10 Women That Changed Philippine History (Part 1)

The Philip­pines is out­wardly patri­ar­chal but inwardly matri­ar­chal. While machismo is very evi­dent, and there’s a lot to improve in how our soci­ety looks at women in gen­eral, and there are a lot of laws that still reek of chau­vin­ism and dou­ble stan­dard, our moth­ers, our wives and our women have power unlike women in other coun­tries. Women in our soci­ety have always had infor­mal power (in terms of influ­ence and being “the power behind the throne”). But we’ve had women hold for­mal power as well. For exam­ple, while Hillary Clin­ton came close to the Pres­i­dency of the United States, we’ve had two women hold the post in our country.

Not bad for a “young” democracy.

Dur­ing the Span­ish period, women joined the under­ground resis­tance move­ment KATIPUNAN in the strug­gle against colo­nial­ism. They fought along­side the men and acquired sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal skills and know-how. Such strug­gle enabled women to go beyond the tra­di­tional roles (i.e of home­maker and care­giver) which the highly patri­ar­chal Span­ish regime had imposed upon them.

The list of promi­nent Fil­ipino women in his­tory include Gabriela Silang, Gre­go­ria de Jesus, Agueda Kahaba­gan, Teresa Mag­banua, Mel­chora Aquino, Trinidad Tec­son among oth­ers. These women did not only attend to the sick and wounded or solicit food and money for the rev­o­lu­tion; they also served in the more dan­ger­ous tasks of trans­mit­ting mes­sages and hid­ing doc­u­ments. A few actu­ally fought and reached the rank of gen­eral in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary army.

By the time of the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion (1940s), a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Fil­ipino women had become edu­cated. In the hope of fur­ther shed­ding off their sta­tus as second-class cit­i­zens, these women enjoined and orga­nized other women to fight for the right to suf­frage. Until then, only the lit­er­ate men were allowed to vote and run for office.

The Suf­frag­ist Move­ment pro­vided inroads for women to get into pol­i­tics. In 1937, women were finally granted the right to vote. The con­sti­tu­tion of 1935 had stip­u­lated that the right of suf­frage would be extended to women only if 300,000 women voted in its favor dur­ing a national plebescite. A Gen­eral Coun­cil of Women (whose fore­run­ner was the National Fed­er­a­tion of Women’s Clubs in the Philip­pines) was then estab­lished in Manila to direct the plebescite cam­paign. Its aim was to draw the sup­port of the broad­est num­ber of women and launch var­i­ous forms of cam­paign through media and per­sonal con­nec­tions. As it turned out, 447,725 women voted yes in the 1937 plebescite.

When World War II broke out and the Japan­ese occu­pied the Philip­pines, women again fought along­side the men. After the war, these same women attempted to par­tic­i­pate in the post­war gov­ern­ment that was con­sol­i­dated by the national elec­tions in April 1946 and the procla­ma­tion of Philip­pine Inde­pen­dence of July 4.

Not too many women, how­ever, were vis­i­bly present in main­stream pol­i­tics. Between 1946 – 1971 (the last year of free elec­tions before Mar­tial Law), only 26 women were elected into pub­lic office: 11 Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, 7 sen­a­tors, 6 gov­er­nors and 2 city may­ors. In 1951, women attempted to form a National Polit­i­cal Party of Women but the project never got off the ground. Instead, in the same year, a sep­a­rate group launched the Women’s Magsaysay-for-President Move­ment to sup­port the pres­i­den­tial bid of Ramon Magsaysay. [from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Library]

In honor of Mother’s Day on Sun­day, I am list­ing down the 10 Women That Changed Philip­pine His­tory.

10. Glo­ria Macapagal-Arroyo [Born April 5, 1948]

She is the four­teenth and cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines. Arroyo is the country’s sec­ond female pres­i­dent, and the daugh­ter of late for­mer Philip­pine Pres­i­dent Dios­dado Macapagal.

A pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics, Arroyo entered gov­ern­ment in 1987, serv­ing as assis­tant sec­re­tary and under­sec­re­tary of the Depart­ment of Trade and Indus­try upon the invi­ta­tion of Pres­i­dent Cora­zon Aquino. After serv­ing as a sen­a­tor from 1992 to 1998, she was elected to the vice pres­i­dency under Pres­i­dent Joseph Estrada, despite hav­ing run on an oppos­ing ticket. After Estrada was accused of cor­rup­tion, she resigned her cab­i­net posi­tion as Sec­re­tary of Social Wel­fare and Devel­op­ment and joined the grow­ing oppo­si­tion to the pres­i­dent, who faced impeach­ment. Estrada was soon forced from office by what its advo­cates would ascribe to peace­ful street demon­stra­tions of the EDSA Rev­o­lu­tion of 2001, but which crit­ics credit to a con­spir­acy among polit­i­cal and busi­ness elites, mil­i­tary top brass and Catholic Church bishop Jaime Car­di­nal Sin. Arroyo was sworn into the pres­i­dency by then-Chief Jus­tice Hilario Davide, Jr. at around noon on Jan­u­ary 20, 2001 amidst the EDSA II crowd, hours before Estrada left Mala­canang. She was elected to a full six-year pres­i­den­tial term in the con­tro­ver­sial May 2004 Philip­pine elec­tions, and was sworn in on June 30, 2004.

