Filipinas and Filipina Americans

This fifteenth day of Filipino American History Month brings information on Filipinas and Filipina Americans.

Filipino women have been migrating to Hawaii and the United States of America as war brides, students, and laborers as early as the Spanish-American War. One of the defining moments of this history occurs in the years immediately after World War II, when hundreds of Filipino American U.S. soldiers married Filipinas and returned with them to the U.S. to raise families. Filipino women have been key in developing long family lines in Louisiana, where Filipinos are well into their 8th and 9th generations.

In cities like Honolulu, San Francisco, and Stockton throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Filipino women developed and sustained large community-based organizations through women's auxiliaries of fraternal organizations and lodges where they administered budgets, programmed events, and sold U.S. war bonds during World War II.

It is important to recognize the importance of women in the Filipino family as well, a remnant of a maternalistic Philippine society. When Corazon Aquino was elected President of the Philippines in 1986, she was not only the first woman president, but the first woman head of state and elected president in Asia.

One does not need to look very far to identify one of the many notable Filipinas and Filipina Americans that have contributed to the United States of America and the world.