1990: Year that Republic Act 6949, which declares March 8 of every year as National Women’s Day, was approved.

447,725: Total number of Filipinos who voted to approve the right of women to vote and run for public office during a national plebiscite in 1937.

1914: Year that Natividad Almeda Lopez, the country’s first woman judge and first Filipina Court of Appeals associate justice, was entered into the Roll of Attorneys.

800: Number of women who were elected to public office in 1940, led by Elisa R. Ochoa of Misamis Occidental, the first woman representative to sit in the National Assembly.

1993: Year that Aurora Carandang, the first Filipina commercial pilot, completed  her first flight  as a full-fledged captain on a Fokker 50 flight from Manila to Baguio.

47.2: Percentage of the two million overseas Filipino workers in 2009 who were female.

72: Projected female life expectancy in years in PH, according to a 2005-2010 projection of the National Statistics Office.

88.7: Percentage of Filipino women aged 10 to 64 in PH who are considered functionally literate (can read, write, compute and/or comprehend), according to the 2008 Functional Literacy and Mass Media Survey

1,181: Number of recorded cases of Filipinas with HIV/AIDS as of December 2009.

Compiled by Schatzi Quodala, Inquirer Research

Sources: PDI Archives, Philippine Commission on Women Fact Sheet 2010, ncrfw.gov.ph, chanrobles.com, lawph.com, philippineairlines.com