Women must look for benefits of regional autonomy

Dr. Kathryn Robinson is head of Department of Anthropology at the Australian National University, Canberra. A fluent speaker of Indonesian, she has written many papers on Indonesia, her forthcoming publication being Gender, Nation and Democracy in Indonesia.

Dr. Robinson is also the convener of the next Indonesia Update conference in Sept. 2001, where the topic will be gender issues.

The Jakarta Post Melbourne-based contributor Dewi Anggraeni interviewed Dr. Robinson on issues related to women in Indonesia. The following is an excerpt of the telephone interview.

Question: Can we use Kartini as a landmark for the beginning of women's self-awareness in Indonesia?

Answer: We certainly can. I have just been reading Kartini's letters again, and I was still impressed by how much of an intellectual she was, a lot more than she was given credit for.

She was truly an extraordinary young woman. She had very little formal education, yet there she was writing for a Dutch feminist magazine, reading all the contemporary literature and giving intelligent commentary on it.

She also worked with Dutch feminists who then produced an exhibition of the work of Javanese women. And all this happened in the late 19th century. So Kartini was an internationalist kind of intellectual.

There certainly are women in Indonesia today who have that kind of standing, but in Kartini's circumstances and period, she was extremely outstanding.

Q: How far has the women's movement come since Kartini?

A: There has been a lot of critical commentary coming from women, especially during the reformasi (political reform) period. And there has also been some very interesting women activism. I think it is interesting how a number of woman intellectuals and activists are trying to find an Indonesian way of being in the world.

Q: What are the examples of women's activism that are interesting at the moment?

A: We have seen the opening up of the issue of violence. A couple of years ago I did some research on Indonesian women workers in the Middle East. I talked to the activists in Solidaritas Perempuan. They expressed frustration at attempts to get the government to acknowledge the problems involved in the regulations of work that apply to those women, and then to get those issues onto the public agenda.

These activists were very angry that they could not get any public focus on either the sexual violence or just the physical abuse of those women. Even worse, there were cases of women whom they had lost contact with, women who simply "disappeared".

Some mothers received their daughters back in coffins, without adequate explanations about how their daughters had died.

Since reformasi there was also public outrage at the May riots in Jakarta, which opened the floodgates to all kinds of public discourse against women. So now the Ministry of Manpower acknowledges the problems that women workers now face and there have been a lot more efforts by the government to try to achieve bilateral agreements to set up some surveillance on the women's working conditions.

We began to see high profile cases such as that of Kartini, who was facing capital punishment in the United Arab Emirates. That was taken very seriously, and the government was very responsive. So activism around violence against women played a crucial role in bringing it into public discourse.

Another issue is women's representation in public life. I don't know if there has been such concrete achievement yet, but it is very interesting that it has also been brought to public discussion.

Women's activism has also been able to successfully focus attention on the differential impact that the monetary crisis has had on women and children as opposed to men or society in general. People have become aware of how women and children are negatively affected, such as the continuing lack of access to contraception.

Q: So Kartini started by intellectualizing the issues affecting women...

A: Yes. I also think that there is a strain of activism in Kartini. In her letters she talked about how she would like to be a doctor, or how she would like to be a nurse, a nurturing kind of activism. She also came across as someone who would like to make her mark in the world.

If you look at the articles she wrote in the magazine and place them in today's context, you can see political journalism in them. For a woman born into that period, and the social constraints of the tradition and era, she was undoubtedly an activist.

Q: The ground-breaking work she did may have been much more difficult than that being achieved by women activists today...

A: Yes. If we look at how, under the New Order, we have the expansion of participation rates of women in education, and in primary schools, there was very little difference between boy and girl participation rates for almost all of Indonesia. So today, women are, on the whole, a lot more educated and much more able to be open to new ideas, with much more information available to them, hence they do not have to struggle as hard as those in the days that Kartini was around.

Q: Women's activism of today still focuses on nurturing and damage control, such as that of the organization, Suara Ibu Peduli (Voice of Concern Mothers)...

A: I suppose on the one hand there is a concrete reality that women have a natural ability for looking after children and family. Under circumstances like the monetary crisis, Suara Ibu Peduli were on to something when they talked about the problems that women faced, such as trying to feed their babies on a daily basis.

I guess that is inevitable when they struggle with women's issues. And some feminists would argue that the nurturing role of women should be valued. It is just as important as struggling for gender equality.

Q: Would the existence of the State Ministry for the Empowerment of Women rectify the situation a little?

A: I think the name change under this government is interesting. The old name, Menteri Urusan Peranan Wanita, the Ministry for Managing the Role of Women under the New Order, then became Menteri Peranan Wanita, the Ministry of Women's Roles, under B.J. Habibie. This reminded me of (the late sociologist) Harsya Bachtiar's comment on the old name, saying that it implied that women had to be managed -- wanita harus diurus. This I find rather patronizing.

Now the word wanita has been changed to perempuan, (perempuan denotes a shift in the word of "women" into a more generically equal status for all women. -- Ed).

The word "empowerment" also moved the ministry into several different policy emphasis. For instance in the 1970s there was an emphasis on women's dual role.

Then in the late Soeharto era there is the movement towards the idea of kemitra-sejajaran (equal status) between men and women, which a lot of feminist activists chose to interpret as gender equity between men and women.

