Do women provide a different leadership?

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.