While advocating for Philippine independence and living in D.C., Sofia de Veyra and other Filipinas joined local women’s organizations that supported the American suffrage movement. Upon returning to the Philippines, these pioneering women formed women’s clubs and eventually won the right to vote on April 30, 1937.
In 1992, Veloria became the first Filipina in the United States to be elected to a state legislature.
In 1957, Cordova cofounded the Filipino Youth Activities (FYA), along with other families who came from different social backgrounds. The FYA was made to provide a space for Filipino American youth to spend time with their families and create a community rich in culture.
Filipina American writer and speaker based in Seattle, Washington.
Dolores Sibonga, a Seattle political pioneer, was the first Filipino American to serve on the Seattle City Council in 1978.
Novelist Kali Fajardo-Anstine is a 2020 winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the National Book Award.
María Josefa Gabriela Cariño de Silang was a Filipino military leader remembered for her leadership in the Ilocano independence movement against Spanish colonial rule.
Feminist, lawyer, social reformer and human rights activist Concepción Felix Roque founded one of the Philippines’s first women’s organisations, Asociación Feminista Filipina, and one of the first humanitarian organisations, La Gota de Leche, focused on the well-being of mothers and their children.
Corazon “Cory” Aquino went from a shy law school student, to the first female president of the Philippines. Supported by the People Power Revolution, Aquino successfully ran a peaceful movement that eventually led her to become TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1986. The only other woman that received that honor at the time was Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.
Narcisa Buencamino-De León was a Filipino businesswoman and film producer who navigated her family-owned LVN Pictures (which she co-founded in the 1930s) into a major force in post-World War II Philippine cinema, operating until 2005.