WOMAN POWER

I was challenged by a friend to post about ground-breaking women in Philippine history for which we could write more stories about. This was not as straight-forward a task because the most notable female figures in our history books are either legendary (Princess Urduja), nameless (Women of Malolos) or substitutes for the failed crusades of their husbands (Gabriela Silang, Cory Aquino). Even our most well-known Philippine Revolutionary heroines played stereotypical roles, like caregiver (Melchora Aquino), flag seamstress (Marcela Agoncillo) or spouse (Gregoria de Jesus), not necessarily the images that Filipinas are known for today.

Given the prominent status played by women in pre- and post-colonial society, it was impossible that there weren't more prominent Filipinas in our history. Fortunately, just a couple of days of internet searches makes one quickly realize that there is a rabbit hole of should-be famous Filipinas in history.

Like Aguada Kahabagan, the female general of the Philippine Revolutionary Army, a rank not achieved by any woman in the revolutionary wars of North and South American independence (Simon Bolivar's lover Manuela Saenz got only as far as colonel, a controversial rank since unlike General Kahabagan -- Saenz did not actually fight in the battlefields.) There's also Teresa Magbanua, who personally led troops against invaders across five decades in Panay first against the Spanish then the Americans, and was a fervent supporter of the guerilla movement against the Japanese. Plus Nieves Fernandez, the school-teacher turned guerilla fighter who stealthily assassinated up to 200 Japanese soldiers in World War II.

Further in the past were Tuan Baloca, the power behind the Sultan of Sulu, and who brokered the peace treaty against General Corcuera's bloody siege of Jolo in the 1630s and left Sulu free from Spanish attacks for more than a century. There's also Sultana Nur Azam, the only female sultan of Sulu, whose five-year rule has been expunged from the Sulu tarsilas because it was impossible for later generations to believe that a woman had actually ascended the throne.

And these contributions are not just in war and politics. Doña Remigia Salazar founded the first Filipino daily newspaper, Diario de Manila in 1846. Pelagia Mendoza was such a great sculptress that Damian Domingo's Academia de Dibujo y Pintura had to accept her to become the colony's first co-ed institution. Leona Florentino's poems of love, eroticism and 'sawi'-ness (she was a Filipino after all) was the first Filipino compendium of poetry to be recognized globally in Paris in 1899. Rosa Sevilla and Florentina Arellano wrote articles in the revolutionary paper, La Independencia, and established the first secular women's school in the country in 1900.

This list is far, far from complete. But the fact these names are unknown to most is a testament to the urgent need for our history books to be reframed so that our founding mothers can be accorded the recognition they rightfully deserve.