Pia on the Run

Whoever thought of the title for her annual fun run on March 13 at the SM Mall of Asia (do early birds or lumbering middle-aged women get a prize?) ought to get a medal for hitting two birds with a pebble (can’t anger the animal rights activists).

Sen. Pia Cayetano, a stunner at five feet eight inches (towering by typical Pinay standards) met with the core of the Tigil Yosi media group (women in media who were at a seminar on smoking hazards in Boracay in 2008), led by Anna Leah Sarabia and Rina Jimenez David, at Café M near the Ayala Museum in Makati City yesterday. Health-conscious, she selected a lunch menu of lots of greens, chicken, fish and a beef stew cooked Asian fusion style. And she concentrated on the salads.

In a few words, Pia is sincere. She’s genuinely interested with the concerns of women from various parts of the country and appreciated that people like lawyer Golly Ramos flew in from Cebu, I took the bus from Baguio the day before, a young Manila Bulletin reporter came from Davao.

She was moved to learn that the former mudslide evacuees of Santo Niño in Ambassador, Tublay, Benguet, have a passable but rough road leading to their barangay and were receiving not much help from the provincial government. The men are clearing 15 road cuts; the women prepare their meals. The local Department and Social Welfare and Development unit could only give them a sack of rice. The Department of Public Works and Highways is nowhere to be found because of the election ban on public works. It’s the women again who find ways and means.

Pia’s awareness of women’s issues stems from firsthand experience as a daughter, mother who lost an infant son, wife, legislator. When she goes on the Senate floor to talk about breastfeeding, she hears snickering from the gallery. Her august colleagues (male, of course) taunt her by saying, “Nag be-breastfeed din kami.”

If she didn’t have a brother in the Senate to update her, she’d be out of the loop because at post-sessions, the male senators regroup in lounges and bars while she, a mother of two, has to return home to oversee her daughters’ well-being and progress in school work.

So Run with Pia because you’ll also be running for causes close to her heart: breast and cervical cancer, women’s livelihood projects, violence against women. In everything, she said, a woman is in it. Whether it’s climate change or allocation of barangay funds, women are involved.

Follow Sen. Pia Cayetano at www.mydailyrace.com or visit her website at www.senatorpiacayetano.com