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One family, one office at a time
Dec. 22 is Women’s Day, or supposedly Women’s Empowerment Day, Hari Ibu, often mistaken as Mothers’ Day as it was reduced to such under the New Order.
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Illustration of gender equality. (Shutterstock/File)
A friend who just gave birth once told me how relieved she and her husband were when they found out that their baby was a boy.
“Being a girl in this patriarchal society is not easy, let alone raising one. You have to deal with so many challenges and burdens,” she said.
Looking at the statistics on women, I understand my friend’s fear.
A 2018 study by the World Economic Forum showed that it would take 202 years for women to earn as much as men.
In Southeast Asia, Indonesia has the fourth-highest gender inequality index after Myanmar, Lao and Cambodia. The index measures women’s empowerment in health, education and socioeconomic status.
Indonesia has also been seeing a rise in the number of cases of violence against women since 2016. Efforts to protect women from any form of violence were sabotaged when the House of Representatives rejected passing the sexual violence eradication bill into law.
On paper, the condition of women in Indonesia looks bleak for now — and for the future.
