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