JP/30/WOMEN

JP/30/WOMEN

Ati Nurbaiti
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

For each person, young and old, in the regency of Gresik,
Central Java, the average annual budget for health is Rp 1,413,
or not even 20 U.S. cents. This revelation emerged in a training
session on the regional budget, aimed at female political party
cadres.

If more women represented the population in Gresik's
legislative council and administration, perhaps they would be
more sensitive to peoples' welfare and push for a larger and more
proportionate allocation of the budget for health services.

In Makassar, South Sulawesi, activist Husaimah Husain works
with the grass roots. Her impatience with conditions around her
has attracted her to politics: "If I'm elected, I'd raise the
budget for women and children with special needs," she said.
In a discussion here on women's political representation, she
added that she would also push for local legislation to protect
women and children from domestic violence.

Better health services, and a society in which people treat
others as equal human beings instead of objects to be bullied,
are just a few of the wide ranging features of "a better
Indonesia" that many dream of -- and for that, better
representation of society is needed in decision making.

Having more women at all levels of decision making does not
automatically mean an enlightened government, legislature or
judiciary. However examples everywhere such as the seemingly
uncaring budget in Gresik have led researchers, politicians and
activists to the belief that a more balanced representation of
gender among decision makers would help make them become more
committed to public interests.

At the national, provincial and regency or township level,
having a third of women in the legislative bodies would fulfill
what is considered the minimum figure needed to balance the power
structures of men.

The struggle for affirmative action has also come to Indonesia
with predictably slow developments. Activists protested the law
on political parties which they said failed to meet their demands
to impose a ruling that they have at least 30 percent of women
candidates for the legislature. Such a ruling was considered
important to prevent women's representation from dropping even
further in the legislative body at the national level, let alone
the lower levels of legislative bodies.

Women are not begging for seats, they say, stressing the word
"candidates" -- the women will have to work hard to get elected.

Despite the disappointment in the law, and even suspicions of
lip service, many hail the clauses on women's representation in
the two laws as important changes toward a more balanced decision
making process.

The average 5 percent of women's representation in legislative
bodies would ideally be much higher in an effort to come close to
30 percent. Central Java, for instance, with 100 legislators at
the provincial level for a population of 33 million, should have
more females than its current six women.

Regional autonomy poses both a broad opportunity and a threat
regarding the ability to improve the life of locals. Husaimah
from Makassar, saw the chance in the area of domestic violence;
yet a number of regions have local rules intended to protect
women, but which could also be seen to unnecessarily limit them,
such as the introduction of sharia in Aceh.

Apart from Indonesian women gaining the first, albeit tiny,
step toward recognition of the need to allocate a quota for women
legislative candidates, the United Nations also points out more
sources of encouragement.

In May the Progress of the World's Women 2002 said that
"although women have progressed relatively slowly in the last two
years in the areas of education, literacy and employment, there
have been encouraging signs of improvement in women's legislative
representation."

The report said there were no systematic differences between
the developed and developing world in women's share of seats in
the legislature -- "the United States, France and Japan lag
behind 13 sub-Saharan countries".

"The increase in women's share of seats in parliament was
attributed mainly to political measures in several countries,
where quotas were legislated or adopted on a voluntary basis,"
read the announcement on the report released by the UN
Development Fund for Women (Unifem).

In Sweden, affirmative action led to a balanced composition
between men and women in the cabinet of the winning party, the
Social Democrat Party. This led other government bodies to follow
suit.

Writing in the Kompas daily, Eva K. Sundari of the Asia
Foundation cites last year's UNDP report, in which corruption in
Peru is said to have dropped by 30 percent at the same time that
30 percent of women occupied the bureaucracy. It is not clear how
women in power here can be less corrupt, yet the hope is that as
a more potent force they would maintain more sensitivity.

Political parties have pointed out that they cannot find
enough women with the necessary qualifications and political
motivation. In response, on Kartini's Day in April this year
which commemorates Indonesia's national heroine, copies of a book
containing the biodata of 100 potential women from Medan,
Jakarta, Pontianak, Surabaya and Makassar were distributed to
political parties by the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro).
From the database compiled from questionnaires including their
vision for the nation, a number of political parties have sought
them out as legislative candidates. In November the book was
updated.

What organizations like Cetro are trying to point out is, of
course, that the argument about the lack of qualifications and
motivation is not entirely true. Brought up in societies where
women generally do not take the lead, role models are indeed
lacking and surveys have indicated that many women still prefer
to choose men as legislators or as president, despite having the
first woman as president in the nation's history.

But like everyone else women here have been more outspoken
since Soeharto quit the presidency; they only need more support.

With lack of experience and opportunity women entering the
high risk world of politics tend to seek a guarantee of security.
Actress Nurul Arifin who has opted to become a legislative
candidate for the Golkar Party, is among the few celebrities who
has put her reputation and career at stake by associating herself
with the party seen as a remnant of the New Order.

Although Nurul is popular, "She would still need security,"
says lecturer Ani Soetjipto, also from Cetro. Such a guarantee of
being elected would be gained from being placed on the top of
political parties' list of legislative candidates, such as number
1 or 2, which are precious political commodities.

When Golkar women came to the party headquarters on Dec. 12 to
demand that the party stick to its commitment to have a 30
percent quota for legislative candidates, Nurul declined to
comment on whether she had secured such a guarantee.

In such an unhealthy system in which women cannot yet compete
based on their own ability on a level playing field, the worry is
that it will be very difficult to get even a small number of
capable women in the legislative bodies.

During the recent rush to list candidates with the General
Elections Commission it became evident that political parties
ignored the message that women, as a minority in terms of power,
need to work with each other. With one party fielding a "leading"
woman, another would also place an equally good female candidate
in the same constituent.

"Our aim was to get as many women as possible in the
legislature" from various parties, Ani says, "Yet they are
pitting the women against each other." She says this again
indicates women's lack of bargaining power in proposing or
rejecting the allotment of certain areas to them compared to the
men, regardless of the requirement that candidates should reside
in their constituencies.