Women's Activism and the Colonial State in the Philippines, 1898-1930

Scholars have examined women’s activism in the Philippines with particular emphasis on women’s suffrage. Mina Roces argues that suffragists did not overtly challenge the “woman as homemaker” ideal to make their cause less threatening and more appealing to Filipino men and the Philippine society. Roces’s work hints at the complexity of the suffragists’ relationship with the colonial state. This relationship was made more complex by the fact that American governors general since F.B. Harrison have pressured Filipino male politicians to grant women the right to vote in keeping with democratic aims.

This paper seeks to advance our understanding of the history of Filipino women’s activism that was geared not only for suffrage but also for many other diverse causes. It examines the arguments and activities of women’s groups, including those outside the country’s capital, to demonstrate the differing ways that women engaged with the colonial state. Drawing on periodicals and newspapers, including regional (non-English language) publications, I argue that Filipino women directly and indirectly engaged with American colonial authorities as they supported movements for Philippine independence, demanded that the American governor general support free public education at the elementary and secondary levels, worked with U.S. women in projects that dovetailed with the colonial state’s modernizing and civilizing projects, and solicited donations to support the war against Germany during World War I. Their diverse agendas have profound implications for how we understand relationships between Filipino women, American women, and American colonial authorities in the Philippines during the early twentieth century.