Happy Women’s Day!

For women who continue to struggle against poverty and gender discrimination in the margins, ano nga ba ang kasiya-siya sa araw na ito? Their family incomes are dwindling, prices are soaring, and government social services, such as housing, are patingi-tingi. Many of the laws that women pushed for women’s rights and wellbeing – like the VAWC and RH Laws - continue to be token promises as government fails to follow up with budget and earnest implementation.

Indeed, what is there to celebrate?

Let me name one: Mina Roces’ book, Women’s Movements and the Filipina, 1986-2008.

Here is a comprehensive account of different feminists’ efforts to transform women’s status in the Philippines. The book details

“the feminist project and its interrogation of the Filipino woman in the period from about the mid 1980’s until 2008: locating her in history, society and politics; imagining her past, present and future; representing her in the advocacy; and identifying strategies that transform her. The focus is on how women’s organizations imagined and refashioned the Filipina in their campaign to improve women’s status in the legal and cultural contexts…

Despite the myriad types of discourses, women’s actions were united in the over-all project of women’s empowerment…”

Much more work needs to be done, but the ground is moving in different places, slowly but surely. Let’s keep the solidarity and the diversity. Padayon sa iba-ibang pagkembot!