Now the minister seems to want to introduce the mainstreaming of gender policy to all aspects of the government activities. It is a very ambitious goal.

I thought the concept of kemitra-sejajaran was interesting because I am aware that in Indonesia a lot of people are troubled by feminism, because they see it as a Western concept. And there often is an assumption that it is about hostility or antagonism between men and women. So the concept was introducing an indigenous way of talking about gender equity.

Today we have come a long way because the President, Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid) and First Lady Ibu Sinta Nuriyah, publicly take a stance for gender equity. If you look at Gus Dur's activity before his presidency, as the chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) he facilitated dialog on gender equity and similar issues.

In some ways Gus Dur made the concept fashionable, to the extent that government officials feel more comfortable with it unlike under the New Order when there was some latent hostility against the concept. There was, for instance, a public promotion of women's domestic role. There was not much of a symbolic commitment by the government towards women's role in public life.

Q: Was gender diversity affected by the concept of making everything uniform drive (uniformisasi) of the New Order government?

A: I went to a conference in Makassar in August, where regional autonomy and local culture were discussed. One of the problems that came through was indeed uniformisasi of the New Order.

A lot of it was related to the mid 1970s village role that was introduced, the common village structure for all of Indonesia. People saw it leading to the diminution of regional identity and local culture. I think it is important to remember that the difference in gender orders is an important aspect of cultural diversity in the Indonesian archipelago.

If we look at the ethnographic literature, there is a huge difference in the kinds of relationship between men and women at the local level, in terms of practical things like how property is distributed between men and women, and in ways local people access property.

In the New Order, through Dharma Wanita and (government- sponsored woman organizations) PKK in particular, a uniformed type of family was promoted, based on a uniformed set of relations between men and women. The government was Indonesianizing everyone, we can say.

Q: Do you think uniformisasi is on the way out now?

A: I would presume so. I am not sure uniformasi has been altogether successful. I think at this point in time there are many women who think about regional autonomy and what implications it has on women.

In the conference I mentioned previously, the participants seemed to think that cultural autonomy was very important. Indeed there has been a push to reinforce respect for local culture conditions throughout various regions.

However these things have to be well audited. In particular places there may be a need for women to struggle again. For instance, in some parts of Indonesia the traditional law guarantees property rights, but in other parts there are different kinds of kinship where women's property rights are more tenuous and more vulnerable. So there are different kinds of struggle that women need to take on.

Q: Do you think that with regional autonomy these differences will become more emphasized?

A: There may be two possible kinds of movement. On the one hand there are women who want to use the more abstract concepts of social justice and human rights to argue against practices like polygamy or in some of the more patrilineal societies, the denial of property rights to women.

On the other hand, it is likely that people would want to also emphasize aspects of their local traditions, which they see as empowering women and being more democratic.

Q: So are there also pitfalls for women in regional autonomy?

A: Yes. If I can go back to the August conference in Makassar, there was a talk by Andi Mallarangeng, who was then from the ministry of regional autonomy. He was of the opinion that, in regional autonomy, people should be relying on their local customs and local traditions to manage their everyday relations, provided that it was not neofeudalism or antihuman rights.

A big discussion followed. If the democratic rights of the local communities were going to be upheld, was it not their right to decide whether or not they wanted to reinstate their traditional practices, even if the traditional practices incorporated aspects of neofeudalism, or the degradation of women?

Yes, there might be a possibility that women would have to struggle for the rights that they had won in the past. Even when the Indonesian republic began, women had the franchise.

In terms of basic political rights, men and women had the same rights. It is possible that some people would try to challenge some of those things, under the guise of regional tradition and culture.

It is not clear to me if the minister of the empowerment of women is going to have a legal reach to overcome these potential problems.

Q: How do you see the role of Islam in the emancipation of Indonesian women? Many women at the grassroots level, who may be wary of Western ideas, may be more open to the reach of, for instance the women of the Paramadina foundation...

A: That is probably true. I know for example that many of the pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), especially in East Java, have been acting as agents of social change, in the general sense, such as in women's income earning opportunities.

Since Islamic organizations do have roots reaching down into villages, and legitimacy in the eyes of Islamic people, they have a real opportunity to make interventions into people's lives.

Aisyah, one of the oldest women's organizations, also has those kind of aspirations, which involve the improvement of conditions in women's lives. So there is a long history of Islamic organizations in Indonesia being involved in improving the social role of women.

The support for women has not only come from other women, it is more widespread. Remember when there was a lot of opposition from some Islamic members of the community for Megawati Soekarnoputri's presidency?

There was an attempt by some people to bring out textual interpretations, based on the restriction of women's public participation. It was, however, widely rejected, not only by the general public, but also by Islamic scholars who rejected that those were the correct interpretations of the Islamic texts.

Q: How do you see the next five years in terms of prospects for women?

A: I think in the next five years economic issues will have to loom pretty large, in terms of what sorts of employment opportunities there are for women, and what impact the ongoing economic problems will have in some parts of Indonesia, such as the educational participation of women.

And it is very likely that the monetary crisis will cause a decline in contraceptive rates. Those who are dependent on privatized family planning programs may not be able to afford it. This is a pressing issue because it may have an impact on the fertility rate and the rate of abortions.

With regional autonomy, an issue of concern is how much political participation women can have in the regional legislature.

If the economic crisis continues, another concern is whether more women will be pushed into low-paying employment.