Momentous women's congress rectifies history

By Debra H. Yatim

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Former minister of manpower, SK Trimurti, had to use the service lift to take her upstairs for the one-day seminar here under the theme: "Indonesian Women: Looking Toward the Future Inspired by Aspirations of the Past". Bad knees notwithstanding, the feisty 86-year-old decided she just had to attend the session, which precluded the biggest congress of Indonesian women in 70 years.

Some 550 women from 26 of Indonesia's 27 provinces came from far and wide to attend the three-day convention ending Dec. 18. And what a meeting it was.

First of all, a little over 100 more women turned up than the 450 that were registered. As it was already the holiday season in Yogyakarta, arranging more rooms was no easy matter for the committee.

Then there was the small matter of a (male) manager not being used to having his premises taken over by 15 women organizers clamoring for better service. The manager decided that if the women were not going to listen to him, than he was putting his foot down: There was to be no Congress Grand Opening at his joint. He did not reckon with his superior, the owner, who just happened to be a woman.

The grand opening went ahead in a toned-down manner, with Sultana Hemas, the wife of the sultan of the special territory of Yogyakarta, declaring it open with a gentle reminder that the congress bear in mind the "lessons of history", the fact that our foremothers never went out into the fray with a war cry against their menfolk.

Well, since that was never the idea behind the congress in the first place, the meeting went on full-steam ahead with the aforementioned one-day seminar. And if anybody entered the room expecting meek and mild Indonesian women saying their piece soft- spokenly, they had another think coming up.

First on the agenda was a wizened old woman, bent under the burden of her years -- and her oppression. Sulami was a victim of the Soeharto regime. A member of the banned Gerakan Wanita Indonesia (Gerwani), Sulami wrought a picture of active women silenced under the pretext of national order.

Her presentation was discussed by Saskia E. Wieringa of The Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Holland, who maintained that "it is not by chance that women and their organization, Gerwani, were singled out of the slander (created by Gen. Soeharto to associate Communism with wild, perverse, sexually loose women)".

This first session drew forth many opinions from the floor, from comments by young women mulling over what it must have been like to be active and then sliced down in the name of peace, to demands by yet other women who wanted to know what the organizers had in mind by bringing somebody from a long-silenced organization into a national congress.

That was only the beginning. As the day wore on, and as the congress proceedings began on the Tuesday, it was very apparent that these were no quiet homemakers, content to let their menfolk lead the way. These were women who knew exactly what they wanted, and that was a definite say in every aspect of social and political life.

And what did that encompass? No less than being agents of change for women's rights and the matter of gender equality across the board in Indonesian life. The congress members also demanded the right to become a pressure group in Indonesian politics, to become facilitators for women working toward democratic change and to have a say in creating just laws more accommodating to women.

After three long, hard days of discussion -- three days in which a farewell party was actually canceled because the congress members preferred to continue slogging at the working agenda -- finally at 5 a.m. on Friday, 18 Dec. a decision had been made.

Not a consensus, mind you, as is usually the case in Indonesian public life. But an honest-to-goodness decision: that instead of having an organization based on organizational membership, the coalition which initiated the congress could be made of individuals and institutions alike.

The other decision that was made was that the coalition would be led by a presidium of 15, to cover the aspirations of groups as different from each other as women farmers, fisherwomen, laborers, female street children, the urban poor, the rural poor, the elderly and infirm, professional women, sex workers, lesbians, and students and women youths.

A tall order by any means, "but who is to say that women are one species?" asked Myra Diarsi, one of the founding members of the Indonesian Women's Coalition for Justice and Democracy, who initiated the idea of the congress.

"The concerns of women encompass the concerns of all of humanity, and should thus be addressed," maintained Myra, at a discussion the next day held by the Law Faculty of Gadjah Mada University to discuss Women, The Law and Politics.

The congress itself was inspired by the first all-Indonesian Women's Congress held in 1928 when Indonesia had not even become a country, but was still an archipelago under Dutch rule.

That first congress held from Dec. 22 to Dec. 25 inspired Indonesians to commemorate Dec. 22 as the Day of Women's Emergence. Through the years, the day was changed to Women's Day (Hari Ibu), when schoolchildren from all over the archipelago ply their mothers with flowers and poems in gratitude for all mothers' sacrifices.

Not enough, the congress decided. This year, congress members made the demand that Dec. 22 be returned to its original stature, that of acknowledgement to Indonesian women's political aspirations and their demand for a voice in public life.

"We like being mothers. But women cannot be defined by their ability to give birth alone," said Zohra A. Baso from Ujungpandang.

The congress was also colored by the fact that a group of women, claiming to represent eight groups and organizations staged a walkout on day three. Even though the steering committee maintained that everything was good and fine, and a reaching of consensus and one voice was never the goal of the congress, the local media found it fodder for sensationalist reporting.

Women's Congress Colored by In-fighting screamed one newspaper headline. "Why put 500 women in one room, when with only two you can get enough fallout?" inquired another local newspaper. Meanwhile, the national press in Jakarta saw fit to ignore the whole meeting, deeming it not as important as two men in Jakarta seeking a consensus to the shambles that the country is currently heading for.

Even though the press missed the whole point so shoddily, the fact remains that the remaining 500-or-so women found it important enough to continue with their discourse.

"This is one of the very few times we have been allowed to say our piece without anybody demanding we try reach a common platform," said Yusan Yeblo of Irian Jaya. "And why should we? A middle-class woman from Yogyakarta would have absolutely different needs and aspirations from myself in Irian, while a sister from West Kalimantan would need something different again."

And hence ended a congress, the first all-women's congress that allowed everybody to say whatever they wanted without anybody attending to tell them to shut up.

As a little footnote: On day three a lone police officer came and requested that the committee give him copies of all the papers making their rounds to members of the congress. Because very few women came with their ideas readily packaged, he went away with a meager three papers: one by the officially stamped Kowani condoned by the government, one by Saskia Wieringa already published as a working paper in November 1996, and the last one by SK Trimurti which she had already presented at some other Woman's Day event in 1991.

The writer is a feminist based in Jakarta.

Window: This year, congress members made the demand that Dec. 22 be returned to its original stature, that of acknowledgement to Indonesian women's political aspirations and their demand for a voice in public life.