#PressforProgress

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EDITORIAL
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Thursday, March 8, 2018
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TODAY is International Women’s Day. This year’s campaign theme is #PressforProgress.

The International Women’s Day website explains: “Now, more than ever, there’s a strong call-to-action to press forward and progress gender parity. There’s a strong call to #PressforProgress motivating and uniting friends, colleagues and whole communities to think, act and be gender inclusive.”

So how will you #PressforProgress?

The website lists five areas that each individual, man or woman, can commit to specifically concentrate on to press for progress for gender parity in his or her own sphere of influence. These are: maintain a gender parity mindset; challenge stereotypes and bias; forge positive visibility of women; influence others’ beliefs/actions; and celebrate women’s achievements.

A social critic said the degree of women’s emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation of society. It has been nearly 162 years since the historic march of women workers in New York to protest against inhumane working conditions and low wages.  It has been 110 years since 15,000 women marched on the streets of New York for “Bread and Roses” – for economic security and a better quality of life. Likewise, it has been almost a hundred years since Russian women workers marched for “Bread and Peace” – which contributed to the isolation and downfall of the oppressive feudal rule of the Tsar of Russia.

But with oppressive and exploitative structures still in place in the Philippines and in most parts of the world, there are still enough reasons for women’s outrage and still much to be done by the women’s movement and the people’s movement for genuine social change.

In this country, there are millions of women who are victims not only of violence but of oppression and exploitation. They are enmeshed in poverty, live in subhuman conditions, do slave work in factories, farms or in households, both here and abroad. They form the majority of overseas contract workers employed in the service sector: serving foreign households and employed in stores, who would be the first to be cut off when the crisis affects their employers. Clearly, a lot of women are still marginalized.

Individually, we’re one drop but together we’re an ocean. Let us commit to a “gender parity mindset” via progressive action. Let’s all collaborate to accelerate gender parity, so our collective action powers equality worldwide.
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