The place of women in Asian society

The place of women in Asian society

Wives, Mistresses and Matriarchs; Louise Williams; Allen & Unwen
1998; v + 302pp

JAKARTA (JP): The great economic miracle in Asia went bust.
What has all this meant, especially to the women of the region?
What do the famous, and the faceless, feel about themselves in
these times of incredible economic and social transformation?

Louise Williams focuses on some of these aspects in this
interesting book. An Australian journalist who moved to Asia more
than a decade ago as a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald,
she listened to hundreds of tales both empowering and depressing
of women around the region.

Although she found negative and positive stories in different
countries of Asia, common everywhere is the inevitable social
change taking place in all their lives. In a village near
Surakarta, Ibu Sinem tells the author that the first goal of
women before was to find a husband, but now it is to find a job.

Since the introduction of irrigation, Kepuh enjoys three crops
a year but there are not enough young people left in the village
to work on the land. People like Subiata have already left for
the glittering lights of Jakarta, to join the other teenagers who
are swallowed up immediately by factories that sew seams into
kids' pajamas, put pockets on men's jackets and seal bags of
cheap confectionery for the international market.

It seems factory owners prefer to employ young, single village
girls.

They are cheap and easy to control. Labor agents even go to
villages periodically to seek 20 or 30 girls at a time. According
to a current study on the Indonesian labor market, the textile,
footwear, garment, shrimp processing, toy manufacturing and
cigarette manufacturing sectors are heavily dominated by young
women. At least that was the case before so many businesses were
bankrupted by the economic crash.

Asian-style industrialization has transformed societies in a
single generation from subsistence rice farmers to armies of
industrial workers. And Williams feels even the currency crisis
cannot change the direction of that transformation, or turn back
the demographic realignments. She believes that even more than
men it is the lives of women that continue to change as polygamy
is increasingly frowned upon, as factories open up millions upon
millions of jobs outside the village structure, as contraception
becomes widely available or compulsory in government family
planning programs. And, above all, as more and more women choose
not to marry.

As the Jakarta correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, it
seems only appropriate that Williams devotes four chapters to
women from Indonesia from different walks of life. The book opens
with the story of Yurnilawati, the only daughter and heir in a
Padang clan in Sumatra. Yurnilawati talks about her privileged
position as a woman, but also the pressures that force the family
home and property on her even though she would like to marry her
American boyfriend and perhaps not want to live in the Minang
area for a while.

Princess is the tale of a daughter of the fifth son of the
Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX of the Yogyakarta royal family. At the
age of 20, she rebelled against conservative rules to become the
mistress of a married painter. After a roller-coaster ride up and
down several emotionally devastating landscapes, the princess at
the age of 48 seems finally at peace, selling her own line of
Muslim women's clothing and living with her third husband, almost
a decade younger than her.

Asked why Megawati Soekarnoputri is not among the Asian
heroines chosen -- including Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, the
Bandarnaike women of Sri Lanka, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and
Cory Aquino of the Philippines, Williams said she wanted to
feature the daughter of Indonesia's founding president.

She had planned a double profile of Megawati and Siti "Tutut"
Hardyanti Rukmana, former president Soeharto's eldest daughter,
similar to one on Aquino and Imelda Marcos. Williams even tracked
down both Megawati and Tutut in Pelabuhan Ratu on Jan. 23. They
were in the fishing village to pay homage to the goddess of the
south seas on their shared birthday.

But after the much sought-after interview, Williams realized
she got nothing substantial out of Tutut. Her tape recorder
played back Tutut's answers that read like a Golkar Party
handout. Megawati, of course, talked much more about herself but
only about the past. She had little to say about her plans for
the future, just like Bhutto whose visions also sound vague and
academic.

The author found simply obsessed with her own personal battle,
counting upon martyrdom to win elections. Williams gets the
impression that Pakistan's leader of the opposition does not like
to be pushed.

Bhutto impatiently explained away her government's utter
failures. "The inheritance of a tottering and troubled economy
made mistake-free management an impossibility. Yes, we made some
mistakes." She does not elaborate.

It seems such a tragedy to the author that Bhutto continues to
play the martyred patriot and champion of democracy, defending
her noble family name against the dark forces of dictatorship.
But the question is who is going to buy the histrionics again and
again.

The most interesting portrait remains that of 81-year-old
Sirimavo, widow of Sri Lankan prime minister Solomon
Bandaranaike, who was assassinated in 1959. A housewife up to
then, Sirimavo grabbed the leadership of her late husband's
Freedom Party and led it to victory a year later.

"I think it was partly sympathy, or mainly sympathy. I was a
widow and, when I spoke to them, the women were crying and I was
surprised the men also. Otherwise I couldn't have won. I think
they all realized that because my husband was so popular someone
was coming to take his place," said the first female prime
minister in the modern world.

She went on to anoint her daughter, Chandrika, as her
successor over her son, allowing pragmatism to override her
maternal ambitions for her only boy. Her daughter is better
organized, said Sirimavo, who was known as the only "man" in her
Cabinet. In South Asia, many widows and daughters have followed
in her footsteps, creating an illusion for the rest of the world
that all is well with half the population of the Asia region,
half of the two thirds of the world's population.

-- Mehru Jaffer