Revising gender-biased textbooks easier said than done

The following article by The Jakarta Post journalist Santi W.E. Soekanto looks at the issue of gender-biased school textbooks. Related reports and interviews written with contributors Herry Nurdi and Rani R. Moediarta are on Page 5.

JAKARTA (JP): Khofifah Indar Parawansa created quite a stir recently when she proposed that a number of elementary school textbooks be revised for containing "discriminatory" and "gender- biased" material. Acknowledging that her office of State Minister for the Empowerment of Women lacks the authority to undertake such a project, she nevertheless displayed her intent to push the relevant ministries to follow up her demands.

Quoting research conducted by scholars at the Jakarta State University, Khofifah cited how women and girls were only ever depicted in textbooks as kitchen dwellers.

Men and boys, on the other hand, were much less confined as they went to offices or played football. "That's discrimination against women," she said in a recent interview.

There have yet to be further reports about Khofifah's plan to invite the four publishers of the textbooks, including Erlangga and Pradnya Paramita, but her call for revision has led to more questions than answers.

Will the planned revision mean a withdrawal of the books? How and who will revise the texts? Who will say which materials are discriminatory, which are gender-fair? Who will finance the project? Should it be approved by the Ministry of National Education?

Will it, ultimately, further burden parents who have already been spending a total of Rp 289 billion for textbooks annually?

Another important question is: how urgent is the motion to revise the textbooks?

Khofifah's concern is indeed justified, given how discrimination is still the lot of millions of Indonesian women and girls. But there are other, equally pressing matters to be handled. For instance, there is the crisis of schooling opportunities for Indonesian children.

A recent Unicef report said millions of Indonesian children are suffering from various clashes and protracted economic and social crises.

At least 1.8 million children under the age of five (out of 23 million children in the same age bracket) are undernourished. Unless some massive, drastic measures are launched, Indonesian children will feel the impacts of the current crises in the next few years, Unicef said.

The report also pointed out that following the 1997 economic melt-down, the education budget dropped by 40 percent. This means a decline in the quality of teaching because teachers have been forced to supplement their meager incomes with side jobs.

Do not forget, either, that over the past three years the number of school dropouts has also risen.

The second crisis hits Indonesian women and girls in particular -- this is the onslaught of messages about women's self-esteem and about how they should behave.

The media and many people tell our girls that they are of value only if they are attractive -- which often means not only skinny but anorexic -- and pleasing to look at by men.

The girls, who spend hours glued to the television, are told through television dramas that women are to be chased by men and hit and discarded when they stand up for themselves.

The girls, too, are told that their bodies, their looks, sell all types of commodities from herbal concoctions to car batteries. They are brainwashed by commercials into believing that they are not worthy of anything unless they are fair-skinned and have dandruff-free hair.

They may achieve good marks in school but unless they have a flawless complexion that seduces men into touching their facial skin, they feel they are nothing.

Even in ordinary life, parents deliver the same message to their daughters.

It is not enough for them to do well in school or have good manners, they must look pretty. No wonder many girls who were confident and dared to take on the world in their childhood, grew up to be fearful women uncertain of their worth and ability.

In many cases, these girls felt the impact of losing their self-esteem as soon as puberty began. They became unable to say no, because they did not think they were worthy of that option.

Physician Boyke Dian Nugraha pointed this out when he revealed that every year, 1.3 million teenagers have an abortion.

Mary Pipher, in her 1994 book Reviving Ophelia, says we live in a "look-obsessed, media saturated, girl-poisoning culture" that takes away a woman's self and imposes on her a fake-self.

"Despite the advances of feminism, escalating levels of sexism and violence -- from undervalued intelligence to sexual harassment in elementary school -- cause girls to stifle their creative spirit and natural impulses, which, ultimately destroys their self-esteem."

Though she writes mostly about American teenagers, her depictions seem eerily familiar for Indonesians.

"Many of the pressures girls have always faced are intensified in the 1990s. Many things contribute to this intensification: more divorced families, chemical addictions, casual sex and violence against women. Because of the media, girls all live in one big town -- a sleazy, dangerous tinsel town with lots of liquor stores and few protected spaces," Pipher writes.

She adds, "Increasingly women have become sexualized and objectified, their bodies marketed to sell tractors and toothpaste. Soft-and hard-core pornography are everywhere. Sexual and physical assaults on girls are at an all-time high. Now girls are more vulnerable and fearful, more likely to have been traumatized and less free to roam alone."

This combination of old stresses and new is poison for our young women, she writes.

Even revising textbooks, it seems, will be a much easier task than taking on the challenges facing our daughters today.