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Eight women sit in a circle on the floor; they sit cross-legged on straw mats, talking animatedly while they drink tea and munch on local sweets. They are discussing news they have just received about some new cases of ‘diskriminasi’ taking place in a village in the next regency (district) over.
They have heard that one village in the regency of Bulukumba in South Sulawesi has begun enforcing new local regulations that impose a strict dress code on women and restricts their rights. The new rules require that all women must abide by the baju muslim (Islamic dress), and wear the jilbab (head scarf) if they want access to public services including healthcare. They have heard cases of women actually being turned away by administration officials. Girls, even as young as six or seven, must also don the jilbab to attend school.
“As Muslim women, the jilbab that we wear is a matter of choice,” says Hajar, one of the women in the group who herself wears the head scarf. “If local laws are going to force all women to wear this, then this is going against our right to choose. There is no similar dress code for men. What’s more, many poor women can’t even afford to buy the jilbab to wear everyday.”
The group fears that other villages will follow suit – already they say women’s organisations have identified at least 30 local regulations in different districts that are impeding women’s rights. All have been established in the name of Syariah, or Islamic law, and purport to ‘protect’ women from negative situations that can arise as a result of the behaviour of men and women. Such regulations include women being prohibited from leaving the house in the evening without being accompanied by a male family member; and ‘zinah’, where women and men who are not married or related to each other cannot be in close proximity – the common penalty for this tends to be heavier on the woman, who typically is shamed in public, sometimes by caning, while men usually pay a small fine.
This is a negative effect of Indonesia’s new decentralization and regional autonomy process say the women, and of the growing influence of religious fundamentalist groups on the formulation of policies both at the national and local levels. Since greater authority has been devolved from the central government to provinces and districts, there is greater scope for laws to be open to interpretation and enforced or implemented differently, depending on the attitudes and mindset of local administration officials.
The group of women belong to an NGO network called the Forum Pemerhati Masalah Perempuan (FPMP) in South Sulawesi, one of Indonesia’s larger provinces. They work in Makassar, the capital, as well as a number of other districts further away, and have been strengthening their links with other grassroots women’s groups across the province to cover ever wider areas. The FPMP focuses on raising awareness about women’s rights in South Sulawesi, not only among local officials but also village women themselves. They give out information on reproductive health issues, on education, on access to basic services, and they encourage women to speak up about the problems they face.
“Village women have a very poor understanding of their rights. Most of them don’t even know what this is when we first approach them to talk about it,” said Marcelina May. “Now many of them are starting to question – for example, when they go to the health clinic, there is often no information given on medicines they or their children are told to take, so they never know what they are using, even if it could be harmful, or maybe useless. Now women are starting to question the health workers, to ask what the medicine is, and what exactly it is for.”
Since the advent of the decentralization process, the FPMP has centered its energies on advocacy to remove discrimination against women in local legislation and community practices. They are familiar with CEDAW, having attended several training workshops conducted by Jakarta-based women’s groups, and they know that CEDAW can be used as a tool to advocate against local laws that restrict women’s rights. Using CEDAW principles, the network focuses on three key issues: ending violence against women; corruption and its impact on women, and encouraging more women to get involved in their communities.
Domestic violence is a serious issue in the villages they say, but because it happens behind closed doors, it is a ‘family matter’ and a taboo subject, and many women are afraid to speak out. The practice of dowry-giving makes matters worse - since these tend to be hefty in South Sulawesi, once a man pays a woman’s family to marry her, he feels like he owns her and can treat her any way he wants. In 2007, the FPMP took part in the 16 Days Campaign to End Violence Against Women, an annual global event at the end of November, that sees local actions to advocate against violence taking place in many countries around the world. The FPMP’s activities included conducting public dialogues in villages, handing out public materials and also engaging the local media to raise public awareness.
For the last three years, the network has also conducted activities to raise awareness about corruption, telling women that if they don’t speak out, their families will be badly affected. Education is a case in point. Schooling is supposed to be free for all children at the elementary and junior high school levels. However parents are often faced with ‘illegal school fees’ in the form of extra payments required by school and administrative officials – if they don’t pay, they find their children excluded from certain school activities and classes.
The women say that corruption among local officials is a daily occurrence, and most people are simply resigned to it. They tell of an ongoing case against a Bupati or regency council chief, who raped his maid – police continue to refuse to prosecute even though the maid, who is unmarried, is pregnant. “Everyone knows he is guilty, and yet no one is doing anything about it.”
In 2008, the FPMP is directing their attention to promoting women’s participation in public life. They know that because of CEDAW, there are new national requirements for a 30% quota of women to be included in political parties and in parliaments. They are busy organizing public forums and community meetings to discuss the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Observations and urge grassroots women to get involved. They have met with some success says Hajar, “More and more women are questioning why there are so few women among the village elders. More are now saying they want to be included in the decision-making process, and are asking how they can participate.”
(January 2008)
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Grassroots Women Speak Out Against
