Girl Power: Four Filipino women on overcoming challenges

How are you coping with the challenges brought by the pandemic? For director and entrepreneur Janina Manipol, keeping herself busy has helped her a lot.

“I like learning new things, so I invest a lot of time on my self growth. Exercising and meditation helped me as well. Every day, I try to do something that makes me feel good—just constantly finding glimmers of hope, positive thinking, and a lot of prayers.”

Meanwhile, multimedia host and Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) advocate Joey Mead-King says she’s been “practicing mental maintenance in daily living” to be able to “find space and openness to uncertainty” of the current situation.

Writer and student Nikki Huang expresses her desire to inspire more women to take education more seriously, as “it as been shown that having as many women in higher education as possible is key to a society’s economic growth and socioeconomic well-being.”

“I feel that through education, women are able to learn enough about the world that we get to determine our own values, dream our own dreams, and chart our own journeys. Society is constructed such that women are always told who they should be and how to measure themselves...and I am all for the radical idea that women should be the ones who decide who they are, what they want to do, and who they want to be, rather than let society dictate it to them. Education is one of the key ways to achieve that,” Huang pointed out.

Challenges were aplenty especially during the first few months of the pandemic, but those hurdles helped seasoned news anchor Pinky Webb discover more of her strengths and capabilities.

“During the start of the lockdown, I got a call and was told that I had to anchor from home. If I’m not mistaken, we were the first news channel that had to broadcast from home,” she recalls.  

Webb continues, “I worked from home, everyday, for the past nine months—I was the anchor, cameraman, light man, teleprompter operator, MUA (makeup artist), and sometimes guest coordinator. While it was challenging in the beginning, I got the hang of it pretty soon. I survived broadcasting both my shows from home with hardly any hitches. We got the news, delivered the news, and kept the public informed at a very crucial time.”

The pandemic has made Webb realize that “you can really do things despite the limited resources; that there’s always a way; and if in case you think otherwise, you must carry on and continue to find ways.”

In celebration of International Women’s Month, Rustan’s The Beauty Source amplifies the voice of women from different walks of life with a virtual event on its Facebook page on March 5 at 4:00 p.m.