Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 4) — Google commemorated Rosa Sevilla de Alvero, considered as one of the noted suffragists in Philippine history, on her birthday with a doodle. She would have been 142 on Thursday.
The doodle of her casting a ballot, with the hands of other women from succeeding generations doing the same thing, is showed on the Google homepage.
Sevilla de Alvero was a journalist, educator, and activist who rallied across the country in 1916 to fight for women’s right to vote and be voted into office, according to a post from the Google blog. In support of her cause, she founded the Liga Nacional de Damas Filipinas (“National League of Filipino Women”), it added.
She and other revolutionary women in the suffragist movement eventually succeeded in their crusade after several years of struggle. On September 17, 1937, Filipino women finally gained voting rights. https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/in-focus/a-celebration-of-herstory-filipino-women-in-legislation-and-politics
Early life
When Sevilla de Alvero was young, she was sent to live with her aunt who often had Filipino patriots and intellectuals as guests in her home, the blog post said. These patriots and intellectuals would often talk about battling educational colonialism —the very conversations that helped shape Sevilla de Alvero’s beliefs. At the age of 21, she founded the Instituto de Mujeres (“Women’s Institute”) of Manila, one of the first schools for women in the country.
The institute has educated women on a range of topics including suffrage and Tagalog. It hosted the very first balagtasan (debate in verse), which started a movement for Tagalog to be declared as the national language.
