ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of new changes and women’s responses to them in four general areas: women and power and women and politics; women and labour including the diaspora; legislation affecting the status of women; and cultural constructions of the feminine. Philippine politics is not male-dominated but gendered. In the gendering of power and politics, men exercise official power as senators, congressmen, mayors, and councillors. Feminists from the early 1970s up to 1999 have concentrated so far on the pursuit of official power and equal opportunity for women. The militant nuns were the most vocal of women activists in the 1972–86 period. Filipino women have high education status with more women than men in the college level and in graduate school. The Filipino diaspora epitomised by the overseas contract worker (OCW) can be cited as the classic example of the Philippine engagement with globalisation.
