Annie’s Journey
“Annie” is a twenty-year-old Kankana-ey born and raised in Mankayan, Benguet. She comes from a family of seven, wherein she has her parents and her four younger siblings. Her parents are trying their best to make do with the meager wages that they earn from informal jobs. Despite their efforts, the pay they receive is not enough for their growing family. She migrated to Baguio and took a Bachelor’s Degree in Education at a university, hopeful of finding a job after her study. In her second...
A call to action to the young indigenous women of the Cordillera
If you are like the vast majority, you probably haven’t heard of the ‘ball-squeezing’ and ‘breast-baring’ women who defended our ancestral lands from threats of unmerciful destruction. For that, you are not to blame because believe it or not, we have a state that is trying to revise our history of resistance. When remnants of our colonial past became a tool for those who have grown to feed off the capitalist world system, our ancestral lands became sources of profit for the few. Giant...
A Reflection on the Cordillera Women’s Human Rights Summit
The Cordillera Women`s Education Action Research Center and the All UP Academic Employees’ Union of the University of the Philippines-Baguio conducted the Regional Women’s Human Rights Summit in response to the relentless attacks against critics of the present administration, human rights defenders, including indigenous peoples and other marginalized sectors of the society. The summit made me see the blatant disregard of our leaders of the basic concepts of human rights, an evidence that an...
Mental Health – a Societal Concern Essential to Women’s Well-being
October has been declared as World Mental Health Awareness Month by the World Health Organization (WHO). Awareness is really a key element in addressing this societal concern most especially that Mental Health is rarely discussed and studied and there is still considerable stigma and taboos on matters surrounding mental illnesses. Reports indicate that 17 to 20 percent of Filipino adults experience mental health disorders, while 10 to 15 percent of Filipino children, within the age group of 5...
A community’s grief and anxiety through children’s eyes
The usual road to Loacan from Ucab, Itogon, Benguet is now missing in maps and photos, defaced from the wrath of the September 15 heavy downpour that saturated the soil and followed the law of gravity. The new route is via Sabkil, offering us distant views of Ucab and Loacan whose mountains bear scars from the recent onslaught, and unseen reminders of a century of mining. After a 45-minute ride through Ambuklao Road, past landslides that were being cleared, we held our collective breath and...
Understanding discrimination and violence vs women
Violence Against Women (VAW) in its different forms are gender-based abuses that target women in particular because of how they are viewed in society. It is one of the most palpable manifestations of women’s unequal status in relation to men in our society. Although VAW is usually perpetrated by males, it must be clear that VAW happens not because of the ridiculous belief that men are naturally violent and aggressive. The problem has its origin in our history, when the subjugation of women...
Reclaim the Genuine Tradition of International Women’s Day
March 8 of every year, International women’s day is celebrated by women all over the world. The United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day during the promulgation of International Women’s Year in 1975. By 1977, the United Nations General Assembly called on its member states to declare March 8 as the UN Day for women’s rights and world peace. For the UN and member states, this day marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. March 8, women’s day, however was originally...
Retracing the True Beginnings of IDEVAW
November 25 marks a very important date for women the world over. Waves of critical events transpired on this particular date bringing to the fore violence against women as a legitimate societal concern in turn engendering awareness towards this issue. On December 17, 1999, the United Nations General Assembly designated this date as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (IDEVAW). Since then, UN member states begun celebrating this date defining strategies “to end...
Against All Odds: Women Journalists in the Frontline
(A Keynote address delivered by Kathleen T. Okubo, member of CWEARC's Board of Trustees, on the 37th biennial conference of the International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT), November 9-11, 2017, in Quezon City. The theme of the 3-day conference: Broadcasting and Social Justice: Women in the Media on Conflict and Crises.) Ladies, women of the world, colleagues in media work, and gentlemen; Naimbag a bigat yo amin! (Good morning! In my region of the Philippines.)...
Defending the Rights of the People, Women and Children
“If we stop defending our rights because of fear from the harassments and intimidation being perpetrated by state security forces upon us then we might as well be dead.” This was a statement by one of the women leaders who attended the Women Human Rights Defenders training workshop for Cordillera women held on September 9 to 10 in Diliman, Quezon City. Spearheaded by Cordillera Womens Education Action Research Center (CWEARC) and Innabuyog, 60 women leaders and organizers from the six...