Amazons of the Huk rebellion: Gender, sex and revolution in the Philippines

摘要

Within the Huk guerrilla forces, Vina Lanzona writes, attitudes to women were 'hesitant and contradictory'. This is an understatement. Practically all the top-ranking leaders were members of the Philippine Communist Party (PKP), which professed to treat women comrades 'on an equal basis with men' and to help them 'equip them-selves for positions of leadership and responsibility'. And yet in reality, says Lanzona, the party advanced only a handful of women to high positions. The great majority of the women who lived in the Huks' forest encampments in the 1940s and 1950s were consigned to the traditional roles of cooking, washing, housekeeping and childcare, and the party was 'allowing most to serve the sexual needs of male leaders'.