Women inspire Omas to keep fighting

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

More than a hundred years have passed since Raden Adjeng Kartini tried to improve the literacy rate of Javanese women, yet today's generation of Kartinis face no less a struggle.

It is no longer a matter of literacy ratios between men and women, but a more intense struggle in correcting gender myopia -- the ingrained attitudes about the relative roles and power between females and males.

One of those at the forefront of this struggle is Tapi Omas Ihromi, a softly spoken woman whose smile can inspire, and whose laughter fills the timid with courage.

Spending most of her life observing and working for the plight of women, Omas -- as she is known to those closest to her -- together with several other concerned women, set up the Convention Watch Working Group in 1994.

That was a full decade after Indonesia ratified the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

"We undertook research about people's awareness of the (CEDAW) commitments, on those whom we thought should have that awareness, such as law graduates, judges, law lecturers. We found that their awareness was limited," Omas said in an interview recently.

Based on this preliminary research, the working group has since conducted various workshops on CEDAW, as well as gender issues at schools of law at various universities across Indonesia.

Law students became the group's agents of change because they are considered the most sensitive to gender issues, Omas said.

"Law students have always been taught that a just law is one without discrimination, but law has a different impact on men and women, which is why we need to look at it through a gender perspective."

The immediate result was the establishment of gender studies at various universities across the country, such as at the University of Indonesia -- which Omas helped establish -- at Udayana University in Bali, and at Brawijaya University in Malang, East Java.

Another significant breakthrough was the inclusion of gender awareness at the Attorney General's Office, as part of refresher courses and for candidate attorneys.

"We were lucky -- a former student of mine was working there and helped us establish the course. To date, we have completed courses for more than 800 attorneys," Omas said.

Omas' concern for the plight of women did not originate from personal experience, however, but rather through observation of how traditional societies treated women, especially in her native Batak culture.

"I saw how Batak men treated women. I saw with my own eyes how they had no hesitation in hitting their wives. Domestic violence is regarded as an everyday thing. I must have been about 14 at the time," Omas related.

Born in Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra, on April 2, 1930, Omas' career in law was a stroke of fate. Moving with her brother -- national hero Tahi Bonar Simatupang -- to Jakarta, Omas attended the University of Indonesia's law school in Jakarta because she had "no choice."

"It was the only school that accepted social science high school majors, as the school of social sciences and politics (FISIP) was still nonexistent then," she explained.

Law school was a real eye opener for Omas. "I learned about human rights, about the beauty of universal human rights, but that in reality many women were exempted from it".

After graduating in 1958, Omas continued her studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, majoring in cultural anthropology.

"For one thing, Indonesian law and the law in the United States are very different. And another, I have great interest in learning about culture; cultural law especially," she said, citing that marriage law in traditional societies was closely linked to women issues.

She married Ihromi, a Sundanese, at Ithaca in 1959, among other reasons, to "avoid shaming the family" because of their differences in ethnic group and culture. Ihromi is now a professor at the School of Theology in Jakarta.

"Marrying out of ethnic group, a Batak would lose his or her cultural privileges. That was why, in today's practice, the non- Batak would be 'adopted' into a Batak family before marriage," Omas explained.

Back in Jakarta, she taught an introduction to anthropology at her alma mater, and helped establish the school's social sciences department -- which would eventually become the FISIP.

"In a way, I was distancing myself from the rigid, 'corseted' science of law toward social sciences," she said, her laughter crisp.

When calls for gender studies became a world trend, the same also came from students of the social sciences department, and Omas helped develop the university's first group for women's studies in 1978.

Since then the University of Indonesia's Center for Women and Gender has had a postgraduate program on women's studies, a study unit on gender and development, a women's studies group and the Convention Watch Working Group.

Omas' students and former students remember her as a "mother"- figure, besides being a well-loved teacher.

In an event commemorating her 73rd birthday, former student Paulus Tangdilintin, who has now become a professor, said, "she enabled many students, including myself, to be reinspired in our studies."

"Articulation is Ibu Omas' prominent trait," said another former student, Yulfita Raharjo, while Francisia Seda remembered Omas as once saying to her, "the teaching process is also a learning process; a teacher is not smarter than the student."

Now in her 73rd year, three years after she formally retired from her position at the university, Omas has remained active in both teaching and the working group.

"When I still see women getting raped or being trafficked, I feel that I have to go on."