Love her or hate her, she deserves to be on this list because of her con­tin­ued influ­ence on Philip­pine politics.

9. Nora Aunor [Born May 21, 1953]

Nora Aunor, or “Ate Guy”, is a multi-awarded Fil­ipino actress, singer and pro­ducer. Aunor has also top­billed sev­eral stage plays, tele­vi­sion shows, and con­certs. She is regarded as the “Super­star in Philip­pine Enter­tain­ment Indus­try”. A num­ber of film crit­ics and movie indus­try play­ers con­sider her as Philip­pine Cinema’s great­est thes­pian and major icon. She is the only movie actress to receive the Cen­ten­nial Honor for the Arts awarded by the Cul­tural Cen­ter of the Philip­pines in 1999.

She’s also been ranked as the great­est actress of all time of Philip­pine Cinema.

I think her real power is in break­ing the mold and stereo­type of the major actress as the fairskinned mes­tiza. And in the process, she showed the nation that strength and tal­ent is not the exclu­sive turf of the tra­di­tion­ally beautiful.

8. Mel­chora “Tan­dang Sora” Aquino [Jan­u­ary 6, 1812 – March 2, 1919]

Mel­chora Aquino de Ramos was a Fil­ipino rev­o­lu­tion­ary who became known as “Tan­dang Sora” (“Tan­dang” is derived from the Taga­log word matanda, which means old) in the his­tory of the Philip­pines because of her age when the Philip­pine Rev­o­lu­tion broke out in 1896 (she was already 84 at the time). She gained the title Grand Woman of the rev­o­lu­tion and the Mother of Bal­intawak for her heroic con­tri­bu­tions to Philip­pine history.

Aquino oper­ated a store, which became a refuge for the sick and wounded rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. She fed, gave med­ical atten­tion to and encour­aged the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies with moth­erly advice and prayers. Secret meet­ings of the Katipuneros (rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies) were also held at her house. Thus she earned the name, “Mother of the Katipunan” or “Mother of the Rev­o­lu­tion”. When the Spaniards learned about her activ­i­ties and her knowl­edge to the where­abouts of the Katipuneros, she was asked where Andres Boni­fa­cio was hid­ing but refused to divulge under pain of death. She was then arrested by the Span­ish Guardia Civil and was deported to the Mar­i­ana Islands.

After the United States took con­trol of the Philip­pines in 1898, Aquino, like other exiles, returned to the Philip­pines until her death on March 2, 1919 at the age of 107. Her remains lie in her own back­yard (now as Him­layang Pilipino Memo­r­ial Park, Que­zon City).

As a token of Fil­ipino grat­i­tude, a Que­zon City dis­trict and a road were named after her. Her pro­file was also placed in the Philip­pines’ five-centavo coin from 1967 until 1992. She is also the first Fil­ip­ina to appear on a Philip­pine peso ban­knote, in this case, a 100-peso bill from the Eng­lish Series (1951−1966).

7. Darna [“Born”: July 23, 1947]

This might be con­tro­ver­sial, but I would like to defend Darna’s inclu­sion in this list by say­ing that she sym­bol­izes empow­ered Fil­ip­inas. It might be wor­thy of note that two of the most pop­u­lar char­ac­ters in recent telen­ov­ela his­tory were women: Darna and Dye­sebel. Any superhero/heroine has the poten­tial to inspire mil­lions of chil­dren grow­ing up.

Darna is a fic­tional char­ac­ter and super­heroine cre­ated by Fil­ipino komiks (Philip­pine col­lo­quial term for comics) leg­end Mars Rav­elo. In her more pop­u­lar incar­na­tions, she is a war­rior from outer space man­i­fest­ing her­self through a girl from Earth, named Narda.

Darna was orig­i­nally known as Varga and first appeared in Bulak­lak Mag­a­zine, Vol­ume 4, #17, on July 23, 1947. Rav­elo had dif­fer­ences with the edi­tors of Bulak­lak Mag­a­zine and Varga’s name was changed to “Darna”. The char­ac­ter was re-launched on May 13, 1950. Nestor Redondo drew the first Darna.

