PHILIPPINE WOMEN IN THE WORLD OF WORK

I published this book in 1982 right after I arrived from London where I had stayed for 18 months. The book contains twin articles: about coconut workers and overseas Filipino workers, specifically women. It is now out of print but I could make reprints if there are substantial orders.

The first article on coconut workers is based on my research on the coconut industry from 1979 to 1981 after which I produced a documentary of 55 minutes tracing the production of coconut from the farm to the factory. I went to four different coconut factories incognito in some and shot scenes of workers in the farm as they pick the coconuts fresh from the trees, then unhusk them, and then bring them to the roadside for pick up by the factory trucks. Then I shot inside factories of male and female workers in robot-like jobs, cracking coconuts, pouring out the juice, removing the white meat, which then is dried and transformed to desiccated coconut for export to Europe. There in the big factories of Mars and Cadbury, the coconut is mixed with chocolate to make candies which our workers would not probably be able to buy for themselves because of their high price.

The second article is based on my interpretation of the European societies as they contrast with the perspectives of our female compatriots, how the latter are alienated from the very culture that they prop up by their contribution of their physical energies, and how the radical group agitating them there seemed to have been so detached from the realities and are only after the propagation of their ideology.

In the end, the book leaves the message the women's liberation shall be the answer to all the problems besetting us as a people.