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President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on August signed into law the measure prohibiting discrimination against women, and recognizing and promoting their rights.

Republic Act 9710 or the Magna Carta of Women, signed at the Heroes Hall in Malacañang Palace, ensures women’s equitable participation and representation in government, political parties, international bodies, civil service and the private sector.

RA 9710 recognizes and protects women’s rights at home, at work and in all spheres of society toward developing all aspects of their well-being. Its most salient features include increasing the number of women personnel until they fill half of third-level positions in the government, setting up in every barangay (village) a “violence against women’s desk,” providing incentives to parties with women’s agenda and barring the derogatory portrayal of women in media and film.

The new law’s most “empowering provision” is its recognition that “women’s rights are human rights,” Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Chair Leila de Lima told reporters after the 10 a.m. signing.
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I chanced upon this Review of MARISOL (2009)—a film directed by Hella Wenders; cinematography by Merle Jothe; produced by Barbara Mutschler and Florian Gerstenberg ; German Film and Television School, Berlin, Germany.

by E. San Juan, Jr.,
Fellow, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University

We live in the era of the global commons, but very few have actually met their neighbors—except as subalterns: household maids, hotel service-workers, nannies, most likely college-educated women from the Philippines. The ubiquitous phenomenon of Filipina domestics and overseas contract workers (almost ten million), known also as Overseas Filipino workers (OFW), has become a tedious and soporific topic for cynics and skeptics. Scholars have categorized them as modern indentured servants of the global ecumene. If you mention that at least five OFW cadavers/coffins arrive everyday at the Manila International Airport, a big yawn greets you: “So what else is new?” Those still awake may prod: “Why? How did this happen?”

Like millions around the world devastated by global capitalism’s meltdown, the lives of migrant Filipinas/as have become redundant or disposable. This began in the 1970s. The Marcos dictatorship, supported chiefly by the United States and the IMF-World Bank, institutionalized the export of “warm bodies” to the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. In the neoliberal global market, the nationality label “Filipino” quickly became equivalent to “servant” or “maid” in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and elsewhere. After 9/11, the terrorist Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines may have eclipsed the OFWs. But with the continual brutalization of Filipinas in Okinawa, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and the “Nicole” scandal (“Nicole” is the Filipina raped by an American soldier subsequently convicted but “kidnapped” by the US Embassy while his case is on appeal), with hundreds in jail or awaiting execution, their plight will continue to haunt the conscience of “the pillars of society.” It may even disturb the sleep of State functionaries whose salaries depend on OFW remittances.

Continue reading at THE FILIPINA FEMALE GAZE: A review of MARISOL, a film by Hella Wenders

Online, is what I mean. There is this advocacy called Reshaping the Filipina Image Online. It is a noble cause to address the current image and reputation of Filipina women in the internet. It can be a Herculean task given the fact that there are many factors we have to consider and one of them is to spread the word (to Filipinas particularly) that we have to do something to abate, if not eliminate totally, the perception in the internet about Filipinas being bound to domestic helping (not that I have anything against this noble work) and prostituting only.

Before posting this, I am glad to know that when you search and type “Filipina”, the advocacy ranks second. The support must be growing placing them at the top. It’s a good thing. It’s good news. Maybe not a gargantuan task at all.

However, I do hubpages and stumbled upon a hub – Nine Inch Nails and Star Trek. I don’t know the band. Of course, I know about Star Trek. What made me uncomfortable is the line in the hub that says “Mariqueen is not Indian. She is Filipino. A very hot Filipino.” Then I started typing Mariqueen Maandig on the search box and clicked go. Then I saw a lot of ‘revealing’ facts parallel to saying she is a very hot Filipino.

Maybe to some that is just a statement. For the hubber, that is simply stating what he thinks of Mariqueen probably because she is a sensual and a straightforward artist (lead vocalist of the band West Indian Girl). But borrowing a line from Wil – music speaks for itself. It can be for me the same as saying, one’s preferences, beliefs and persona speaks for the person himself.

Being hot can be a good thing but can be another thing, too. The implication of the word is varied but there is danger also that Filipinas are stereotyped as hot in a perverted and twisted sense of the word.

(Also posted at Warmstone.)

I can feel so much for the Filipina mom and her daughter as the latter’s ex-boyfriend tried to extort money so the video uploaded in youtube would be removed. She is lucky because police operatives located the ex-boyfriend. The sad thing here is the video already spread through the internet. She is forever shamed.

Lately, two filipinas became victims of an unauthorized video being spread across the internet. One of the victims is Katrina Halili, the ex-lover of Haydn Kho. Katrina Halili filed a complaint against Kho at the headquarters of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), accusing Kho of filming his sexual encounter without her consent. She is “willing to face all this embarrassment so that other people may learn. I want to fight back because I don’t want this to happen to me again or to other women,” she said. (Source: Inquirer.net)

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