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Charilu Puno-Dizon graduated from
Assumption High School in 1977, and from the University
of the Philippines in 1982 with a B.S. Business
Administration degree, majoring in both Marketing and
Finance. After working briefly as a Financial Analyst for
a bank, and then logging six years as a Product Manager,
she eventually became President of a public affairs
company, for which she became active in the 1998
Philippine presidential race doing media surveys and
dissemination. Consequently, she was appointed as
Assistant Secretary to the Office of the Press Secretary
of the Philippine government. Apart from juggling hectic
government and press liaison work, Charilu is wife to
Noni Dizon, mother to her sons, Albee and Mark, and a
perpetual home-economist-trainee as well. For the
Assumption HS Class of 1977 webpage, Charilu is our
prolific Women's Issues Opinion Writer. |
| Stress  was in the middle of a lunch appointment at the
coffee shop of the Manila Hotel with one of the more
respected editors of a widely circulated national
newspaper in the Philippines. The meeting was in the
middle of the last presidential election fever--with mud
slinging between top political players at its height. I
was trying to convince this editor of a scoop--a
downright dirty ploy by a highly placed official to
re-shuffle positions held by career civil service
servants. He was supposedly doing this in an effort to
sow disarray within a major political party.
At the climax of my dramatic narration, my cell phone
suddenly rang.
I excused myself, visibly irked that my momentum had been
so disrupted. I answered my phone and heard my dear
husband's voice at the other end of the line. You see,
when we both parted earlier that morning to go to our
respective jobs, we had agreed that HE would pick up our
son from school that day. But he called to tell me that
he was likewise stuck in some all-important meeting and
that I had no choice but to take on the responsibility of
picking up our son myself.
"Great!" I told myself. There I was all the way
in Manila and he gave me 30 minutes to finish up my own
meeting, to get into the car and tell the driver to take
me all the way to La Salle Greenhills. For those living
in Metro Manila, let's not even discuss the traffic, lest
I get totally off track and write a whole different
article altogether.
After all these years of being a career woman, mother and
wife, I still had to learn about grace under pressure
when faced with the tug-of-war between work and home. As
I ended the conversation with my husband, I was unable to
control myself and pronounced to the editor, "Ya
know about this woman of the '90s thing? It sucks!"
Heck, when did women decide that we could do it ALL? Did
some feminists discuss it and arrive at a consensus when
we weren't looking? Was it a role forcibly thrust upon
our fragile all-too-human shoulders? Or maybe someone had
just decided to rip off all of her pretty, feminine
frills and declare herself a SUPERWOMAN.
The web team describes me as the Women's Issues Opinion
Writer. What exactly is that? Beats me. I do not profess
to analyze or advise for I do not have a psychology
background or the wealth of years of wisdom to pronounce
from my rocking chair. But I am opinionated. And like all
of you, I have had choices to make and do have the task
and responsibility of having to make my way through the
day-to-day consequences of these decisions. I hit and
miss and sometimes get lucky. So I guess I qualify for
the job. But is becoming a superwoman really possible?
Is it expected of us or do we just expect it of
ourselves?
This little corner of our web page will venture to take
us through all types of issues faced by us
thirty-something women and the f_ _ _ y-something
generation too. OK, I refuse to say the "f"
word--as we survive the '90s and prepare to hit the year
2000. What's our battle cry? How about--to the millennium
bug and beyond!
________
Source: Assumpta Newsletter, October 1998
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Assumption
HS Class of 1977
