“I remember during Ramadan last year, at iftar—just as we were about to break our fast—suddenly we heard an explosion. We dropped and ran, carrying our food with us,” Salha Salik, who now lives in Shariff Saydona Mustapha, recalled in Tagalog during a phone interview. “It’s unpredictable here,” said Salik, 35. “Ever since I was...
Tag: women
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Six Filipino women show the way
Women who have marked the political landscape with grit and grace and who continue to engage the burning issues of the day for the people’s general benefit are the subjects of a new book, “Six Filipino Women for Justice.” Published by San Anselmo Press and edited by Asunción David Maramba, the book features profiles of...
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When you hit the road and ‘feel the wonderful wind on your face’
“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling,” the American activist Susan B. Anthony once said. “I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a...
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Women in a Masbate barangay champion education
After completing their chores, eight mothers in Barangay Tugbo in Masbate come together to take on another role: as literacy champions for themselves and their children. Erlinda Cabarles, a mother of seven, rises at 3 a.m. to do her household routine. While her family sleeps, she cooks, cleans, and prepares for the day. She is...
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What it’s like in the WOMB
“It’s a struggle!” When one said that in the ‘70s and ‘80s, they would most certainly have been referring to any of the multifront resistance groups against Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s dictatorship, martial law, and the assassination of the opposition leader and former senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. Today, when spoken by some members of the...
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All-women anthology ‘First Draft’ released
The anthology “First Draft: Essays by Ten Women” is off the press, published by Tahanan Books, edited by Lorna Kalaw-Tirol, and with an introduction by Mariel N. Francisco. It features the narratives of a group of women who had been meeting for over 10 years in different homes and restaurants to share their compositions for...
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Forum on women’s movement against gender-based violence
Stories of local and global practices in the movement against violence against women and gender-based violence will be shared by three resource persons in the first Maureen C. Pagaduan Memorial Public Forum Series on Nov. 18, Saturday, 1-4 p.m., at the University of the Philippines’ College of Social Work and Community Development in Diliman, Quezon...
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Punlaan School provides fertile ground for women empowerment
Long before women empowerment became a global movement, Filipino women had been holding their own in the home and the community. In precolonial times, they held equal status with men. Colonizers may have redefined their role in society, but they strove to defy their demotion, asserting their rights and capabilities while rallying around one another. ...
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4 Chinese women show social context of deployment of beauty
Women’s agency is illustrated in how they deploy their beauty as cultural capital. But they do so amid certain factors, which shape, facilitate, and even constrain such deployment. In China, as shown by four famous Chinese women, the deployment of beauty lies at the intersection between individual agency and social, cultural, and even political structures:...
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Music sassy, raucous and tender
Strong women (from left) Skarlet, Celin Cristobal and Gou de Jesus sing of tough love and other quirks of the human condition to an overflow crowd at UP Diliman’s University Hotel on March 9, a day after International Women’s Day. Voices sharply honed despite the long pandemic lull, they keep the music playing and the...