Since then, Darna has become a Philip­pine cul­tural icon and the most rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ter among Ravelo’s creations.

Accord­ing to con­firmed sources, such as the GMA Network’s descrip­tion of Darna, the rea­son why Mars Rav­elo chose to cre­ate a female super­hero rather than a male one was because Rav­elo grew up with an absent father; thus, he never had a father-figure and he con­sid­ered his mother as his biggest hero grow­ing up. His mother rep­re­sented Darna, and young Mars Rav­elo rep­re­sented the kid side­kick, Ding.

6) Socorro Ramos [Born: Sep­tem­ber 23, 1923]

Socorro Ramos, founder of the country’s largest book­shop empire started out as a sim­ple saleslady in a book­store whose red-and-white plas­tic bags have become the name that the Fil­ipino peo­ple know today as National Bookstore.

She deserves to be part of this list because her great hand­i­work, National Book­store (and even­tu­ally Power­books) spawned gen­er­a­tions of Fil­ipino book lovers–people who would line up for hours just to buy a new book! Who would’ve thought that would hap­pen to a nation whose ancient books were burnt by the Spaniards when they came a-conquering our Islands?

Here is a fea­ture of her by The Philip­pine Star when she won three awards in

PHILIPPINE STAR: What did you dream of as a young girl?

SOCORRO RAMOS: Putting up a book­store was the far­thest from my mind. We were poor and I was always think­ing of how I could help my par­ents (Jose and Emilia Can­cio) sup­port our fam­ily of six. My father died when I was 10 … I remem­ber I was an honor stu­dent in Grade 7 and my uncle was the one who bought my white dress and white shoes. Dur­ing the war, my grandmother’s house was near a sug­ar­cane field and they were mak­ing panocha (can­died brown sugar). What I would do was buy up the pro­duce of the day and then put them in the kaing and my two sis­ters would then sell them in the mar­ket the next day. I remem­ber I would go home with bites from wasps. I must have been 12 or 13 years old then.

So you’ve always been business-minded?

I don’t know if I was then, but I was always think­ing of how to make a lit­tle money. Dur­ing sum­mer vaca­tions, I had to work for the whole two months so I’d have money to buy my note­books, paper, and pen­cils. Because I went to pub­lic school (Arel­lano High School), there was no tuition. On one vaca­tion, I worked at Amer­i­can Sweets wrap­ping bub­ble gum. I was paid the min­i­mum wage of 50 cen­tavos a day (the exchange rate at that time was P2 to US$1). Back then, you could buy a kilo of pork for 45 cen­tavos. Mag­a­l­ing akong mag­balot, I was a very fast worker. So my Amer­i­can super­vi­sor would say, “Look at this girl, how fast she wraps bub­ble gum!” So all the more I would show off.

What hap­pened after high school?

I wish I could have gone to col­lege and taken up med­i­cine after high school, but my par­ents had no money to send me to school and I had to find a job. After high school, I worked as a sales clerk at Good­will Book­store, which was owned by my older brother Manuel Can­cio and his wife (Doña Juana Can­cio). Here, I met my future hus­band, Jose Ramos, the brother of my sister-in-law. Yes, it was love at first sight. I was only 20 when I got married.

It was the stuff romance nov­els are made of. Girl, 18, meets boy, 14 years her senior. They wanted to get mar­ried, but the girl’s fam­ily was against it, what with World War II hang­ing threat­en­ingly over their heads. The girl was exiled to the province to stay with her grand­mother. An elder sis­ter of the boy fol­lowed the girl to the province to implore her to return to Manila as the boy was truly heart­bro­ken. Despite her grandmother’s objec­tions, the girl went back to Manila and mar­ried the boy the next day.

And you and Jose were mar­ried and lived hap­pily ever after as busi­ness part­ners as well?

My eldest brother opened a branch on Escolta and he put me in charge of the store. Later, my hus­band bought the place from my brother and named it National Book Store.

Why did you name it National Book Store? Did you envi­sion a book store that would be national in scope?

No, I named it after the National Cash Reg­is­ter, our second-hand caja. National Book Store was very, very small (a tiny 4 x 15-meter space inside a hab­er­dash­ery shop) dur­ing the Japan­ese time in the 1940s. And we were not sell­ing books because the Japan­ese were cen­sor­ing them. The Japan­ese sol­diers were ask­ing for slip­pers, tooth­paste, tooth­brush, writ­ing pad – so those were what I was sell­ing. What­ever the cus­tomers were look­ing for, I was sell­ing. But we were forced to keep our books because if you brought them out, the Japan­ese would tear off the pages until there was none left of the thick books.

