Gender and Gender Equality

The author uses his main character Pampa Kampana as an agent for change and progress. This is particularly the case in the context of Bisnaga’s gender roles and gender politics. Indeed, in the immediate wake of Pampa’s mother’s death, the goddess Pampa Kampana tasks Pampa with this particular activist work. She not only informs Pampa that she will grow “a great city” from the very place where her mother burned, but that she “will fight to make sure that no more women are ever burned in this fashion, and that men start considering women in new ways” (8). Because of the monumental nature of this task, the goddess informs nine-year-old Pampa that she will live and pursue this endeavor for the entirety of her 247-year life. Throughout the novel, which spans more than two centuries, Pampa indeed devotes herself to advocating...