Women must challenge laws, policies: Lawyer

Women must challenge laws, policies: Lawyer

JAKARTA (JP): A prominent lawyer and feminist says women must continue to struggle against laws and policies which discriminate against women.

Nursyahbani Katjasungkana said the women's movement has progressed from only addressing women's position in the home to broader issues of democracy and equality before the law.

But laws and policies, she said, pose a constant challenge for the women's movement.

"The movement must now make efforts towards changes in the patriarchal structure," said the executive director of the Association of Indonesian Women for Justice (APIK).

Nursyahbani said the 1974 Marriage Act, for instance, recognizes women as legal subjects, but enforces the traditional expectations of male and female roles in a family.

"Why does the patriarchy, which determines that a woman is a wife and homemaker and a husband as the head of the family and breadwinner, have to be legalized?" she said.

The Indonesian Congress of Women (Kowani), an organization grouping around 90 women and family movements, stated last year that the alternative to revising the Marriage Act, which is regarded as a mammoth task, would be to raise gender awareness in society.

Nursyahbani was speaking at a seminar titled "The Women's Movement as a Cultural Movement" at the Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Center on Tuesday evening. She elaborated on policies which she said "continue to domesticate women" and the numerous obstacles, including the Mother's Day celebration on Dec. 22, faced by feminists in Indonesia.

The former head of the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation said the traditional celebration of Mother's Day enforces "patriarchal values and structure."

Activists have repeatedly sought to remind the public that Dec. 22 was chosen to commemorate the Indonesia's first Women's Movement Congress in 1928, and ought therefore to be mark women's active contribution in the social and political spheres rather than honoring mothers.

Nursyahbani conceded that women are highly valued for their work as mothers, homemakers and child-bearers, but said their work as wage earners is undervalued.

This, she said, is evident in the country's cheap labor policy. Like male workers, women are paid not much more than they need to meet their minimum physical needs, she said.

Women's role as homemakers "is considered their natural, holy task," she said.

Another example of the obstacles to women's movement is the creation of the compulsory civil servants' organization, Dharma Wanita, she said. The organization has been used by certain parties to drum up political support in elections, she added.

Dharma Wanita was established in 1974 as a forum for the wives of civil servants. One of its objectives is to encourage the members to take up activities outside their homes.

Wives of civil servants have traditionally been expected to vote for the ruling Golkar party along with their husbands, Nursyahbani said.

The organization constantly comes under criticism from feminists and scholars. Mochtar Buchori of the Indonesian Democratic Party branded the organization "undemocratic" last year because its members' positions are determined on the basis of their husbands' civil service rankings.

Nursyahbani said the dichotomy drawn between West and East in relation to concepts such as democracy and human rights "is often used as a tool against ideas of women's liberty."

She said the public reaction to the attempt by some activists to address the issue of rape in marriage was an example of this tendency. It has been argued that describing unwanted sexual intercourse between husbands and wives as marital rape is incompatible with Indonesian values. (anr)