After the war, my hus­band was able to get the cor­ner of Rizal Avenue and Soler Sts., to put up a small – barong-barong muna – store. Our night­time door served as our morn­ing table where we put our books.

Where did you get your books?

We had this stock which I bought dur­ing the Japan­ese time. I bought all the text­books which were avail­able then and kept them in our ware­house. I bought from the ven­dors who kept their books in the bodega. Since they could not sell these, they might as well sell to me and make money out of it.

If there’s one book that has influ­enced your life, what would that be?

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influ­ence Peo­ple. It taught me how to be hum­ble and how to get along with other peo­ple, no mat­ter what class of soci­ety they come from.

And we guess this must have helped you influ­ence or charm pub­lish­ers into giv­ing you low prices for your books?

Yes, peo­ple are sur­prised that our mark-up is really very low. My job is to talk to for­eign pub­lish­ers to give us a low price. I have to explain to them why I’m squeez­ing their necks for a low price. I tell them our peo­ple can’t afford their books. And I add, “Wait until Fil­ipinos are a lit­tle richer, and I will not have to bar­gain with you. In the mean­time, you have to help us.” That’s my trade secret.

Our aim has always been to con­tribute to the edu­ca­tional uplift­ment of Fil­ipinos by sell­ing books at low prices. Not only books, but also office/school sup­plies. Dur­ing the time of Pres­i­dent Mar­cos, he allowed the reprint­ing of col­lege text­books under Pres­i­den­tial Decree 285. We could reprint a for­eign book and pay them roy­alty based on the US dol­lar price. What hap­pened was we were able to reduce our prices by up to 75 per­cent. I was talk­ing to a cer­tain fel­low the night I won the award and he told me, “You know, when I was in col­lege, I was using your book – the paper is not so nice, but the con­tent is the same as the imported one.” By using newsprint, we were able to bring down the price of books and make them avail­able to more peo­ple. I think that’s the most impor­tant thing we’ve done for stu­dents. Maybe now, some of them are in the US earn­ing good money.

What’s your favorite book?

The book I like very much is The Pur­pose Dri­ven Life by Rick War­ren. It just came last year. I got two copies. You know how many we sold? 330,000 copies last year. I think peo­ple were buy­ing five or 10 at a time. Except for the dic­tio­nar­ies, it was the biggest num­ber we sold. Even the Catholics were read­ing it (the author is a Chris­t­ian). I was so sur­prised! It even beat Harry Pot­ter. Harry Pot­ter Return of the Phoenix sold 32,000 copies last year. Frankly, I had to sign a con­tract with the pub­lisher not to put it out before the launch date world­wide. On the day it was released, peo­ple were wait­ing out­side National Book Store as early as 5 a.m. And to think the hard­bound copies were sell­ing for more than P1,000 per. It was a year after that the paper­back edi­tion came.

What advice would you give some­body who wants to go into busi­ness?

Work hard. Be fru­gal, be patient, per­se­vere. And be will­ing to take a lit­tle risk.

How much of a risk-taker are you?

There are things you want to order for the store, but you do not know if they’d sell. For exam­ple, in the early days of National Book Store, I was look­ing at what the cus­tomers were buy­ing. They were buy­ing Christ­mas cards. So I made these Christ­mas cards with Philip­pine scener­ies on them. I asked some artists to draw and then I made them into cheap Christ­mas cards sell­ing from 10 to 20 cen­tavos each. They sold well. Then I also thought of mak­ing post­cards. My son Alfred went all over the Philip­pines with a Ger­man pho­tog­ra­pher to take pic­tures of the Mayon Vol­cano, the vin­tas in Min­danao, Pagsan­jan Falls, etc. When they came back after two months, they were very dark from hav­ing been exposed to the sun. We made these very nicely done pic­tures into post­cards. And then I made them into Christ­mas cards as well. It was a risk, but they got sold again. I was also think­ing: Fil­ipinos love to sing, but they don’t know the lyrics of the songs. What I did was to put these lyrics in a card, like Let me call you sweet­heart, with a lit­tle design on the side. It cost me three cen­tavos to make and I sold it for 10 cen­tavos. But peo­ple were buy­ing not just one card but five to 10 cards of the songs whose lyrics they wanted to know.

What legacy would you like to leave behind?

I hope National Book Store would con­tinue what I’m doing by help­ing peo­ple have good books, good school/office things at rea­son­able prices. Because I can never for­get that once upon a time, I was in their shoes.

TO BE CONTINUED HERE.