Written by Nads Esteva

Updated Mar 14, 2019 3:48:23 PM2

Manila (CNN Philippines Life) — Women’s Month is greeted with the approval of Rice Tariffication Bill, the reclamation projects in Manila Bay and the administration’s refusal to recognize the demands of contractual and underpaid laborers such as the protesting NutriAsia workers and Sumifru plantation workers in Liwasang Bonifacio. All these pressing issues have a crippling effect on mothers. Women, who take on the role of child rearing and housekeeping, are first and foremost farmers, plantation workers, fisher folk, and laborers.

What is the role of feminism in these trying times? Many will say that we are dealing with the same level of misogyny, the same gender stereotypes and exploitation as the women of the ‘70s and ‘80s. “We need to deepen and broaden people’s understanding of what feminism is … For as long as there is violence against women, there is no equality,” says Nathalie Africa Verseles, Director of the Women’s and Genders Studies of the University of the Philippines.

This month, we pay tribute to five Filipinas who helped organize one of the first women’s organizations in the country. According to Africa, “There’s a spectrum of feminism. We don’t even talk in terms of just feminism but rather feminisms.”

“It’s necessary to acknowledge that even if feminists work from different ideologies, all of them are doing something salient to contribute to achieve social justice and social transformation,” says Africa.

Patricia “Tati” Licuanan

Patricia Licuanan started as a young social scientist. While she was studying development programs, as a social psychologist, she saw how women were not benefitting from the programs.

“They would develop programs for farmers and programs for the farmer’s wives. But women were the farmers themselves,” says Licuanan “They are involved in all the aspects of agriculture. Yet the programs were not designed for them. They were designed for their husbands. The government programs should realize that women do so much important things in the agriculture … ”

This pushed her to write “Some are More Unequal than Others,” one of the many scholarly works that she published as an early advocate for women’s rights and issues. Licuanan became the Chair of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCFRW) and headed Asia Pacific Women’s Watch (APWW), an non-government institution network, from 1987 to 1992.