Family planning evolution in RI

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.