Dian fights for women's rights

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The young Dian Kartika Sari idolized her best friend's father. Growing up without a father of her own, she thought he was the perfect man because he seemed to put his family ahead of everything else in the world.

But her image of the man was shattered unexpectedly, leaving her heartbroken and eventually pushing her to become an activist fighting to empower women.

It happened in the 1980s, when Dian was preparing to take her finals and graduate from high school. She had to pawn her typewriter so she could pay for the finals, which her mother, who ran a small business and was also a social worker, could not afford.

A girl friend from school told Dian how lucky she was that she had something to pawn, because she had to "pawn" herself to a policeman to raise the money to pay her school fees.

Dian was stunned when she found out that the man who "bought" her friend was none other than the man she idolized as the ideal father and family man.

"I was so shocked that I didn't remember how I got home on my bike," the 37-year-old told The Jakarta Post recently.

That incident left Dian pondering a question that has since become her obsession: Why are women bought, sold and treated as commodities?

However, Dian, who is a volunteer with the Indonesian Red Cross in Yogyakarta, did not immediately take up the cause as an activist. In fact, she was not even interested when her mother, an admirer of Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, cut out and gave her articles written by the women's activist.

After Dian graduated from Gadjah Mada University's School of Law in 1992, she went to work as an insurance agent. Her last job was as the personnel and legal manager for a private aviation company in Jakarta.

The riots in May 1998 finally opened her eyes.

"I entered the House of Representatives with thousands of university students, and I felt something was missing from my life despite the fact that I was already financially secure," said Dian, who was born in Madiun, East Java, but grew up in Yogyakarta.

She became determined to fight for women's rights after hearing about the systematic rapes that took place during the riots, targeting Chinese-Indonesian women.

When her mother died in September 1998, Dian, the eldest of five siblings, returned to Yogyakarta, where she spent time observing the lives of women in some of the more remote areas of the province.

In October of that year, she went to Jakarta and while traveling on a city bus, she saw a sticker for the Women's Association for Legal Aid (LBH APIK), and her instincts told her to contact the number on the sticker.

Dian, who describes herself as stubborn, joined the association, which provides legal assistance for women and children.

She worked as a volunteer for LBH APIK for about eight months, before leaving to join the newly established Indonesian Women's Coalition for Justice and Democracy (KPI) as a member of the public policy advocacy and political education division.

And, as it so happened, Nursyahbani was Dian's supervisor.

Despite her activism, Dian refuses to be hung with the feminist tag, saying she doesn't want "to become polarized by its various categories".

Dian has traveled widely in the country to learn about the exploitation of women and children.

She has spent numerous nights in cheap bars with women and children who have been victimized by human traffickers, trying to understand their lives and their needs. At other times, Dian has campaigned for women's political rights in slum areas in the capital.

Violations against women, Dian said, occur in different ways, including domestic violence, trafficking in women and the unfair treatment of women in politics.

Domestic violence is certainly not a new phenomenon. Unfortunately, most of the victims here are left unprotected, often because they are afraid to report the matter to the authorities. But, at a certain level, victims also lack protection because the government does nothing to help them and there are only a few non-governmental organizations that deal with domestic violence.

"The problem is that most of our representatives on the city councils or in the House of Representatives are men. Unfortunately, these policymakers, including the few women, are not sensitive about the issue," Dian said.

She also criticized the government for its reluctance to impose a quota system for women in politics.

Not only is the government unwilling to take action on the quota system, some officials go so far as to accuse women who demand affirmative action of being troublemakers.

Dian responds to all of it calmly. "They forget that they were given birth to by women, their mothers."

She appreciates every step forward, no matter how seemingly small.

"I was so happy when one of our 'disciples', who was a housewife in a poor fishing village in North Jakarta, was elected as the head of a neighborhood unit," Dian, now the coordinator for public policy division, said.

She said her proudest moment was when, as a member of a team drafting amendments to the Constitution in 2000, she was able to insert an article on human rights, women's rights and children's rights.

The constitutional amendments are still being deliberated.

Dian's next project is to put together a book tracing the history of the women's movement in Indonesia.

"I just want to find out whether we have made any progress compared to our predecessors such as S.K. Trimurti," she said, referring to the renowned journalist and former minister of labor.

The women's activists of the past had a clear plan of action and a consistency that produced significant results, she said.

"I wonder if we only raise issues but never make any real achievements, as someone recently criticized me. That's why I always remind myself to focus on down-to-earth issues," Dian said.