Govt policy on women's role 'poses setback'

Govt policy on women's role 'poses setback'

JAKARTA (JP): The government's drive to promote women's emancipation has suffered a setback by its own assertion that women should take the lion's share of responsibility for the success of their children's education, a woman activist says.

Nursyahbani Katjasungkana said this was not consistent with the Broad Outlines of State Policy drawn up in 1993 by the People's Consultative Assembly which made children's education the joint responsibility of fathers and mothers.

Nursyahbani, a lawyer and chairperson of the Legal Aid Institute of the Indonesian Women's Association for Justice, was commenting on the result of last month's national coordination meeting held by the office of the State Minister for Women's Roles.

The meeting, she said, concluded that mothers were not doing enough to encourage their daughters to pursue education.

"I don't understand. Maybe they failed to consider the fact that the majority of women are victims of a system that discourages women from being educated," she told The Jakarta Post yesterday.

The plight of female students, compared to their male cohorts, was more evident in rural areas where poverty was more prevalent than in the relatively wealthier metropolis, she said.

"At the heart of the matter is poverty. With limited resources, parents generally send their sons off to school," she said.

Increasing gender awareness among education planners and eliminating gender stereotyping in school curricula and the media are some of the solutions Nursyahbani proposes.

The Secretary General of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Hasan Waliono, was quoted by Antara as saying Tuesday that a wide gap of opportunities in education existed between men and women.

The gap, he said, was not as wide at primary school level as at secondary and tertiary levels.

Official statistics show that 95.01 percent of boys and 92.05 of girls get a primary education. At tertiary level, the rate of participation is 9.05 percent for males and 5.22 percent for females.

The Ministry of Education's 1994 Gender Statistics also showed that more women enrolled at universities than men, but the number of women graduates shrank by as much as half, indicating a high rate of dropouts.

Nursyahbani attributed this decline to deeply embedded patriarchal values which did not consider the possibility of a woman becoming the family breadwinner.

"Few realize that investing in women's education is as beneficial, if not more so, than investing in men's because they are the prime social motivators when dealing with health betterment, family planning, and increasing social prosperity," she said.

Many parents still took the view that the public domain belonged to men while the domestic, private domain was for women to manage, another expert said.

"Boys are groomed for public life, which is deemed more important than the domestic, private domain, which is specifically reserved for girls," Sjamsiah Ahmad, an assistant to the State Minister for Woman's Roles, recently said in a seminar.

Women's works are considered inferior to men's in societies that believe household affairs, giving birth, taking care of children, the elderly and the disabled -- can be learned naturally.

"What's needed is family education which teaches families not to stereotype their children," said Saparinah Sadli, chair of University of Indonesia's Women's Studies program and newly elected member of the National Commission on Human Rights.

Equal opportunity in education becomes crucial because it opens up access to the economic, social and political domains for women, she said at a seminar on "Girl's education in the 21st century" this month.

Family background is seen as a crucial factor in shaping a child's self-esteem. Sociologists have noted that in most societies, boys were more favored than girls, Saparinah said.

Minister of Education Wardiman Djojonegoro, who opened the seminar, said the concept of gender equality should be thoroughly studied, particularly its implementation in Indonesia, which has its own characteristics.

"Don't be trapped into heroic statements about gender equality, this can be counter productive," Wardiman said. (06)