Carol Pagaduan-araullo MD, 50

Who are the women who inspire you?

Women who take the “road less traveled.” They are ordinary women who do extraordinary things, transcend their personal life conditions and circumstances and socio-economic disadvantages and constraints, to fight for their rights and help others who are exploited and oppressed fight for theirs. Like the 80-something urban poor leader Ka Mameng Deunida and student activist and MAKIBAKA founder-turned-guerilla fighter/martyr Lorena Barros. Also, women who are strong and who make their mark in their field yet are not self-indulgent or narcissistic and who have a broader, humanitarian view of the world — like Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep. Women who have causes beyond themselves.

Who, in your opinion, are female role models for today’s youth?

Gabriela Silang and Tandang Sora (Melchora Aquino) because of their boundless love of country, their revolutionary fervor, their selflessness and their tenacity in fighting for a better world. Representative Luz Ilagan of the Gabriela Women’s Party, soft-spoken yet steadfast in her causes; Bibeth Orteza, a writer, feminist, social and political activist extraordinaire; UP professor Judy Taguiwalo, a quintessential First Quarter Storm activist who now shares her progressive, patriotic and altruistic viewpoint and praxis to students and young people in various walks of life.

What women’s issues are you tackling in your organization?

Bayan is a multisectoral alliance of people’s organizations and cause-oriented groups founded in 1985, in the dying years of the Us-backed Marcos dictatorship. Bayan is dedicated to fighting for genuine freedom and democracy in the economic, political and sociocultural spheres that has historically eluded the Filipino nation. A stalwart member of Bayan is Gabriela, the alliance of progressive Filipino women’s organizations that is at the forefront of fighting for women’s rights and their social emancipation since the ’80s.

Gabriela embodies a women’s movement dealing distinctly with the problems of women as women, working to free women from all forms of economic and political oppression and discrimination, sexual violence and abuse, neglect and denial of their health and reproductive rights. It is a movement integral to the struggle for national emancipation, a democratic and representative government and equality between women and men in all aspects of life. Gabriela endeavors to harness the power of half of the country’s

population towards liberation.

What can we do to empower ourselves as modern women?

I believe that Filipinas today have gone a long way in achieving greater opportunities and rights in society by way of education, jobs and the lifting of many socio-cultural taboos compared to the days of our mothers and grandmothers. But the overall poverty and backwardness in socio-economic development of the country is what holds back the majority of Filipinas — whether from among the or the slightly better-off so-called middle class — from actualizing their potential. In fact, high unemployment rates, low-paying and dead-end jobs and migration as an escape route constitute the bane of most Filipinos, male or female.

One way of overcoming our lot as Filipinas is to focus on individual advancement via higher education and better employment, most probably abroad. But I am a strong believer in empowerment arising out of heightened consciousness of what ails society and the solutions necessary to fix it. A woman who gains insight as to her role in changing Philippine society in fundamental ways alongside a host of other like-minded people of whatever gender is a woman who has taken the first step towards genuine empowerment.

I am also a great believer in the power of organized strength and so I think Filipinas who want a larger, more effective say in the way this country is run and where it is headed need to become politically and socially active, I daresay more precisely, become activists in the best sense of the word, in whatever field they are or aspire to be in.

What challenges do you face in your position today?

At my age, the biggest challenge is how to develop a new generation of strong, self-assured, productive, socially committed and politically assertive young women and men who will fulfill our people’s aspirations for a free, just, equitable and prosperous society.