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)