25 years of successful ‘She works’

Some people in the Cordillera have pronounced the acronym of a top women’s organization as “she works.” But the CWEARC (Cordillera Women’s Education Action Research Center Inc.) considers the error a badge of honor.

In fact, on its 25th anniversary here on March 8, International Women’s Day, CWEARC board secretary Carol Galvez told the organization’s well-wishers that she could barely pronounce the myriad acronyms of women’s groups that turned up to celebrate.

Geraldine Fiag-oy, the center’s chair, said her group was formed from a March 8, 1987, assembly of 60 women at the Sta. Catalina Convent here. The women agreed that remote Cordillera communities required a service center for women that would provide them gender-based information and organization.

This took place shortly after the 1986 People Power revolt.

At that time. the Cordillera was a region of contradictions—its provinces were counted among the country’s poorest in spite of the fact that their villages host mining and hydroelectric power facilities.

Between 1987 and 1990, the CWEARC studied and analyzed the problems faced by Cordillera women. The results were used to help raise awareness about women’s rights, Fiag-oy said.

In 1992, the CWEARC developed the women’s crisis center, which soon helped address high-profile cases such as the murder attempt on Myrna Diones, who was attacked by policemen after she, her sister and their cousins were suspected of stealing clothes from the public market in San Fernando City in La Union in 1991, and the first sexual harassment case filed in Baguio City against a school superintendent.

The group initiated discussions about reproductive health, traditional farm knowledge and human right violations in 1994.

Fiag-oy said it also formed Innabuyog in 1990, which has become a strong alliance of women activists, whose lobby efforts helped develop government policies on liquor sales, the enforcement of customary laws and gender rights.

Recently, CWEARC studies added “food sovereignty” programs, advocating and providing research inputs to farming in lieu of mining as the Cordillera economic direction, the center’s fact sheet showed.

Fiag-oy said the Baguio government had recognized the CWEARC as among the outstanding women’s organizations in the city in 2010.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, former chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, was the CWEARC’s founding executive director who served the group until 1995.