Pinays to watch
Pinays to watch
Updated 09:28pm (Mla time) Jan 04, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the January 5, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
NOTWITHSTANDING the male connotations of the year of the cock, I propose this is going to be the year of the Pinay. And the reason is that we have so many able women, other than the President, charting the Philippines' fortunes as they hold key positions in politics, business, education and, let's not forget, mass media.
This is not to downplay the tremendous problems women face in the Philippines. Males still dominate and women often suffer grievously, but, in common with other Southeast Asian societies, we do live in a matricentric society where women can wield great influence and power. Even more fascinating is the way they keep a low profile, working slowly but surely to achieve their goals.
I thought of focusing on three Filipinas to watch during the next year, not because they're necessarily going to be making waves this year but because they epitomize that quiet strength, that subtle thoroughness that brings lasting and substantive results.
Susan Roces
Her legal name is Jesusa Sonora, but she is better known as Susan Roces, a popular actress who played lead roles in more than 40 films. She went into semi-retirement over the last few years but re-emerged in the public limelight late in 2003 when her husband, Fernando Poe Jr., ran for president. If FPJ was the reluctant politician, Susan Roces was said to have been even more wary of politics, but she played the role of the Filipino wife, standing by her husband in all his campaign sorties and smiling enigmatically when asked if she would take over her husband's candidacy if he were disqualified.
After FPJ's death in December, Susan Roces once again came into the limelight when she spoke out against what she felt was the mass media's biased coverage of her husband's campaign and lashed out against the insincerity of politicians now rushing to pay homage to FPJ.
The nation noticed, and approved, touched by her ability to speak out, mincing no words and yet maintaining her composure.
I am not surprised. Filipinas are strong, but Filipino widows are even stronger. Our widows have been known to surpass their husbands in business and politics. The potentials with Susan Roces are actually tremendous, given that she has far greater mass appeal than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo or Cory Aquino.
Easily, Susan Roces could become someone like Sonia Gandhi, daughter-in-law and widow of Indian prime ministers. Despite strong public clamor for her to become India's prime minister last year, she declined and has, in the process, become an even more powerful woman. Like Gandhi, Susan Roces may yet prove her mettle by choosing to be political without entering the quagmires of politics.
Emerlinda R. Roman
Next month Dr. Emerlinda R. Roman will become the 19th president of the University of the Philippines. The fact that it took almost a hundred years for the university to have a woman president speaks volumes about the paradoxes of Filipino society's gender relations.
Dr. Roman's first year of office will be crucial, setting the tone for a centennial presidency that will impact not just the university but the entire nation. It has been a tumultuous century for the university, of grappling with its colonial and patriarchal beginnings, of growing up pains and explosive radicalism in the 1970s. Dr. Roman has seen the most crucial transitions, and has herself been involved in many of the uphill battles, having served more than 10 years as chancellor of UP's main campus in Diliman, Quezon City.
Even more daunting for Dr. Roman will be the practical problems of running a university that continues to have to live up to almost unrealistic expectations from the public about training the country's future leaders, even as Congress mercilessly cuts its budget each year. Dr. Roman's most immediate challenge will be defending a controversial new charter that will redefine the university as a state institution generating its own resources without necessarily becoming commercial.
There will be more to revitalizing the university than improving salaries for professors. Dr. Roman's leadership style will be crucial in dealing with the often vicious intramurals that plague government institutions and drive away some of our best professors. She is foremost a manager, a consensus builder who will listen graciously and silently to all sides but will speak up when needed, firmly, almost sternly. Yes, when I heard people explaining her style, I thought, just like a nanay (mother). There is hope yet for the university.
Patricia Evangelista
For the third Pinay to watch, I wanted to name someone young. Easily, that would be 18-year-old Patricia Evangelista, a speech communications major at UP (sorry for my bias) who beat 60 contestants from 37 other countries to win the 2004 Best Public Speaker competition in London.
Evangelista wrote her own speech, "Blonde and Blue Eyes," reflecting the ambivalence we face over the Filipino diaspora. She describes wanting to be "blonde, blue-eyed and white" in her childhood and then growing up, with a greater awareness of being Filipino, and labeling those who leave as deserters. We sense her dismay as she mentions that out of her brood of 16 cousins, there will only be five of them left in a few years because so many would have left to work and live overseas.
But Patricia becomes more optimistic, speaking of the Filipino diaspora in a borderless world as an opportunity for "an extension of identity." She speaks of Filipinos contributing to the world, and learning from these experiences. Ultimately, she says, "leaving sometimes isn't a matter of choice. It's coming back that is... A borderless world doesn't preclude the idea of a home."
I've seen Patricia interviewed on two television talk shows, once with Tina Monson Palma and once with Cito Beltran. She's sharp and feisty, avoiding cliches and empty rhetoric. At the same time, she can be refreshingly awkward at times, almost embarrassed with the recognition she's received. Simple lang, I would say, using the Tagalog-Spanish sense of the word. She has said she wants to work in mass media and I'll be watching, hoping she maintains her "simple" asset and resisting the temptation that so many of our mass media personalities succumb to: of becoming too self-absorbed, too messianic, too male.
Indeed, if Patricia Evangelista, Emerlinda Roman and Susan Roces are to leave their mark, it will be by carrying on a Pinay tradition that we see all the time in homes and in boardrooms, in classrooms and in Congress: of being strategic in choosing to speak up or being silent, of being nurturing and firm, of being of wise mind and of even wiser heart.
