a sight to behold as 10 male police and three jail personnel wore high heels with their official service uniforms in support to the women sector, as part of their contribution to the Women’s Month (Kababaihan Festival) in the city.
These men said they borrowed their “heels” from their wives, mothers, sisters , relatives, female co-workers and even girlfriends.
They said they agreed to the challenge to feel how it is to be wearing “high heels”, literally placing themselves in the shoes of the women in their lives.
Baguio’s Outstanding Women Leaders (OWL) adviser Patti Gallardo said the male police and jail personnel were requested to wear women’s shoes as an adaption of the international award-winning “Walk A Mile In Her Shoes” project that started in the United States in 2001.
The project asks men to literally walk one mile in women’s high-heeled shoes to experience the difficulties that women have to deal with on a daily basis.
“It is not easy walking in women’s shoes and it gets people talking about gender relations, the seriousness of domestic violence, rape and men’s sexual violence against women. It demonstrates that men who walk in women’s shoes are willing and courageous partners of women in making the world a safer place,” Gallardo explained.
She said since 2001, more and more men, women and their families around the world have joined the activity to educate and raise awareness on gender issues, decrease and prevent the potential for violence, and raise positive activism by getting men to work together with their female counterparts in ending violence against women. (Liza Agoot/PNA)
