In conjunction with International Day of the Girl Child on Oct. 11, child rights organization Plan International Indonesia Foundation (YPII) organized a campaign called #GirlsTakeover aimed at promoting gender equality.

This year’s theme, Girls in Media, was chosen to build a positive public perspective about women in the media, according to YPII executive director Dini Widiastuti.

“The campaign aims to highlight the fact that there are still representations of women and girls that need to be fixed, either on social media or conventional ones,” she told The Jakarta Post after a #GirlsTakeover event in Jakarta on Thursday.

Plan International collaborated with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to conduct a research project on the representation of women and girls in film and media by analyzing 56 top-grossing films in 2018 from across 20 countries.

Resulting in a report titled Rewrite Her Story, the study found that 42 percent of male characters were depicted as leaders, compared to 27 percent of female characters.

It was also discovered that female characters in leadership roles are more likely to be sexually objectified (15 percent) than their male counterparts (4 percent), and the former are five times more likely to be sexually harassed than the latter.  

Although the report did not include respondents from Indonesia, Nazla Mariza from YPII, who revealed details of it on Thursday, said the Indonesia branch had conducted a similar poll involving nearly 3,000 respondents.

The poll shows that 83 percent of respondents believe a woman’s physical appearance is often presented in negative ways. It also shows that 77 percent of men are likely to lead.

“We need to show more stories about women in leadership with a positive narrative and no longer show women as objects,” she said.

To break the stereotype, #GirlsTakeover held a Sehari Jadi Pemimpin (Leader for a Day) activity on Wednesday, which saw eight girls from four provinces fill the roles of communications and information minister, editor-in-chief of The Jakarta Post and several other printing and television media, the ambassador of Sweden in Indonesia, East Nusa Tenggara governor and Google Indonesia managing director.

The #GirlsTakeover program was initiated in 2016 as part of a bigger global campaign called Girls Get Equal.

“Because girls do not have the same level of access as boys do, so we want to remove those barriers,” Dini said.

The organization has cooperated with various institutions so far, including five ministries.

Dini said the organization had seen positive changes happening to its past participants.

“We haven’t monitored whether [the campaign] made sustainable changes to the institutions that were taken over, but the program has affected the schools and regency of the [participating] girls, especially those from the eastern part of the country,” she said.

“Once a local administration held an event, they were invited and asked for an opinion. Their opinions in the process of making decisions were heard. Hence, it changed the institutions of their hometown.”

Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara, who delegated his position on Wednesday to Riska, 15, said he had also learned from the teenager, who hails from Lembata, East Nusa Tenggara.

“It was not just a [job] take over, but I learned a lot from her, especially about the way the youths think. That gives us references on how to develop human resources in Indonesia,” he told the Post after the event.

As he was replaced by someone who comes from the eastern part of Indonesia, Rudiantara said, “We must not see human resources with a Java-centric approach because there is also tremendous talent from the eastern part of the country. Equal opportunities must be opened across the country.”

Speaking at the same occasion, Riska said she learned a lot about leadership, even in just one day.

In the morning, she was given a chance to deliver a speech during a graduation ceremony in front of Esa Unggul University graduates and lecturers. She went to a meeting with a media group, a leadership meeting with Vice President Jusuf Kalla and, lastly, had dinner with 10 ambassadors.

Speaking about gender equality in a global context, Dini believed that Indonesia’s past achievements were always seen as average compared to other countries.

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