INSPIRING WOMEN IN NATION-BUILDING

    

 

      This blog aims to inspire women to do their share in contributing to the country's national development and quest for a new industrialized country status by the first quarter of the 21st century by harnessing their best in two significant roles in society: marriage and career.  Women's growing number can no longer be ignored as population figures from the NCSO reveals a population distribution of 49% males and 50.3% females in 1990 as compared to 52.6% males and 49,4% females in 1980.  Women power should be harnessed as never before but the initiative to be partners of men in nation building by engaging in gainful occupations in addition to their traditional biological roles should come from them.  It seeks to expand women's choices by sensitizing them to their multi-potentialities as human beings and the unlimited chances of honing and using them for national development.

      People empowerment is envisioned as the concepe to obliterate or diminish poverty in the country.  Data on the incidence of poverty by region in 1985 and 1988 show that all over the country, poverty is still a stark reality, a cruel choice among the majority.  Poverty incidence in various regions:  National Capital Region (NCR: 31.8%); Ilocos (47.5%); Cagayan Valley (48.9%); Central Luzon (39.6%); Southern Tagalog (49.3%); Bicol (65.3%); Western Visayas (61.8%); Central Visayas (54.6%); Eastern Visayas (60.5%); Western Mindanao (52.0%); Northern Mindanao (51.5%); Southern Mindanao(52.2%); and Central Mindanao (47.1%).

      My mother's all encompassing concern for the diminution or eradication of poverty has been fired by her own immersion to an early life of penury and destitution.

      Her whole life presents paradoxes that accord human beings the classic example that there is hope even on the darkest despair.  In her early life, she always found herself in the bottom rung of the economic ladder but happy that she was almost always up in the intellectual charts.  She grappled with extreme oddities in life and suffered the constant ignominy of poverty but her later life was filled with opportunities for a better economic status that enabled her to be an enterpreneur, a fortune she believed was endowed by God to her and Dad as a couple.  She considers this phenomenon a triumph of the human will.

      She saw herself as a gem first covered in dirt of poverty.  Gradually, the dirt was scraped by her patience and determination; the gem came out hard and sparkling.  Even at an early age, her motivation for higher status was never dampened by extreme vicissitudes she suffered in life.  It was her own path to empowerment.

      My mother aimed to enlighten women of their significant roles in infusing life and meaning to this concept of people empowerment while rearing their children which is the process of drawing up an individual's inner drive and personal initiative to develop and improve oneself.

      She hoped to motivate women to be a real partner of our men in nation building by holding on to marriage and career.  In marriage, they participate in the miracle of procreation by bearing and rearing children to become leaders of tomorrow, and inspire and help their husbands to achieve and work hard to attain national development goals and in their careers they contribute directly to development.

      This blog is impregnated with advices on how to hold on to marriage and career without sacrificing any one through time-tested techniques from respondents who have succeeded in living both worlds on time, income, food, and human relations management.  It also reveals ways of protecting women from inequities, temptations and hazards of the world of work and of approaches to be a living partner to a husband despite demands of career.

      Her conceptual framework is hinged on the view that for a married woman to succeed in a career outside the home, she should strive to first set up a strong foundation for her marriage by coping up with the adjustment period through enhanching compatibility, developing healthful and pleasant attitudes on sex relations, crises and life events, mutual fidelity and mid-life sex transitions and systematizing child-rearing practices, strengthening relations with extended families and helpers, by knowing how to choose a career and progress in it and by balancing demands of marriage and career by adopting scientific as well as common sense approaches in time and income management, household management, food management and burnout syndromes.

      The wealth of information on these internalizes aspects in a woman's life in marriage and career is a conglomeration of my mother's readings, researches, personal experiences and insights as well as the opinions and views of women who have succeeded in living the best of two worlds of marriage and career.