Dharma Wanita needs to change: Saparinah

DEPOK, West Java (JP): An advocate of women's' rights said on Tuesday that there should be changes in Dharma Wanita, the organization of all female civil servants and their male counterparts' wives are obliged to join.

Saparinah Sadli, a noted psychologist and chairwoman of the National Commission on Violence Against Women, stressed that while she realized it was difficult to change the membership regulation, the reform era should provide a good opportunity to do so.

"Women must be given options; for instance, they could be active in other groups and not necessarily have to join Dharma Wanita," she said. She cited a newly formed group on awareness of the elections, Gerakan Perempuan Sadar Pemilu (Women's Movement for Electoral Awareness).

Established in 1974, initially as a voluntary organization, political analysts say that Dharma Wanita has been influential in ensuring Golkar gets the general election votes of wives and relatives of millions of civil servants.

Saparinah, also a member of the National Commission on Human Rights, admitted the members would find it very difficult to cut themselves away from Dharma Wanita. Wives of civil servants have been told they could hamper their husbands' careers if they failed to be active in the organization.

"The organization has been established for quite some time. The system has been crystallized as symbols of their husbands' career path." The position of civil servants' wives in the organization's hierarchy mirrors that of their husbands.

"But I think this reform era is the right time to change all this," Saparinah told a seminar on women's rights at Pancasila University in Depok, West Java.

Dharma Wanita, she added, only strengthened women's "secondary status" in society as the organization positioned them as subservient and with an "obligation" to follow their husbands.

Indicators that women were still accorded secondary status, she said, showed that the country had yet to fully understand the implication of its 1984 ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

In Semarang, Central Java, activist Kusyuniati told a discussion on violence against women that the "patriarchal system in which men are the breadwinners and women as homemakers" contributed to violence by husbands against wives.

"This entrusts a role on men to make them feel they have the right to control their wives' lives," Kusyuniati was quoted by Antara as saying.

The Indonesian Women's Coalition for Justice and Democracy is scheduled to hold an Indonesian Women's Congress on Dec. 16 and Dec. 17 in Yogyakarta.

Organizer Debra Yatim was quoted by Antara on Monday as saying that some 400 participants from across the country would attend the function, aimed to discuss the role of women in the country's reform process. She said the congress was a follow-up to the first women's congress of Dec. 22, 1928. The date is now celebrated as Women's Day here.

The congress will be opened by GKR Hemas, the wife of the Sultan of Yogyakarta, Hamengkubuwono X. (edt)