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Women: Life-affirming agents or bombers who kill?
We have come a long way — tragically, not in the way we had hoped for.
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The women’s movement in Indonesia has had a long life span, but we often forget to write about it. (Shutterstock/File)
I
n Asian societies you’re expected to respect your elders and learn from them. Well, at almost 64, maybe I’m a new-fangled Asian as I respect young people, and love to learn from them as well!
For example, when my son Aditya was a teenager, he opened me to the world of science fiction. I was quickly converted: unlimited imagination, alternative realities, idealized or wacky worlds — what’s not to like?
This youthful nudging happened again recently, when Nur Janti, a 24-year-old reporter from Historia magazine, the only popular history journal in Indonesia, interviewed me about the Voice of Concerned Mothers (SIP). She’s writing a series on women’s movements in Indonesia to commemorate 20 years of the Reform Era this month.
SIP gained worldwide fame in February 1998, when we — female activists, academics, housewives — demonstrated against exorbitant prices, especially milk, which was a covert way of protesting against the authoritarian New Order regime. We were all feminists but used “mother” and “milk” as a camouflage for our real cause: opposing New Order oppression. As a result of the demonstrations, the withdrawal of support from his power base, and the economic crisis that preceded it, Soeharto resigned on May 21 that year.
