Saga of Kalijodo red-light district

Saga of Kalijodo red-light district

Eva K. Sundari, Lecturer in Economics, Researcher, Airlangga University,
Surabaya

The recent destruction of settlements and the eviction of
people in Kalijodo, North Jakarta by city public order officers
is tragic for the urban poor. Relations between the security
apparatus and its victims was asymmetrical, relying solely on
power. On the day before the raid, Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso
revealed his determination to build a mosque complex as a symbol
of sanctity in the former red-light district, which is said to
represent vice.

Prostitution, let alone the informal sex business, indeed
downgrades women's dignity -- but what kind of human dignity have
public order officers demonstrated by unilaterally and
arbitrarily driving away the occupants of Kalijodo? And on what
basis are sacredness and vice established?

To the oppressed, the government may just be on the side of
vice for failing to guarantee the fulfillment of people's right
to economic security and even abusing them.

Normally commercial sex transactions take place when demand
meets supply. Therefore, the view that merely corners female sex
workers (as the supply side) in analyzing the problem of
prostitution is unreasonable. The analysis should go further into
why women become sex workers and why men seek their services. The
public policy adopted concerning the commercialization of sex
would then be proportional.

It is hard to deny that Jakarta's glittering life attracts
both male and female migrants. Intensive industrialization has
caused dramatic regional disparity in Indonesia, even in the
capital. In the case of Kalijodo, which lies on West Java-North
Jakarta border, the regional disparity is indeed very striking.

The 1999 Human Development Index (HDI) of Lebak regency in
West Java for instance, reached merely 61, which was the lowest
rate (West Java HDI ranked 15) against North Jakarta's record of
71.5 (Jakarta HDI ranked 1).

On the demand side, the need for commercial sex comes from
unmarried male migrants and married ones who usually leave their
spouses in the villages. The patriarchal preference, like the
myth of men's prowess in terms of male sexual vitality (as shown
by various tonic advertisements) with many women around them, is
an important factor on this side. The other myth, i.e. female
virginity as an absolute requirement while male bachelorhood is
considered relative, encourages men to pay for sex.

Nonetheless, the increasing income of male migrants due to
urban growth becomes the most important motivation, particularly
in connection with women's price factor. In a patriarchal
community, poor women are priced very lowly even before they do
anything, owing to subordination and unlimited supply.

From the supply angle, poverty in originating regions causes
an increasing flow of female migrants into the capital city.
Various surveys have indicated that sex workers in brothels
register at the average age of 15 to 18, get maximum schooling of
four years and almost definitely come from poor families.

One study reveals that the economic needs of these women can
be associated with unemployment, divorce, neglect or inadequate
government aid. Also in this category are husbands' failure in
meeting family needs or the ruin of extended families.

On the situation on the periphery, such as East Java, the 2000
national census data shows that in this province, the proportion
of illiterate women that year reached 67.40 percent and those
without schooling constituted 68.75 percent.

Here it appears that East Java has met the precondition that
motivates its women to migrate to cities only to be later trapped
in prostitution. The province has become unsurprisingly known for
the trafficking of women (into and out of Indonesia) and as the
third largest province exporting woman workers.

The fact that East Java is the poorest province in Java along
with the phenomenon of poverty among females makes women there
increasingly vulnerable to sex commercialization.

Further, society does not yet recognize young women as full
entities (with their right to employment); this reduces their
availability of job opportunities -- as indicated by low gender
empowerment measure rates in 76 percent of 288 regencies and
cities.

This can be linked with explicit discrimination in the labor
market, which more or less results from the human capital policy
(of education, training, health access), hence limiting women's
choice of jobs with low pay for the simple skills required.

The political commitment of regional and municipal
administrations to relieve poverty, on the other hand, has not
been seriously implemented. In East Java, spending on education
and health as two key sectors to overcome poverty, which in the
New Order period was already low by international standards, has
decreased drastically in the reform period.

Ironically, besides the generally bigger allocations to other
expenditures, such a budgeting contrast, is found in
regencies/cities with high incidence of poverty, like the
regencies of Situbondo, Bondowoso, Ponorogo and Blitar.

From the perspective of human development, poverty is seen as
a failure in development, which is a process under government
control. Development is believed to be a right of the people that
the government must guarantee. Therefore, the policy to close
down a brothel can be considered a scandal in urban development.
This action can also be likened to punishing victims of the
government's own policy failure.

Prostitution is indeed a vice prohibited by religion, but its
solution should also accommodate the interests of sex workers.
The capability of the Jakarta provincial administration to listen
to the voiceless or the silent population would bring about
justice to some extent.

Furthermore, the brothel shutdown will not end the
commercialization of sex. This is because poverty, the root cause
of prostitution and also the main enemy of mosques, has been left
untouched.