Women bear heaviest burden

Women bear heaviest burden

Indonesia commemorated Women's Day on Dec. 22. The plight of
women during the crisis of the past few years was among the
highlights of a recent conference in Leiden on Indonesian women.
Linawati Sidarto, a Leiden-based journalist, shares insights from
the four-day talks.

LEIDEN, The Netherlands (JP): In the poem titled "Woman"
author Damairia defiantly declared in 1959 that Indonesian women
should no longer be "ornamental flowers," and neither should they
be "discarded flowers -- seller of cheap sweat, half-paid
laborers."

Almost half a century later, the poet's dream remains just a
dream, as research in various Indonesian regions consistently
shows that, particularly during hard times, women bear the brunt
of the misery.

What do women in Irian Jaya and Makassar, South Sulawesi, have
in common? While divided by language, geography and culture, they
suffer the same fate during times of need: they work harder than
anyone else, and at the end of the day, get the least amount of
food on their plates.

"Women in Makassar, especially those with little education,
tend to let men in their families eat first. During normal times,
this is not a problem. However, in times of crises, women are the
prime targets for malnutrition," said Baego Ishak, lecturer at
Makassar's State Islamic Studies Institute IAIN Alauddin.

Similar observations on women in Irian Jaya were made by
Mientje Rumbiak, who teaches at Jayapura's Cendrawasih
University.

Ishak and Rumbiak were among the 23 presenters at the four-day
conference "Indonesian Women and Crises: Past and Present, Opportunities
and Threats" at Leiden University in the Netherlands in mid
December.

Participants at the conference, organized by the Women Studies
Working Group, came from various ethnic and professional
backgrounds.

Papers presented covered regions in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan,
Sulawesi, and Irian. Themes were equally variable, from labor and
social issues to politics.

Women laborers also get the shorter end of the stick during
hard times, as shown by research done on communities in Central
and East Java. Keppi Sukesi of Malang's Brawijaya University
pointed out that female plantation workers in East Java, most of
whom fall into the category of casual rather than permanent
workers, were the first to lose their jobs when the crisis hit.

Women workers in the metal industry in Batur, Central Java,
suffered a similar fate according to a study done by Gadjah
Mada University's Susi Eja Yuarsi.

She pointed out that while women often become the main
breadwinner during crises, in reality "socially they are still
placed in a very low position compared to men."

One of the consequences of the above sentiment is that outside
assistance meant for women is often nicked by men. Gadjah Mada's
Naniek Kasniyah, who has done research in Irian Jaya, said that
agricultural tools donated specifically by the government for
women, who often perform heavier physical work than men, were
ultimately used by the latter.

Sukesi noted that while women have to scramble to scrape
additional income for their families in times of need, they are
also still expected to do the bulk of the household chores.

Middle-class women, while protected from the harsher fate of
their poorer sisters, are not immune to the situation, albeit for
different reasons. Yuarsi said her research found that these
women "lack the skill and experience" to financially assist their
families during leaner times, as "the norms in the community
discourage women from this class from working outside (their
home)."

Saparinah Sadli of the University of Indonesia, and chairwoman
of the National Commission for Women, stressed during her keynote
speech that "one of the most pervasive problems is the fact that
we are basically still living in a patriarchal society, and many
men and women are still gender blind."

The notion of Indonesian women being subservient was
effectively exploited by former president Soeharto's New Order
government to restrain the citizenry.

Yanti Muchtar, coordinator of the NGO Circle of Alternative
Education for Women, explained in her paper that New Order gender
politics "recast the roles of Indonesian women as being limited
to domestic spheres and excluded from all political activity,"
-- a concept mirrored in the women's organizations it set up.

The use of women's organizations as political vehicles was not
exclusive to the Soeharto regime. Jan Elliot of Australia's
Wollongong University points out that the Indonesian Women's
Movement or Gerwani, when set up in 1954, "articulated a strong
voice for the rights of women workers," and strived to be "an
educational and struggle organization which was nonpolitical and
for all religions and ethnic groups."

In later years, however, Gerwani leaned more and more to the
left, a fact deftly used by the New Order regime in the wake of
the September 1965 failed coup to smear the organization and
close it down permanently.

During the three decades of the New Order, state-controlled
women's organizations such as Dharma Wanita and Family Welfare
(PKK) flourished.

Siti Kusujiarti and Ann Tickamyer of Ohio University, who
scrutinized PKK programs in two Central Javanese villages,
described the organization as "the single most important
institution in Indonesian rural areas for implementing state
social welfare programs for women."

While defining itself as a "voluntary and democratic social
organization," the researchers found PKK not only to be an "effective
channel for ideological socialization," but it also provided the
government "with a means for controlling or curbing women's
political participation and activism."

Similar to Dharma Wanita, its structure "assumed that all
government functionaries were men whose wives automatically were
available to serve as the chairs of the corresponding
PKK organization."

How far apart the PKK and women's nongovernment organizations
are was made clear by a plea made by Yessy A. Rozali. Rozali, a
member of the Muara Enim PKK in South Sumatra, asked: "Instead of
ignoring PKK, why not include us in the struggle to advance
women's causes?"

She added that the term guidance (pembinaan) in PKK has,
apparently in the spirit of reformasi, been conveniently changed
to "empowerment" (pemberdayaan).

The conference, Saparinah said, was the first attempt to
analyze the social, political and economic impact of the recent
crisis on Indonesian women. While commending the variety of research
presented at the conference, Sadli pointed out that many were not
done with a feminist approach, and lack in-depth analysis.

"This conference shows that there's rich data out there. The
question now is: what do we do with it? It's good that studies
are done about women, but they also need to work for women."

She explained that on an academic level, women's studies in
Indonesia had a decidedly non-feminist origin. A decade ago the
State Ministry for Women's Affairs, often criticized for
proliferating the idea of women's subservience, set up women's
study centers in some 80 universities throughout the country,
"mainly to come up with possible programs for the ministry."

One participant lamented the quality of research at the study
centers. The main purpose of the event, organizer Ratna Saptari
said, was to "support research on women, since in all these years
Indonesian universities were not encouraged to do proper
research, and a lot has been done outside the academic sphere."

Ratna stressed that academics and activists were often unaware
of what the other side was doing, "and it's very important
to link the two together." A long time researcher and co-founder
of the Jakarta-based Kalyanamitra women's organization, she
pointed out the possibility of activists utilizing research
results in their undertakings.

The most urgent problem which needs to be tackled, Saparinah
warned, is that of violence against women, particularly in areas
in regional conflict.

"This is getting worse because of the ongoing political
conflict, and what's most worrisome is that the government so far
has no policies to overcome this.

"So many women have been victims, including of state violence,
and they receive no protection, and no guidance as to what to
do."

The writer is a journalist based in Leiden, The Netherlands.