Women's movements and the Filipina, 1986-2008
By: Mina Roces
Publisher: University of Hawaiʻi Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Honolulu
Language: eng
Number of pages: 277
ISBN-13: 9780824834999
Subjects: Women political activists; Legal status, laws; Social conditions; Women; Feminism; History
Description: This book is about a fundamental aspect of the feminist project in the Philippines: rethinking the Filipino woman. It focuses on how contemporary women's organizations have represented and refashioned the Filipina in their campaigns to improve women's status by locating her in history, society and politics; imagining her past, present and future; representing her in advocacy; and identifying strategies to transform her. The drive to alter the situation of women included a political aspect (lobbying and changing legislation) and a cultural one (modifying social attitudes and women's own assessments of themselves). In this work Mina Roces examines the cultural side of the feminist agenda: how activists have critiqued Filipino womanhood and engaged in fashioning an alternative woman. How did activists theorize the Filipina and how did they use this analysis to lobby for prowomen's legislation or alter social attitudes? What sort of Filipina role models did women's organizations propose, and how were these new ideas disseminated to the general public? Analyzing data from over seventy-five interviews with feminist activists, radio and television shows, romance novels, periodicals and books published by women's organizations and feminist nuns, comics, newsletters, and personal papers, Roces shows how representations of the Filipino woman have been central to debates about women's empowerment.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The religious roots of women's oppression; title: Prostitution, women's movements, and the victim narrative; title: The woman as worker; title: Indigenous women; title: Hindi kailangan magtiis (there is no need to endure); title: Women's studies on the air; title: Fashioning women through activism, ritual, and dress; title: Women's movements in transnational spaces; title: Women's movements in liminal spaces.