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IT HAS been fairly well established by anthropologicalevidence that women have had a very decisive role inbringing about civilization. ... Even medicine and therudiments of other sciences came to be developed by women.As primitive women labored collectively, they were alsodecisive in the development of language and speech. ... It was precisely the productive labor of women thatinitially relieved the men from the rigors of foodgathering and enabled them to attend to other areas ofhuman endeavor. ... With the development of civilization and the rise ofexploitative societies, the women came to be relegated to asubordinate status even as they continued to be engaged inproductive labor. ... Historical Roots of Womens Oppression in the PhilippinesAs it has been the world over, the subordination andoppression of women in the Philippines came with the adventof class societies. ... This is not to say, however,that women would have had equal status with men had theSpanish colonialist and the U. ... Men and women labored collectively. ... Men and women had more or less equal status in thecommunity. Women could become chieftains and heldprestigious roles as priestesses. ... There were norigid concepts or practices that subordinated the women tothe men.In areas where Islamic feudal practices had however takenroots and class stratification had developed or started toharden, the women had become dependent on the men. ... This brought about the gradualand systematic lowering of the status of women relative tothat of the men. The women were the first to be convertedto the new religion, Roman Catholicism, that sought to bindthem to domestic and parochial concerns. ... Ironically, it was the indio-women whom the Spanish friars used to help them inpropagating religion. Catechism and prayers became the mainpreoccupation of the converted women. ... Among the elite, women became alienated from any importantindependent economic role. ... However, in agriculture, the peasant women could not becompletely alienated from productive labor. ... Women were,however, subjected to further servitude. ... Friarinfluence was not as pervasive among poor peasant women asit was among the women of the upper class. ... Spanish laws explicitly subordinated women to the men. Lawson property were definitely biased against women. Forexample, married women were deprived of the rights toparaphernal property and prohibited from engaging inbusiness without the husbands consent. Other lawsprevented women from holding public office. ... Amongthe elite, the only other avenue open to the women was thehome of the nunnery.Towards the end of the 19th Century, after more than threehundred years of Spanish colonial and feudal oppression andexploitation, the Filipino people rose up in revolution andsucceeded in overthrowing their Spanish colonial masters.All throughout those three hundred years, there wasresistance through countless sporadic revolts against theSpanish colonialists until the final successful assaultthat was the Philippine revolution in 1896. Women took anincreasingly active role in the resistance. In thePhilippine revolution of 1896, some women took a leadershiprole in the Katipunan, the organization that led therevolution. ... and its Philippinesemicolony subjected women to further oppression andexploitation. ... Women liberated from the parochialconfines of the hacienda (the landlords estate) becamecommodities in the capitalist labor market as well as inthe sex trade and suffered economic discrimination. ... Despite the supposed time of bourgeois democracy andexpansion of educational opportunities for women, laws andpractices discriminatory to them continue to be in force.The feudal patriarchal view of women as subordinate of mendomestic bound to care for home and family and thebourgeois decadent view of women as commodities for displayand with value dependent on their desirability as maleobjects have combined to subject women to furtherdiscrimination in the economic sphere.
Approximate Word count = 2815
Approximate Pages = 11.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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