Updated 09:28pm (Mla time) Jan 04, 2005
By Michael Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the January 5, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
NOTWITHSTANDING the male connotations of the year of the cock, I propose this is going to be the year of the Pinay. And the reason is that we have so many able women, other than the President, charting the Philippines' fortunes as they hold key positions in politics, business, education and, let's not forget, mass media.
This is not to downplay the tremendous problems women face in the Philippines. Males still dominate and women often suffer grievously, but, in common with other Southeast Asian societies, we do live in a matricentric society where women can wield great influence and power. Even more fascinating is the way they keep a low profile, working slowly but surely to achieve their goals.
I thought of focusing on three Filipinas to watch during the next year, not because they're necessarily going to be making waves this year but because they epitomize that quiet strength, that subtle thoroughness that brings lasting and substantive results.
Susan Roces
Her legal name is Jesusa Sonora, but she is better known as Susan Roces, a popular actress who played lead roles in more than 40 films. She went into semi-retirement over the last few years but re-emerged in the public limelight late in 2003 when her husband, Fernando Poe Jr., ran for president. If FPJ was the reluctant politician, Susan Roces was said to have been even more wary of politics, but she played the role of the Filipino wife, standing by her husband in all his campaign sorties and smiling enigmatically when asked if she would take over her husband's candidacy if he were disqualified.
After FPJ's death in December, Susan Roces once again came into the limelight when she spoke out against what she felt was the mass media's biased coverage of her husband's campaign and lashed out against the insincerity of politicians now rushing to pay homage to FPJ.
The nation noticed, and approved, touched by her ability to speak out, mincing no words and yet maintaining her composure.
I am not surprised. Filipinas are strong, but Filipino widows are even stronger. Our widows have been known to surpass their husbands in business and politics. The potentials with Susan Roces are actually tremendous, given that she has far greater mass appeal than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo or Cory Aquino.
Easily, Susan Roces could become someone like Sonia Gandhi, daughter-in-law and widow of Indian prime ministers. Despite strong public clamor for her to become India's prime minister last year, she declined and has, in the process, become an even more powerful woman. Like Gandhi, Susan Roces may yet prove her mettle by choosing to be political without entering the quagmires of politics.
Emerlinda R. Roman
Next month Dr. Emerlinda R. Roman will become the 19th president of the University of the Philippines. The fact that it took almost a hundred years for the university to have a woman president speaks volumes about the paradoxes of Filipino society's gender relations.
Dr. Roman's first year of office will be crucial, setting the tone for a centennial presidency that will impact not just the university but the entire nation. It has been a tumultuous century for the university, of grappling with its colonial and patriarchal beginnings, of growing up pains and explosive radicalism in the 1970s. Dr. Roman has seen the most crucial transitions, and has herself been involved in many of the uphill battles, having served more than 10 years as chancellor of UP's main campus in Diliman, Quezon City.
Even more daunting for Dr. Roman will be the practical problems of running a university that continues to have to live up to almost unrealistic expectations from the public about training the country's future leaders, even as Congress mercilessly cuts its budget each year. Dr. Roman's most immediate challenge will be defending a controversial new charter that will redefine the university as a state institution generating its own resources without necessarily becoming commercial.
There will be more to revitalizing the university than improving salaries for professors. Dr. Roman's leadership style will be crucial in dealing with the often vicious intramurals that plague government institutions and drive away some of our best professors. She is foremost a manager, a consensus builder who will listen graciously and silently to all sides but will speak up when needed, firmly, almost sternly. Yes, when I heard people explaining her style, I thought, just like a nanay (mother). There is hope yet for the university.
Patricia Evangelista
For the third Pinay to watch, I wanted to name someone young. Easily, that would be 18-year-old Patricia Evangelista, a speech communications major at UP (sorry for my bias) who beat 60 contestants from 37 other countries to win the 2004 Best Public Speaker competition in London.
Evangelista wrote her own speech, "Blonde and Blue Eyes," reflecting the ambivalence we face over the Filipino diaspora. She describes wanting to be "blonde, blue-eyed and white" in her childhood and then growing up, with a greater awareness of being Filipino, and labeling those who leave as deserters. We sense her dismay as she mentions that out of her brood of 16 cousins, there will only be five of them left in a few years because so many would have left to work and live overseas.
But Patricia becomes more optimistic, speaking of the Filipino diaspora in a borderless world as an opportunity for "an extension of identity." She speaks of Filipinos contributing to the world, and learning from these experiences. Ultimately, she says, "leaving sometimes isn't a matter of choice. It's coming back that is... A borderless world doesn't preclude the idea of a home."
I've seen Patricia interviewed on two television talk shows, once with Tina Monson Palma and once with Cito Beltran. She's sharp and feisty, avoiding cliches and empty rhetoric. At the same time, she can be refreshingly awkward at times, almost embarrassed with the recognition she's received. Simple lang, I would say, using the Tagalog-Spanish sense of the word. She has said she wants to work in mass media and I'll be watching, hoping she maintains her "simple" asset and resisting the temptation that so many of our mass media personalities succumb to: of becoming too self-absorbed, too messianic, too male.
Indeed, if Patricia Evangelista, Emerlinda Roman and Susan Roces are to leave their mark, it will be by carrying on a Pinay tradition that we see all the time in homes and in boardrooms, in classrooms and in Congress: of being strategic in choosing to speak up or being silent, of being nurturing and firm, of being of wise mind and of even wiser heart.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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