Women inspire Omas to keep fighting

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."