Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan

MAKIBAKA was founded by Maria Lorena Barros[1] following the First Quarter Storm, a time of growing political consciousness and activity in the Philippines. During these first 3 months of 1970, as the public was made more aware of the ongoing presence and intervention of the United States in state affairs despite the formal independence granted by the US decades prior on July 4, 1946.

On April 18, 1970, MAKIBAKA led a protest of the Miss Philippines beauty pageant, marking the formal beginning of the organization. [2]

Gender, race, sexuality, and social justice studies scholar Dr. Leonora Angeles notes that the basis for the formation of MAKIBAKA was rooted in three factors. First, traditional male views on how women in society should act limited women’s involvement in the militant mass movement, particularly for young women wanting to participate in the student movement. Second, MAKIBAKA wanted to question the narrow perspectives and issues of conservative women's groups during that period. And third, their insistence that women’s liberation from the traditional societal expectations had to be included for the vision of total liberation of the Filipino people to be complete. [3]

Revolutionary organizations such as MAKIBAKA were declared illegal and forced underground following the declaration of Martial Law by then dictator Ferdinand Marcos. [3][4]

MAKIBAKA believes that women's liberation can only be won through national democracy, genuine independence and true liberation of the Filipino people as a whole.[5] As part of the National Democratic movement, they believe that there are three root problems to the suffering of the Filipino people, that being imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism. Through this analysis, Philippine society is understood to be semi-colonial and semi-feudal. Semi-colonial meaning that only a few wealthy families hold political and economic power, and that the country's economic policies are influenced by more powerful foreign economies and international financial institutions. Semi-feudal meaning that the country's farming system is also based on the Spanish colonial model, where only certain cash crops are grown on large estates called haciendas, rather than crops being grown for the benefit of the Filipino people themselves. [6]