Family planning evolution in RI

Aya Hirata Kimura, Contributor, Jakarta

People, population and policy in Indonesia Terence H. Hull, ed Equinox Publishing 208 pp, Hardcover

A few years ago when I was in eastern Java, I was struck by the casual way in which Indonesians would often ask, "What do you use for KB?" -- even in a seemingly conservative rural area.

The fact that KB, or family planning, has become a household term for many stands testimony to the radical change in Indonesian attitudes to this previously sensitive topic.

How did Indonesia go through this dramatic change regarding appropriate family size, contraceptives and the role of women in society? What issues remain to be tackled?

People, Population and Policy in Indonesia offers insightful material into these issues.

The book consists of three major chapters: The first narrates the historical development of population policies in Indonesia; the second addresses changes and continuities in the lives of Indonesian women over the past several decades; the final chapter explains basic demographic changes in Indonesia based on the national census.

It is not only the Indonesian population that underwent dynamic changes, and readers can glean how policies on population underwent a makeover since the Dutch colonial era.

The chapter on policy successfully avoids a dry, laundry list of related legislation and policies. Instead, it provides an historical narration by focusing more on the actors involved.

For example, we see Soekarno, who officially opposed family planning in fear of religious critics, but enjoyed discussing the topic with foreign journalists. We also see Suharto, who first equated transmigration with population policy, but later became a proud supporter of the contraceptive revolution.

The book also keys our attention to the long involvement of Western philanthropic organizations such as the Ford Foundation and USAID in channeling funding, training researchers and shaping policies to a great extent.

While People, Population, and Policy is part of a series of scholastic literature published in commemoration of the Ford Foundation Indonesia's 50th anniversary, it has been widely recognized that philanthropic organizations have been key to translating concerns over population explosion into population control programs in developing countries around the globe. In this manner, the book can also be read as a self-reflexive memoir of an organization that is deeply involved in population issues.

As a memoir, however, it sometimes comes across as highly ambivalent in its evaluation of past policies and its achievements as it tries to be a neutral observer despite its role as an active participant.

The Indonesian experience of family planning echoes the experiences of many other developing countries. In the 1960s, population control became a major preoccupation of many developing country governments and international donors. Curbing population growth became a social reengineering scheme necessary for any nation aspiring to be "modern".

Incorporated into the government machinery, the decision of how many children a couple could have became a statistic compiled and monitored by officials. The overzealous officials often turned to extraordinary measures: forced sterilization, promotion of contraceptives without due safety testing, selective targeting of racial/ethnic minorities for the acceptance of birth control.

The book is full of stories that remind us of the necessity for similar reflection on those past experiences in Indonesia. A U.S. Embassy driver confronted officials that his wife was forced to use an Intrauterine Device without her consent. The government -- as opposed to the women themselves -- decided what contraceptives were appropriate, advocating injections because it was deemed more efficient than the previously popular Pill. Population was of such national importance that it could not be left to individual citizens.

Have population policies been successful? In terms of controlling birth rates, it has. But women's empowerment has not yet been achieved.

Declarations in the 1994 Cairo and 1995 Beijing conferences are frequently celebrated by observers as a paradigm shift from the older, often coercive, "control" paradigm to the "rights" paradigm. It was indeed a major achievement by women's rights advocates in the international arena.

Yet, many governments have not fully absorbed the implications of this shift, and Indonesia is no exception. The book points out that the government has a hard time moving away from the "control" paradigm, ambivalent about promoting women's reproductive rights.

The discursive shift is not necessarily accompanied by substantial policy changes on the ground. The history of Indonesian women as covered in People, Population, and Policy shows radical changes, from an increase in labor market participation, to higher educational attainment, to later marriage.

But maternal mortality remains quite high, and young unmarried women still face difficulties in accessing contraceptives. Working women often bear the double burden of household work and outside employment. Women's labor participation is selective and often underpaid. The book points out, rightly so, that much remains to be done.

People, Population, and Policy in Indonesia raises many issues to consider, although the authors do not necessarily provide a theoretical framework to make sense of the sometimes contradicting, varied changes in population and population policy. Still, it gives a rich sense of what has happened in this field on the ground, and as such, it will be an excellent supplementary reading for an undergraduate course on population policies.

Aya Hirata Kimura is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Sociology/Rural Sociology. She presently resides in Jakarta, where she is conducting field research for her doctoral thesis on food security.