Our nation is in crisis.
We, the women, know because we live the crisis everyday.
This crisis has exacerbated the specific forms of oppression that we have to contend with as women.
We are the housewives who can barely make ends meet because of the dwindling value of the peso and spiralling prices;
We are the consumers, victims of monopolies, price fixing, hoarding, and false advertising;
We are the mothers who grieve over the future of children we can neither clothe nor educate;
We are the mothers who desperately watch our children waste away because of hunger and disease.
We are the peasant women who do not have access to basic social services, who do not have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives, and who bear the double burden of unpaid labor at home and in the fields.
We are the urban poor who live in extreme poverty, yet must defend our shanties and meager possessions against harassment and demolition.
We are the street demonstrators whose legitimate protests are met with water canons and truncheons, teargas and bullets.
We, who make up the bulk of the silent majority, will no longer be silent.
We, who have been called the weaker sex, will no longer be cowed.
We who have been relegated to the home will no longer be confined.
In unity we will raise our collective voices, we will build our political strength.
-- The Filipino Women's Manifesto, October 28, 1985
Adapted and reprinted with permission from GABRIELA, a coalition of women's organisations in the Philippines.