Pushing for women’s empowerment

There are 100 women for every 103 men among West Java’s 43 million people, the biggest province in the country. The figure may seem equal, but discrimination against women is still out there.

The Bogor Agriculture Institute’s Women Study Center head, Titik Sumarti, said West Java’s Gender Development Index, at 61.81, was still far behind the Human Development Index, which has reached 71.12. Out of 96 programs created by the West Java provincial administration, only two were identified by the center as gender-sensitive, a disparity they blamed for women’s low participation in development.

The province still suffers an educational gap as well, with only an estimated 46 percent of women attending senior high school, compared with 47.38 percent for men.

“Women are still barely represented in politics, at 12.5 percent in the West Java Legislative Council,” Titik said after a recent gender equality discussion with West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan.

With the low representation, the political process of pushing for gender equality within the budget will be a big issue, she added. Head of West Java’s Women Empowerment and Family Planning Agency, Sri Asmawati Kusumawardhani, known to many as Dani, said that despite limited attention, women’s roles are not something to be ignored.

Currently, 78 percent of the employees behind the informal sector, which accounts for more than Rp 7 trillion (US$805 million), are women, in addition to the many women working overseas as migrant workers who also bring money home.

“In terms of budget, it’s limited. But women’s roles in running the economy in West Java are pretty high,” said Dani.

She said her office’s main tasks are to push for empowering women in the economy, society, politics and education.

In the province, women carry a huge burden. The Central Statistics Bureau recorded that in 2008, 60 percent of the women in West Java played a dual role as housewives and as breadwinners who, on average, supported four family members. Support for women’s empowerment programs such as Perempuan Kepala Keluarga (Pekka), or the Women-Headed Households Empowerment Program, which was introduced in 2001 in West Java, must come from the government.

Dani said that, in the past 10 years, Pekka has expanded its network to 26 cities/regencies and has helped make 2,648 women who were the heads of their households more independent and socially active. Six regions targeted by the program in 2011 are Bandung city, Bekasi, Bogor, Banjar, Cimahi and Tasikmalaya.

“There should be more provocative programs such as Pekka pushing for social changes in West Java,” Dani said.

She hoped the province’s women could emerge to deal with prevailing social and economic programs despite the annual budget of Rp 900 million from the provincial administration, much lower than Rp 2.2 billion allocated to buy an official jeep for the West Java Legislative Council’s Speaker.

A mobile divorce trial involves the religious affairs court, by which judges would come to village offices to officiallize divorces between couples in a bid to cut costs. Courtesy of Pekka/Oemi Faezhati