Former foreign workers become village misfits

Former foreign workers become village misfits

JAKARTA (JP): Families and village life are likely to change
as more women leave for foreign lands in search of work,
sociologists say.

Many women become more independent, assertive and self-
confident after leaving village life behind.

Rianto Adi, a researcher at Atma Jaya University studying
women who worked in Saudi Arabia, said these workers balk at
returning to the same roles they had before they left.

They have become risk-takers and entrepreneurs who know what
it's like to be successful at earning money. Many of them wish to
open small businesses, become more active in the PKK and even
teach Arabic.

But Tati Krisnawati of Women's Solidarity said the women's
newfound worldliness and money management skills often go to
waste because the traditional villagers do not support them.

Krisnawati said the women are considered village misfits,
regardless of whether they had a positive or negative experience
abroad. If the woman had a bad time and returns without much
money, she is blamed. If she was successful at earning money
overseas, her husband and other villagers are frequently jealous.

There is also the danger that the family will begin to see the
woman as an economic tool whose labor can pay for weddings or
other special expenses. "The woman who migrates is like a machine
for money," Krisnawati said.

With separations sometimes lasting several years and the woman
changing so much, many marriages suffer.

Measuring how many of these marriages end in divorce, how many
are effectively over after so many years of separation and how
many couples still view themselves as man and wife separated by
economic circumstance is difficult, sociologists say. It is
complicated because many villagers don't bother to go through the
expense and formalities of divorce when they want to terminate a
marriage.

Nonetheless, many marriages do disintegrate because the
husband takes a mistress in his wife's absence.

Utami Munandar, a psychologist at University of Indonesia, is
concerned about the welfare of children when one parent works far
from the village. "It's not a broken family in the sense that
they separate because they don't like each other, but the effect
is the same on the children."

But the fallout from the mother working overseas is mitigated
by the extended family of the village. Sri Sunarti Purwaningsih,
a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)
studying childcare strategies of Javanese families with mothers
working overseas, said fathers, grandmothers and other relatives
assume a greater role in childrearing while the mother is away,
but childcare reverts to the mother when she returns.

Mothers often feel guilty about abandoning their children
while they're away, Sunarti said. "But they tell themselves that
at least they'll have money to compensate them and improve their
lives." (Becky Mowbray)