Feminism an alternative to women under patriarchy

Gadis Arivia, Jakarta

Patriarchy is a reality in our world, so much so that many people cannot imagine any other way of organizing human life. Read any magazine, watch any sinetron (TV soap opera), talk to any bureaucrat, professional, intellectual, or religious group. None have a clue about values other than masculine values. Feminine values are always regarded as the "other", values that have to be "protected" and done so in a single manner through domination.

Gender is a major component of structured inequality. Members of the devalued gender have less power, prestige and economic rewards than those of the valued gender. In a country like Indonesia, and many other countries where gender discrimination is often encouraged, many major roles are often defined by gender.

Women do most of the domestic work and child rearing, even when also engaged in full time paid work; women and men are segregated on the job, each assigned tasks considered "appropriate" for their gender. Women are usually paid less than men for work requiring equivalent skills. Men dominate the positions of authority and leadership in government, the military, the law, cultural productions and religions.

Women are discriminated against in virtually all areas of life. Deep-rooted cultural beliefs render them more vulnerable to human rights abuses then men. For example, women do not enjoy equal rights to speech, participation, ownership, inheritance of land and housing. In Indonesia and many other cultures, women are excluded in economic, social and cultural rights. They are given less opportunity to work outside the home and they receive inadequate education.

Indonesian women's rights are still not enforced and the government has not done enough for their women who comprise 51 percent of the total population. What are the obstacles that Indonesian women face today?

Over the past decades, the Indonesian government has always promised to work hard to providing women with better access to education. A recent report proves there is no serious commitment. The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) data in 2003 tells us there are 15.6 million illiterate people, of whom 10.6 million are women, and the number of illiterate women is on the rise.

There has been a sharp decline in youth illiteracy. School enrollment has risen, but at the elementary level boys outnumber girls by 51.58 percent to 48.32 percent (Indonesia Educational Statistics, 1999/2000). The gender gap in education is most pronounced in relatively poor provinces like Maluku, East Java, and Lampung, and surprisingly also in Jakarta.

In higher education girls are falling even further behind. In times of economic distress, parents often take their daughters out of school first. This is because girls are expected to take over their mother's household duties when she takes up paid work outside the house. In some areas in Indonesia such as Pulau Buru, sexist traditions still play a major role in society. Practices such as kawin piara are common among the indigenous people, where daughters as young as eight years old are married to older men. Young girls basically are treated as a commodity.

In the report of July 2001 published by the U.S. State Department's Economic and Social Commission for the Asia Pacific region, Indonesia was categorized as the worst "sending" country. Indonesia is described as having a "large number of victims", whose government has not fully implemented "minimum standards" and has yet to undertake "significant efforts" to comply with standards for the prevention and handling of trafficking problems.

However, there has been some progress. Indonesia was promoted to tier 2 in 2003, meaning the government has begun to make significant efforts and has created awareness of the issue. Tier 2 also involves drafting an antitrafficking law, strengthening law enforcement and setting up victim recovery centers. Despite these promising signs, two years have passed since the promotion to tier 2, but the trafficking law has not yet been ratified.

Estimates of the number of trafficking victims vary since reliable statistics are unavailable. There are various reports such as those produced by the National Commission on Violence Against Women, which reported there were 320 trafficking cases annually in 2002 and 2003 in Batam, Riau Province. (National Commission interview with Tempo Newspaper, Jan. 20, 2004).

Whereas the Global March Against Child Labor in 2002 reported that 1 million Indonesians were trafficked that year. The Ministry of Women's Empowerment of Indonesia claims that 20 percent of women migrant workers are victims of trafficking. The National Police have reported that the trafficking destinations, or receiving countries, are mainly Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Europe. The sending areas in Indonesia are primarily Jakarta, Central Java, Yogyakarta, East Java, Bali, North Sumatra, Riau and South Sumatra. Transit cities in Indonesia are Medan, Batam, Tanjung Pinang, Lampung, Jakarta, Pontianak and Makasar.

In accordance with the general definition of health, the WHO describes reproductive health as a state of physical, mental, and social well-being in all matters relating to the reproductive system at all ages in life. Reproductive health implies that people have the right to have satisfying sex lives, the capability to reproduce, and the freedom to decide when and how often to do so. To achieve this, women need to have access to safe, effective, affordable methods of family planning of their choice, including the right to safe abortion.

Abortion is legally restricted in Indonesia and only permitted to save a mother's life. Statistics on abortion in Southeast Asian countries demonstrate that legal prohibition does not prevent abortions, it only makes them unsafe as illegal and high- risk abortions are often carried out. A large percentage of maternal deaths are related to unsafe abortions. Indonesia currently has the highest maternal death rate in the region, reaching 307 per 100,000 births. In comparison, the ratio in Singapore is 6, Malaysia 39, Thailand 44, and in the Philippines 170 per 100,000 births.

The list can go on: domestic violence, sexual harassment, economic exploitation of the girl child and women with HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS in a recent report indicated that there is a significant rise in the number of women with HIV/AIDS. Globally there are 39.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS, of which 50 percent are women. In Asia there are about 8.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS and 2.3 million of them are women. In Indonesia alone women comprise 21 percent of the 5,701 cases reported. The Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital in Central Jakarta, reported that as of December 2005 there were 635 cases, of which 82 (12.9 percent) were women from age 15 years to 53 years old and 76.8 percent were married.

This brief report of the status of women has painted a grim picture. What should be done next? Has it come to the point of insisting on creating a feminist world? Feminism is the only serious, coherent, and universal philosophy that offers an alternative to patriarchal thinking and structures. It asserts that women are human beings; what does it take for society to accept and for government to act?

The writer is a lecturer of philosophy at The University of Indonesia and is a founder of Jurnal Perempuan.