Do women provide a different leadership?

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor, The Jakarta Post, Canberra

As the Indonesia Update opened at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra recently, it was clear they had moved away from their 12 year annual review of recent economic developments that had traditionally kept women out of focus.

At last, it's now about human beings and human dignity, sighs Saparinah Sadli, a professor in psychology who chairs the national human rights body for women.

Or are women ultimately the last resort? Probably so, nodded Jean-Luc Maurer, another professor and director of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies in Geneva.

"Gender, equity and development in Indonesia's reform period" was the title of this year's Indonesia Update that attracted about 200 participants, much less than it used to when the focus was on the male-dominated economy. Even so, the presence of economic experts such as H.W. Arndt, Graeme Hugo, Gavin Jones and Mohammad Sadli signify the increasing significance of gender issues.

Speaking at the beginning of the conference, Krishna Sen's outstanding presentation on Megawati's ascension to the top makes it clear that other ways of doing are becoming important.

Sen, a feminist media scholar, analyses the many comments discrediting Megawati Soekarnoputri in her bid for the presidency. With the emphasis on the different kind of politics, and different ways of developing democratic ideals, her presentation titled "A new president, or a new kind of presidency" elaborates on the national media and the political elite that had dismissed Megawati as an impossible candidate for the presidency.

Democratic ideals were developed and nurtured under the Soeharto regime, not as a mass movement, but rather as an intellectual project nurtured in universities, small magazines and later in Internet news groups and web pages, she said.

But Megawati was an outsider to such intellectual circles, not just because of her being a woman, but rather because of the kind of woman she was.

In the general view, she could not hold a conversation, she was silent most of the time, uneducated, and could never be part of the seminar circuit that was the domain of her critics. She could not be part of the idealized, elitist, "deliberative democracy", where the best ideas win. Nevertheless, she did become the president.

Her victory, says Sen, citing another scholar, is a signal that indeed the intellectual politicians have had their "salad days in the late Soeharto and early post-Soeharto period". Megawati came to power not through the hierarchal, inherently elitist academic system and seminar circuits, but in spite of these.

Looking at the different facets of Megawati is like looking at the phenomenon of "gender". Repudiated, set aside and, at best, laughed at, the gender issue was and still is the underdog in the male-dominated world with male-formulated concepts. But, if the case of Megawati is an example, we may well be at a turning point.

Without emphasizing Megawati's gender, it must not be downplayed either. For she is a woman, a former underdog, the outsider of the normally respected circuit. But she did things differently.

Putting the emphasis on "different" is what the gender perspective is about. In development it means looking at things through women's eyes, the eyes of more than half of the population.

One small example of how the perspectives of women are different, and do make a difference, is management of household water supplies. As everyone knows, this is a task for women, but when a development project was formed for the supply of clean water in Garut, West Java, the project neglected to include women in their consultations.

The project failed. Why? The project provided water pumps at the request of the male community leaders without taking the needs of women into account. In this case, women also had jobs as plantation workers and could not afford the long wait of the new pumps to produce the water.

One push on the button only filled a small bowl of water. The pumps were, therefore, just a waste of time and money, and indeed were simply left to rust.

One can imagine the implications when concerns which used to be neglected emerge; just by including women in determining processes in decision-making processes and alternative problem solving makes for the difference.

In this sense, the prestigious Indonesia Update this year has taken an important step by moving away from its usual pattern. Such became evident in the presentations of internationally respected scholars from Indonesia and Australia, with the titles alone telling of a different perspectives on development.

These included studies and observations on women in the labor force, and "the changing Indonesian household". Presentations also included those on family planning, women in the arts, as well as women and regional autonomy.

Let us hope that the momentum is maintained.