Kartini Day celebrations Wednesday were lauded as a powerful platform on which to promote women’s emancipation by some rights activists, and deplored by others as evidence the public had missed the point of the heroine’s struggle for freedom from repression.
The commercialization of Kartini’s memory might rub the wrong way those familiar with the story of the national heroine’s struggle to seek enlightenment and freedom through education, but the phenomenon can also be made to serve women rights activists looking to push their cause.
On Wednesday, female Transjakarta bus conductors dressed in traditional kebaya and businesses offered special discounts for female customers.
The Transjakarta busway management confirmed it had required all 700 of its female employees to wear kebaya.
Okta Berlina, a ticket officer at the Bendungan Hilir bus stop in Central Jakarta, said she had been happy to spend a little bit of time that morning applying extra makeup and arranging her hair into a sanggul, a traditional bun at the nape of the neck.
“This is the first time I have dressed up in such a way. I feel fine and do not find it impractical,”
Okta said.
Her colleague, Nur Fitria, expressed a similar opinion, saying she was used to donning the traditional attire because she and her coworkers were also requested to dress formally every year on Jakarta’s anniversary on June 22nd.
Both Okta and Nur said they wished for an end to gender inequality in their workplace.
Businesses in the city celebrated Kartini Day by offering discounts. Oh la la Cafe offered a 30 percent discount for female customers from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. on Wednesday.
“We would like to make use of the occasion to lure more buyers,” cafe manager Nuh Ti’sin said.
He said that the effort had succeeded in attracting more customers than normal. “We have advertised this discount since April 1,” he said.
He said the franchise cafe typically received between 300 and 400 customers a day on weekdays and up to 500 people on weekends.
Septiana, a customer at the cafe, said the discount had surprised her.
Head of community participation sub-commission of the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan), Andy Yentriyanti, said that people should look beyond the commercialization of Kartini Day to the actual story of the heroine herself.
However, she conceded that the commercialization of the occasion had raised awareness about women’s emancipation.
“By drawing people to public places through Kartini Day celebrations there is a potential for conveying empowering messages.
“Malls, for example, can use their catalogues to tell about Kartini’s struggle,” she said.
Ikhaputri, the research coordinator of the Jurnal Perempuan foundation, which publishes Jurnal Perempuan, the country’s first feminist journal, said that by encouraging superficial traditions such as wearing kebaya, Kartini Day celebrations threatened to further repress women by turning attention to their physical features.
She said the kebaya, which accentuates the curves of a woman’s body, was a symbol of women’s contortion to their socially constructed role as defined by this patriarchal society, rather than of their freedom.
“Cloth that wraps around the body can be interpreted as a symbol of the oppression of a woman’s thoughts,” she said.
According to Ikhaputri, many people observed the superficial traditions of Kartini without looking beyond hype to the woman who had the courage to convey her social conventions through writing. (lnd)
Businesses in the city celebrated Kartini Day by offering discounts.
