Women S Movements And The Filipina

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 pro-women’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? What cultural strategies did activists deploy in order to gain a mass following? 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. She explores the transnational character of women’s activism and offers a seminal study on the important contributions of feminist Catholic nuns. Women’s Movements and the Filipina provides an original and passionate account of the contemporary feminist movement in the Philippines, bringing to light how women’s organizations have initiated change in cultural attitudes and had a significant impact on contemporary Philippine society.

DIVFocusing on the early to mid-twentieth century, Denise Cruz illuminates the role that a growing English-language Philippine print culture played in the emergence of new classes of transpacific women./div

Women's Movements in Asia is a comprehensive study of women’s activism across Asia. With chapters written by leading international experts, it provides a full overview of the history of feminism, as well as the current context of the women’s movement in 12 countries: the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Japan, Burma, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Korea, India and Pakistan. For each of these countries the manner in which feminism changes according to cultural, political, economic and religious factors is explored. The contributors investigate how national feminisms are influenced by transnational factors, such as the women’s movements in other countries, colonialism and international agencies. Each chapter also considers what Asian feminists have contributed to global theoretical debates on the woman question, the key successes and failures of the movements and what needs to be addressed in the future. This breadth of coverage, together with suggestions for further reading and watching, and an integrated cross-national timeline makes Women's Movements in Asia ideal for use on courses looking at women and feminism in Asia. It will appeal both to students and specialists in the fields of gender, women’s and Asian studies.

Books on Southeast Asian nationalist movements make very little - if any - mention of women in their ranks. Biographical studies of politically active women in Southeast Asia are also rare. Women in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements makes a strong case for the significance of women's involvement in nationalist movements and for the diverse impact of those movements on the lives of individual women activists. Some of the 12 women whose political activities are discussed in this volume are well known, while others are not. Some of them participated in armed struggles, while others pursued peaceful ways of achieving national independence. The authors show women negotiating their own subjectivity and agency at the confluence of colonialism, patriarchal traditions, and modern ideals of national and personal emancipation. They also illustrate the constraints imposed on them by wider social and political structures, and show what it was like to live as a political activist in different times and places. Fully documented and drawing on wider scholarship, this book will be of interest to students of Southeast Asian history and politics as well as readers with a particular interest in women, nationalism and political activism.

This pathbreaking book provides for the first time an overview of the genesis, growth, gains, and dilemmas of women's movements worldwide. Unlike most of the literature, which focuses on the industrialized Western world, this volume devotes greater attention to the postcolonial states of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The book challenges the assumptions that feminism can transcend national differences and, conversely, that women's movements are shaped and circumscribed by national levels of development. All the authors reject the notion, proposed by its detractors and champions alike, that feminism is of middle-class origins and Western inspiration. Instead they seek to locate women's movements within the terrain from which they emerge.Virtually all the authors are from the countries or communities about which they write the few exceptions are women who have spent lengthy periods studying and living in the region. Most are scholars, often in women's studies, and many are closely associated with the movements they describe. Thus, these writers share a commitment to the substantive concerns as well as the collective processes of women's movements. As a key book for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, this volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the global scope and implications of feminism.

Essays - om kvindefrigørelsen, dels i den tredie verden, dels i Filippinerne, samt om den filippinske kvindes stilling økonomisk og socialt

Contemporary popular culture stereotypes Filipina women as sex workers, domestic laborers, mail order brides, and caregivers. These figures embody the gendered and sexual politics of representing the Philippine nation in the Filipina/o diaspora. Gina K. Velasco explores the tensions within Filipina/o American cultural production between feminist and queer critiques of the nation and popular nationalism as a form of resistance to neoimperialism and globalization. Using a queer diasporic analysis, Velasco examines the politics of nationalism within Filipina/o American cultural production to consider an essential question: can a queer and feminist imagining of the diaspora reconcile with gendered tropes of the Philippine nation? Integrating a transnational feminist analysis of globalized gendered labor with a consideration of queer cultural politics, Velasco envisions forms of feminist and queer diasporic belonging, while simultaneously foregrounding nationalist movements as vital instruments of struggle.

Revolutionizing Feminism offers the first feminist analysis of the human rights crisis in the Philippines during the Arroyo presidency (2001-2010) and the declaration of the country as the 'second front' in the US-led 'war on terror'. During this period over 1,000 activists, including peasants, journalists and lawyers, were murdered. Lacsamana situates Filipino women within the international division of labour, showing the connection between the 'super-exploitation' of their labour power at home and their migration abroad as domestic workers, nurses, nannies, entertainers, and 'mail-order brides'. In contrast to the cultural turn in feminist theorising that has retreated from the concepts of class and class exploitation, Revolutionizing Feminism seeks to reorient feminist scholarship in order to better understand the material realties of those living in an increasingly unstable and impoverished global south.