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Women seek better representation
“Fight
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“Fight. It’s a must. Without a fight, we will remain poor …,” sang musicians from the Union of Indonesian Street Musicians (SPI) at Taman Menteng, Central Jakarta on Thursday night.
When the musicians finished their show, an old woman, Ibu Fatimah, took to the stage to read a poem titled Ibu Penyelamat Negeri (Mother, the Savior of the Country).
“Queuing for gas no more. Lining up for kerosene no more.”
She ended her reading by saying, “happy anniversary Indonesian women, happy anniversary International Women’s Day,” to the applause of the audience.
The music and poetry readings were part of an event to mark International Women’s Day, March 8. The event was organized by a joint committee of organizations concerned with women’s rights.
“As the nation will have an election in April, this year’s commemoration of the International Women’s Day will focus on the same issue. We will campaign for an increased representation of women in the House of Representatives,” Masruchah, secretary general of the Indonesian Women’s Coalition (KPI), said.
“We will organize a peaceful rally on Sunday to campaign for female legislative candidates,” she said on the sidelines of Thursday’s event.
About 1,000 participants are expected to join the march, which will use the slogan, “Vote for Women in April’s election”.
Masruchah said the fact that representation of women in the House of Representatives stands at 11.6 percent can be blamed for existing discriminative policies against women.
“There are many issues that only women can really understand like polygamy and reproductive health. With a bigger representation of women, these issues could be discussed more seriously,” she said.
While recognizing that the political party law has adopted a 30 percent quota for female politicians, Masruchah said the quota will be meaningless if the female politicians are not empowered.
She added that while the 30 percent quota is critically important, it needs to be higher if equality between men and women is to exist, as it is hard for female politicians to influence the policy-making process with just 30 percent.
She regretted gender-bias policies issued by some regional council’s, which put women in the wrong positions. The issuance of regional policies requiring women to stay home at night and to wear specific dress is a hard evidence of “gender-biased regulations”, she said.
“The number of female voters is bigger than that of male voters. But, the representation of woman is smaller than that of men. This means women have poor access and control in policy making,” she said.
Aside from Masruchah, Anggito Abimanyu, head of the fiscal policies at the Ministry of Finance, spoke at the event.
He said that the global crisis will have a big impact on the country’s economic and social life. “The number and proportion of poor people will increase because of the global crisis. This means that we can’t avoid the increasing number of poor people,” he said.
Anggito, an economist from the Gadjah Mada University, said the next government will face numerous social and economic problems.
“There will be lay offs. We will be facing serious problems,” he added.
Anggito however said that the current government has drafted mechanisms and policy to help people deal with the crisis, especially by giving grants or soft loans to small-scale industries.
Thursday’s event featured a bazaar, a music show and a public discussion of women’s rights ahead of the April election. Political analyst Yudi Latief was scheduled to speak at the public dialog, but he did not show up.
