Women's role
Women's role
The report by Ms. Linawati Sidarto entitled Women bear
heaviest burden (The Jakarta Post, Dec. 29) was interesting and
deserves a comment.
In an agricultural society there is a division of labor in the
family. The men do the harder works which require stronger
muscles such as hoeing, plowing as well as carrying the seeds and
harvest. Whereas women do the lighter jobs requiring more care,
like sowing the seeds, doing the post harvest work and selling
the agricultural products. These chores are in addition to
shopping, cooking for the family and taking food to the paddy-
fields for the men's lunches. They also have to take care of
their children.
In such a way of life men have more opportunities to
communicate with each other in the fields where their routine
work is relatively more specific in nature. While women are
concerned with the whole family life: listening for the cries of
their children, taking care of their health, etc. Women are the
ones who are most knowledgeable of the family's financial
condition.
Also the women are fully aware of the burden of their
husbands, who usually toil under the staunch heat of the sun and
are deeply concerned about them during lightning storms. They
wait patiently and will only eat after their husbands arrive at
home and all their children get fed, as a token of love of and
responsibility for the whole family. So women are not really
sacrificed by being assigned to bear the heaviest burden as
described by Ishak from the State Institute of Islamic Religion
(IAIN Alaudin).
However, the state of affairs changed when society entered the
era of industry and trade early in the period of the New Order.
Most people, particularly civil servants and military personnel,
still carry on with the division of labor customs of the
agricultural community.
Social communications are more influenced by profession than
geographical setting. Then women who are not the bread-winners
have limited communications within the family circles and a small
number of their husbands' office friends.
On the other hand, the husbands have wider relationships
through contacts with colleagues, business relations and
interactions with other institutions. More importantly. husbands
now control the financial affairs and are dominant in family
life. While the wives can only control the official income of
their husbands. Extra income, gained particularly through
corruption and collusion, is totally beyond the wives'
supervision. In such situations, wives are completely incapable
of controlling their husbands' behaviors.
To improve the situation, women deemed it necessary to enlarge
their communication network in their husbands' offices, and this
resulted in the establishment of Dharma Wanita (association of
employees' wives and female civil servants). In this organization
women can assume control over their husbands' behaviors and make
them keep treading the right track.
One of the most important government rulings was decree No. 10
which prohibits men from practicing polygamy.
What concerns us most nowadays is that there is a strong
tendency to show religious (Islam) identity. Unfortunately Islam
is perceived as Fiqh Law (juris prudence) and Arabization which
practically serves as an obstacle for emancipation and women's
basic rights such as rights to work, receive inheritance, and
assuming leadership, etc.
Another concern is the possibility that women are, for
religious reasons, not allowed to participate in sporting events,
nationally and internationally. Note that Arab nations did not
send a single woman athlete to the Sydney Olympics. I fear that
the Indonesian women will step a century backward, as did the
Afghan women.
M. IKHSAN
Jakarta