Australian women now lucky to have a choice

JAKARTA (JP): Sometimes wives of high ranking South Australians give Julie Olsen a look that reads, "Why weren't you there with your husband?" when she does not accompany her husband, South Australian Minister of State Development John Olsen, on official outings.

But Julie says she is lucky, "I go with my husband when I want to. I am able to choose how much of an official role I play as John's wife."

In her husband's grueling lifestyle he has never seen it as her role to be at home waiting for him.

Ms. Olsen addressed a charity luncheon held last week by the Indonesian Women for Development (WPI) organization and the South Australian government for the Citra Baru foundation, which arranges operations for people with cranio-facial deformities.

The South Australian government, she added, neither expects her to be with her husband at all official functions or act as his hostess if she considers that it interferes with their children or her job.

A mother of five, Julie said she studied part-time at college for three years after staying at home with her children until they reached school age.

For the last four years she has been working five days a week for a national fashion manufacturer and retailer.

The option for women studying and working outside the home, she added, is partly made possible by the range of child care facilities.

" Almost three quarters of South Australia's students, who are over 25, are women and almost half of them have children," Julie said.

She also told The Jakarta Post that the women's movement in Australia has had an influence in changing expectations regarding women as mothers and wives.

"We have come a long way in a short time," she told the gathering at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, citing that Australian law had even required women in certain occupations to stay at home once married.

Changes

"As recently as the 1970s, women could not remain as police officers or aircraft flight attendants if they married," she said.

Radical changes in Australia in the past 15 years, Julie said, have caused the boundaries of a typical woman, wife or mother to disappear.

The chairwoman of WPI, noted businesswoman Kemala Motik Gafur, acknowledged the lack of choice in Indonesia for women, particularly those with high ranking husbands.

The compulsory membership of Dharma Wanita, the organization for wives of civil servants, has come to require a higher degree of involvement from the women according to their husbands' rank.

"In Dharma Wanita much still depends on the efforts of the woman herself," said Kemala, whose husband, Abdul Gafur is a former State Minister for Youth and Sports.

Julie added that, "the acceptance we have of a woman's right to be what she wants to be, means that we are not as judgmental as our mothers and grandmothers were."

"What we hope for, in whatever country we visit, is that the women we meet are happy being what they are," she concluded.

Other speakers included Margaret Kelly, who was Miss Australia 1967. She spoke on building her "family team", including her eight children.

The last speaker was internationally renown jewelry designer Ann Middleton, a former pingpong "diplomat". Her sneak preview of the initial part of her new collection, based on Australian stones, fetched millions for the Citra Baru foundation.

Kemala said that the purpose of the luncheon was to inform the audience about how important the family still is to members of a developed country. (anr)