Viewers know Rosario Dawson as nurse Claire Temple in Marvel’s Daredevil, yet recently she has taken on another role — that of an advocate for Filipino women’s rights.
Dawson has become the newest supporter of #BabaeAko, a social media campaign that aims to fight back against President Rodrigo Duterte’s allegedly misogynistic behavior.
Late last week, the Facebook account of #BabaeAko shared a photo of Dawson with Joms Salvador, the secretary general of the group Gabriela, one of the organizers of the movement.
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In an interview with Coconuts Manila, Salvador said the photo was taken shortly before it was posted. She met Dawson in upstate New York at writer and activist Eve Ensler’s farm.
Ensler, the writer of the play The Vagina Monologues, introduced Salvador to Dawson. Ensler is also the founder of VDay, a movement that fights violence against women using art and activism which counts Dawson as one of its board members.
Said Salvador: “GABRIELA has been connected with VDay since 1999, and we’ve been part of One Billion Rising, a global campaign against violence towards women, that was born from VDay. [W]e were having a meeting in New York. That’s how I met Rosario.”
Salvador discussed GABRIELA’s work with Dawson and the situation of women under Duterte’s presidency.
She said: “I explained to her how on many fronts women are resisting Duterte’s misogyny, [the] fascism and economic policies in the Philippines, and the #BabaeAko campaign. She wanted to show support so we had those photos.”
Dawson was worried about how women are being treated in the current environment. Said Salvador: “She was concerned about how Duterte is making Filipino women more vulnerable to violence by brandishing his misogyny, and how activists who are doing work among the communities are like open targets of hatred and violence by state forces.
“She also made a connection between state leaders like Duterte’s misogyny and the global system of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, institutional violence and poverty that the world’s women are battling with globally.”
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Salvador added that Dawson wanted to help the women’s movement in the country. “She offered to support our campaign in the Philippines — the photos were the first step,” said Salvador. “She said she knew the influence that celebrities like her could lend to struggles of women globally, so she willingly posed when I asked her to.”
There’s a chance that Dawson might visit the Philippines in December to participate in an event for One Billion Rising, which GABRIELA is organizing.
“She said she wants to meet the grassroots women in the Philippines and get to know more of the work that GABRIELA and other activists are doing there. Hopefully, she really comes,” said Salvador.
#BabaeAko has gained traction in the past few months, due to the president’s remarks, which have been widely perceived as misogynistic. For example, he famously told members of the armed forces to shoot women rebels in the vagina and that he doesn’t want a woman to become the next chief justice of the Philippines.
Meanwhile, his daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio slammed #BabaeAko last month, and wrote on her Instagram that “many women and some men are known to be damsels in distress, that #babaeako included.”
GABRIELA said that Carpio’s choice to defend her father’s statements as “freedom of speech instead of recognizing that his words trample upon other people’s beliefs” reflects on her “dictatorial orientation.”
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