2026/02/01 by Mary Dorothy Jose, Gene Segarra Navera · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Asian American and Pacific Histories #Gender Politics and Representation #Philippine History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/09612025.2026.2619349
openalex publication_date 2026/02/01 · openalex created_date 2026/02/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
This article analyzes the women's suffrage movement in the Philippines through a feminist perspective informed by scholarship in critical discourse analysis and rhetorical criticism. It examines Filipina suffragists’ public addresses published in women's magazines in the early twentieth century by looking at metaphorical expressions that formed conceptualizations utilized by women to argue for the right to vote. These conceptualizations constituted the schema of homemaking as a civic duty, the most salient aspect of the discourse whether for or against suffrage. While it is expected of the anti-suffragists to use women's traditional role as a homemaker to argue against granting women the right to vote, the idea of homemaking has also been used by the suffragists to prove that women deserve to be enfranchised. The suffragists framed their rhetoric by strategically affirming their gender role as homemakers during this critical period in women's history. This study posits that examining women's rhetorical strategies through the analysis of the particular metaphors used to frame their conceptualization of the Filipino woman reveals that both pro and anti suffragists sought to define the idea of homemaking, with the former adopting an expanded definition of homemaking and the latter taking a limited definition of the term.