Ideological Critique

Women in Philippine History

A. Pre-colonial times: Egalitarian Society

1. in family life

  • Filipino dowry - one month service
  • no concept of virginity but fertility
  • no name change, last names came later

2. in economic life

  • traders, merchants, exporters!
  • contract validity

3. in political life

  • decision makers
  • datu’s wife

4. in religious life

  • Genesis: 'Si Makalas at si Maganda mula sa kawayan'
  • 'Bathala': ba- female principle; la - male prinicple; th - God principle
  • ‘babaylan’: priestess; when men celebrated - they women’s clothes; midwives and witch doctors

B. Spanish Rule: Systematic Domestication of women

1. Domestication

  • FROM Mujer Indegena: indigenous/wild woman
  • TO Mujer de Casa: Perfecta Casada, perfectly married; Maria Clara, the Victorian Filipina
  • USING Nuestra Senora: Cult of Mary; Mary- model of meekness, humility & obedience

2. Political economy of gender

  • Traditional Products: weaving, sugar, tobacco, rice, abaca
  • Governance: male dominated
  • Culture & Family: woman relegated to home
  • History-making: his-story (little or none about women)

C. Post- Spanish Rule

1. American Rule:

  • Status quo from Spanish Rule
  • Public school system
  • Women as teachers
  • U.S. Bases: G.I. & their women
  • Home economics for women only!!!

2. Japanese Rule

  • Status quo from Spanish Rule
  • Comfort women (war strategy)

What was the underlying ideology that pushed this image of women and culture?

Patriarchy

All the governments, class structures, and major religions on Earth are based on patriarchy, or male supremacy.

The domination of women by men is justified as being divinely ordained. "God" supposedly granted males the right to control every aspect of womens' lives so they could dominate and exploit them for personal gain.

Ritual view on communication

James Carey, Dean Emeritus at the University of Illinois, has written extensively on what he sees as the two basic models or views of communication and media. In his collection of essays, Communication as Culture (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), Carey distinguishes between a transportation or transmission model of communication and a ritual model

Transportation or transmission model of Communication:

Especially when it brought the Eurpoean Christian community in contact with the heathen community of the Americas it was seen as a form of communication with profoundly religious implications.

PURPOSE:

  • to establish and extend the KINGDOM OF GOD
  • to create the conditions under which KNOWLEDGE OF GOD is received
  • to produce a heavenly though still terrestrial city, the CITY OF GOD.

"The moral meaning of transportation, then,
was the establishment and extension of God's kingdom on earth ... "

EX: The Telegraph entered American discussions not as a mundane fact but as divinely inspired for the purposes of spreading the Christian message farther and faster, eclipsing time and transcending space, saving the heathen, bringing closer and making more probable the day of salvation... Communication was viewed as a process and a technology to spread, transmit, and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and information farther and fasterfor religious purposeswith the goal of controlling space and people" (Carey 1989, 16-17).


Ritual Model:
In contrast to this notion of control the ritual model views the process of communication as a one of sharing:

"A ritual view of communication is directed
  • not toward the extension of messages in space
  • but toward the maintenance of society in time
  • not the act of imparting information
  • but the representation of shared beliefs...

The archetypal case under a ritual view is the sacred ceremony that draws persons together in fellowship and commonality" (Carey 1989, 18)

Human Agency
Through social structure, granted equal -- if not superior -- emphasis and influence
  • in the process of opinion formation
  • in the social construction of reality
  • in the maintenance of social continuity

Source: http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/transport.html

What are we saying here?

  • Considering the human agency: MAN
  • Considering the message: GOD with meaning-made by man
  • Considering the model of communication: spreading, controlling, maintaining, sharing this meaning
WHAT MEANING COULD THEY HAVE GIVEN ‘WOMAN’?
THIS BRINGS US TO THE QUESTION OF
MOTIVES, WORLDVIEWS AND IDEOLOGIES…

It is impossible to find an OBJECTIVE REALITY:
  • We need to DECONSTRUCT the meanings
  • We need to DEMYTHOLOGIZE the images
  • We need to DEMYSTIFY the roles
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