Sunday, March 11, 2007

Babaylan Germany Celebrates IWD 2007 with Film Bata, Bata Paano Ka Ginawa?






(photo Elda Weiss, ML)
In celebration of this year's International Women's Day,
Philippine Women's Forum e.V./Babaylan Germany
and Babaylanes Internationales sponsored a private
showing of Lualhati Bautista's story "Bata, Bata
Paano Ka Ginawa?" starring Vilma Santos,
Albert Martinez, Ariel Rivera, Raymond Bagatsing,
Carlo Aquino and Serena Dalrymple with Chito
Rono as director on March 09, 2007 at the
International Center Stolzestrasse in Köln.
The all women's gathering was also the start of
a series of planned activities of Babaylan Germany
in celebration of the 15th anniversary of Babaylan,
The Philippine Women's Network in Europe with
the theme: Gender, Migration and Development.
Part of the program was the announcement of the
official launching of the website of Babaylan Europe
www.babaylan-europe.org on March 8, 2007.
A brief exchange of comments about the film followed
with the women agreeing to set an extra gathering to
discuss on the role of women as mother and the importance
of her own identity as individual. It was followed
by a small salosalo and the welcoming of new full
pledged members of philippine women`s forum.

Some inspiring one liners in the film as said by Lea,
the main character in the story played by Vilma Santos:
* What is important is what one has in mind and heart
and not his/her appearance.
* Hindi ikinakahiya ang katotohanan. One should not
feel embarrassed to tell the truth.
* Pag ikinakahiya, hindi dapat ginagawa. If one feels
shame about doing something, then one should
not do it at all.
* Bakit ang dalawang babae ng isang lalake, pag
nagkaharap, nag-aaway? Pag hindi sila nag-away,
parang hindi normal? Pero bakit yun dalawang
asawa kong lalake, nang nagkaharap sila, ako
ang inaway? Nagkampihan sila, inaway ako?
(When two women of a man meet, they claw
each other? if they don´t fight each other, it
does not look normal? When my two husbands
met each other, they ganged up on me!)
* Sa kanilang pagtatalik, nasusudsud sana ng
ari ng lalake ang kaluluwa ng babae. Makita
niya yun lihim ng babae na hindi nasasabi ng bibig.
*If I clung on you forever, I would have lost
myself. How could you live with someone
who has no identity? How could that woman
be a good mother if she herself has no identity?
* The most important question is how would
parents raise their children for them to grow up
to become just, decent and humane beings. For if
they were molded as such, then we would have by
now, a just, decent humane society that we could
proudly pass on to you all.

* Let us reach for the stars and make our collective
dreams come true.

Our thanks and appreciate go to Hans and Vanessa
Zarm for lending us their beamer and cd player for
our film evening.

My deep gratitude to my girlfriend Cecilia Rubio
Apolinario for giving me this CD film Bata, Bata Paano
Ka Ginawa. It has touched many women like she has
touched many lives of migrant women in Italy.
She will be dearly missed by her friends. We will always
keep the beautiful memories we had together as childhood
friends and as migrant women working abroad for the love
of their children.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

International Women's Day March 08

International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equity, justice, peace and development.

International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.

The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following
is a brief chronology of the most important events:

1909

In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Women's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.

1910

The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.

1911

As a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.

Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disaster were invoked during subsequent observances of International Women's Day.

1913-1914

As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War 1, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters.

1917

With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.

Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movemeny, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process.
Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.

The role of the United Nations

Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.

Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.

A reprint from UN. Org
Department of Public Information
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Sunday, March 04, 2007

International Women's Day Celebration

(photo: www.partyguideonline.com)

BABAYLANES INTERNATIONALES
Philippine Women's Forum e.V. (Babaylan Germany)

Invite you to their 2007 Celebration of the
International Women's Day (March 08)

with a private film showing of
"Bata, Bata Paano Ka Ginawa?"
starring Vilma Santos

and a small gathering on
Friday, March 09, 2007
from 18:00 at the Internationaleszentrum Stolzestrasse
Stolzestrasse 1, Köln
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