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Women work hard in Timor-Leste. Beginning when they are girls, most females spend some of their day gathering firewood, cleaning, cooking and taking care of members of the family too young or old to care for themselves. At parties the women in Timor don’t celebrate. During festivals the men and elderly tell stories, chew betel nut and eat—while the women stay backstage keeping the food in constant rotation. Before a festival a woman’s work begins at daybreak when she begins preparing vegetables and meat. Outside, under tarps, men joke and share tobacco while the women sit inside the kitchen on rocks, stoking fires for boiling cauldrons of rice, tea or coffee. By noon the tiny, windowless kitchen is a dark dungeon of smoke and flame.
In most areas of Timor this is simply women’s work.
Laura Pina wasn’t from the Baucau area, but her husband was. Pina said in Ainaro, where she grew up, the people are not so hidebound to patriarchy. Growing up she was not expected to slave in the kitchen simply by virtue of her sex. But then she got married and moved.
Pina said she was shocked when she went to visit her in-laws for the first time in Baucau. “They thought women had to serve the husband’s family,” she said. “They thought I had to stay and cook in the kitchen for all the ceremonies. They expected me to stay in the kitchen all day and then eat last because that was their custom that women had to eat last—even if we sometimes ate in the middle of the night.”
Pina was not OK with this. Her parents were teachers and they had always encouraged her to get an education and make something of herself. When she saw firsthand how Timorese women are treated as second class citizens, she decided to do something about it. She started by arguing with her mother-in-law.
Then in 2001, she helped found the Women’s Caucus, a local NGO which addresses women’s issues. “I decided to fight for women’s rights because women in Timor-Leste have no voice in their own culture or politics,” said NGO head Laura Pina. The NGO focuses on women’s role in local politics. Pina said the Women’s Caucus has a volunteer focal point in each of Timor’s 13 districts. The focal point is usually busy doing trainings to women, explaining their civil liberties and, through civic education courses, convincing women they have a right to stand up and be heard in their communities.
Politically it was a good time for women’s rights. In 2002 the country ratified the CEDAW Convention, an international human rights treaty which guarantees the rights of women and girls everywhere. It was exactly the sort of thing Pina, and many other women in Timor, were struggling for.
After Timor ratified the Convention, the Women’s Caucus got a lot of support from UNIFEM. Pina said the United Nations agency has supported her staff to participate in conferences around Asia so they can compare notes with other women as well as better understand how to bring the message home.
Signing the Convention didn’t mean that the reality for the estimated half million women in Timor would change automatically. There would have to be programmes implemented to change people’s mindsets and laws would have to be drafted to promote equality.
As part of the Convention, governments agree to send periodic progress reports to the CEDAW Committee every few years. Timor-Leste started preparing its first report in 2005 and finally submitted it in March 2008.
Wishing to get the most complete idea on progress made in the country as possible, the CEDAW Committee encourages NGOs to draft a shadow report with their own analysis of the situation of women. Local women’s rights NGO Rede Feto (The Women’s Network) jumped at the idea and asked Pina to coordinate the effort.
Pina was onetime executive director of Rede Feto and because of her longtime interest in women’s issues, members of Rede Feto felt she should be the coordinator of the shadow report. Pina had been trained by UNIFEM on CEDAW principles and she has had an opportunity to meet NGOs from other countries in the region that have used the CEDAW reporting process to push for women’s equality in their country. So when Pina was given the opportunity to head up the shadow report, she jumped at the chance to augment the government’s report, which she saw as lacking. “[The government report] didn’t say much regarding the reality of women in Timor-Leste and also it just gives some very basic information and misses a lot of important things,” Pina said.
Pina and the working group she leads with members from various NGOs have been busy working for the last few months putting together an accurate statement about the state of women in Timor. They expect the report to be about 100 pages and they say it will be a clear representation of the struggles of Timorese women.
Pina said it is exhausting work for several reasons. There are the usual first time jitters that come with writing such an important document, but also Pina feels there is a lot at stake with the report. “We want the Committee to, after we present them with the report, write a strong recommendation to the Timor-Leste government so the government here will write some strong legislation to protect women and ensure they can lead lives free from discrimination,” said Pina.
In addition to the Committee, the report will be presented to the government in Timor-Leste. Pina said she hopes her words can convince her country’s leaders that life has to change—soon. “We want the shadow report to help the Timor-Leste government to really understand what problems the women of Timor face,” Pina said. “The government here can create concrete measures which can help the women of Timor-Leste overcome some of these problems.”
However, she understands real solutions to these problems take time. Her fight with her mother-in-law has cooled, but the old woman is as stubborn as ever. She said her mother-in-law is still no a fan of women’s rights, but Pina said her mother-in-law at least respects her and doesn’t argue with her. That tiny, personal change has taken over a decade to accomplish, but the lives of most Timorese women remain unchanged. For them a woman’s job is still to gather firewood, haul water, clean the house and cook the food—and then eat last and keep quiet in town meetings.
Pina’s youngest child is two. The boy can just barely speak, but Pina reckons it will be his generation which has a chance at equality and the government should focus on him. Asked when she thought women might live as equals in Timor, she said that day will come—maybe—when the boy is in university.
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Laura Pina Hopes the CEDAW Shadow Report