Monday, May 23, 2005

What is a Filipina?

In the iBlog site, there's a great appeal ongoing that encourages each and every blogger to populate their blog as to what a Filipina is all about. This is to populate search engines results with relevant content that truly depicts what a Filipina is all about.

A Filipina is a Filipino lady or woman. More than half of the country's population is composed of Filipinas. You can find her in almost every profession. Overseas, she can also be found working in various services industry.

A young Filipina lady is often assumed to be having her own career or take care of her family as she reaches maturity. This mindset has left many Filipinas unprepared to take on the challenge of possibly becoming an entrepreneur. However, I hope this will change in the near future as more and more schools are integrating entrepreneurship in their courses.

As the Philippines is very much gender neutral, every Philippine resident, regardless of gender is often referred to as a Filipino. I noticed that a lady is only referred to as a Filipina whenever she gets featured or recognized in events, publications, and awards.

Perhaps this is the reason why there's not much content specifically referring to Filipinas. This is also where women publications in the country should take the challenge of taking their content online and populate search engines as to what Filipinas are truly all about. More than just mail-order brides and the likes... ayayay!

4 comments:

vonjobi said...

"As the Philippines is very much gender neutral..."

i don't know. in tagalog, there are distinctions for males and females in many professions (e.g., doktor/a). could it be that we filipinos tend to make decisions on who to go to on the basis of a person's gender?

Janette Toral said...

You are right there. However, when it comes to laws (except for those meant for women) and referring to Filipinos in general, we hardly use the term Filipina.

vonjobi said...

new developments: http://filipinolibrarian.blogspot.com/2005/05/yan-ang-pinay.html

Unknown said...

You said it very well...Filipinas are more than just mail-order brides. Glad you're a proud Pinay too.