BABAE, BABAWI: 3 years of paying tribute to the women whose struggle will seize back our land

On March 26, 2022, 4-9 PM at Village B, Brgy. UP Campus, Quezon City, SAKA (Sama-samang Artista para sa Kilusang Agraryo), RUWA (Rural Women’s Advocates), and Farmers Center for Agroecology Services will participate in the celebration of the international month of working women through a Working and Peasant Women’s Fair.

As part of the Fair, the book Gabay sa Agroecology will be launched at 4 PM, followed by a gig to show solidarity with the struggle of women farmers, agricultural workers, and laborers. Standing with these revolutionary women, these musicians will be performing at the gig: Catpuke, Faith Corvatch, Lolit Solid, Mao, Project Yazz, Shanti, Tao, and The Bleaching Hour.

This event underscores the significant contribution of women to our communities, politics, and economy. Even in the most developed areas of our country, the care work performed by women—whether paid or unpaid—is an unseen and undervalued contribution to our personal, domestic, and national economies. Women spend time managing households and raising children is time freed up for others to engage in productive work.

On top of performing care work, most women also participate directly in production—suffering through inequality in spaces that are already exploitative in the first place. In a country with a national minimum wage that is barely half of a family living wage,* those in informal work are not guaranteed the standard wage, and women even less. That is, if they are even permitted to work. The stench of feudalism continues to permeate our society, and more evidently in agriculture. The pakyawan system discriminates against the participation of women in productive work, violating their rights for economic determination. Only a third of agricultural workers are women, and only a third of the certificates of land ownership (CLOA) were awarded to women under the government’s token agrarian “reform” program. In militarized farming communities, women are exposed to the danger of sexual violence and multiple other threats—displacement, intimidation, physical assault, fake arrest, murder. Women leaders of agriworkers, defending their right to decent working conditions and benefits, face outright intimidation and terror-tagging.

This is probably why women can always be seen at the forefront of the struggle—fighting for human rights, decent wages, free land distribution, and national industrialization—because the progress that emancipates workers and peasants from exploitation inherently liberates women. By giving women the power to care, work, and lead, we will build an indeed just and free society.

So join us on March 26 to celebrate the women who hold up half our sky! Babae, Babawi! Babaeng anakpawis, magbigkis! Bawiin ang lahat ng pinagkait sa atin!