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'Mother's Day' demeans Indonesia's historic women’s movement
Hari Ibu started to lose its real meaning after Soeharto, an Army general, took power in 1966 and strengthened the patriarchal system.
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Wonder women: Women of the Air Force carry their parachutes during a military drill at Iskandar Muda air base in Blang Bintang, Banda Aceh, Aceh on Feb. 8, 2019. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
L
ike most Indonesian children, I used to give my mother a greeting card on Dec. 22, the national Hari Ibu (Mother’s Day). For many years, she would receive it. But when I reached my 20s, she changed her tune.
“Our Hari Ibu has history: The fight of our founding mothers against women's discrimination,” she said. “I know this because my mother was an avid activist fighting for women’s rights.”
However, I did not take my mother seriously. All my life, all I knew was that Hari Ibu was to celebrate mothers. That is what school taught me. Until a couple of years ago, through historical literature, I found out that Hari Ibu was initially a momentous women’s fight. Its current notion is part of the country’s patriarchal system of domesticating women.
Chairperson of Indonesia’s Women’s Congress (Kowani), Giwo Rubianto Wiyogo, during 2020’s Hari Ibu, stated that “women have big roles as part of the solution” to the country’s development, not just to “breed and raise children”.
I realized my mother had a point. Now that both my grandmother and my mother have passed away, I feel it is my duty to correct this historical anomaly to honor them. I would thus urge the renaming of Hari Ibu to Hari Perempuan (Women’s Day). This change can be our battle against the country’s patriarchal system, which constricts women and is very detrimental to the nation’s progress.
The history of Hari Ibu began with the first Women’s Congress in Yogyakarta on Dec. 22-25, 1928, one of several in a historic chain of events in the quest for independence in what was then the Dutch East Indies. The women’s activists fought not only for the nation’s freedom, which Indonesia won in 1945, but they also challenged the deep-seated patriarchal system of the time.
The first Women’s Congress saw around 1,000 participants from 30 organizations from Java and Sumatra discussing education and women’s empowerment. They also advocated the eradication of illiteracy, child marriage, women trafficking and polygamy in their agenda.
