Women Against Domestication

AFTER THE 20-year Reformation, the women's movement faces a challenge similar to Soeharto's authoritarian regime. When the New Order (Orba) "Ibuism" is a challenge, women's movement now faces challenges of religious conservatism such as female domestication, polygamy and early marriage.

Photo exhibition of women's movement activism of New Order era at Komnas Perempuan. Photo: Nur Janti / repro: Gun Gun Gunadi

Religious conservatism has shifted state domination over women. He wants women to be godly wives by being good mothers and also willing to be polygamous. This also forms the basis of Suharto's "Ibuism" ideology, although the New Order forbids polygamy.

"The ideal woman is shifted again to fill the domestic sphere. And that's what the women's movement is against when the New Order period. When the Reformation, the idea (domestication, red.) Is expected to disappear. Now it is trying to be pulled back, "said Atnike Nova Sigiro, executive director of Women Journal in Media Briefing held by Komnas Perempuan, Sunday (20/04/28).

In "Ibuism", good women are imitated obediently, silently, and family nurses. Suharto attempted to silence women's politics and placed the role of women only as wingking conco, the father's pairs who played in the back line: kitchens, mattresses, and wells.

"The relation of women to the state such as women relation with state father. Its representation is in women's organizations, Dharma Wanita and PKK, "said Ruth Indiah Rahayu, a feminist researcher at the Institute for Critical Studies and Alternative Development Studies (Inkrispena).

The wife's organization in line with the New Order gender ideology has no political vision of women's liberation, equality and justice. As a result, the organization will not be able to do anything to women's problems such as human rights violations, women's welfare, and women's access to politics.

The existence of fundamental problems that became the reason for the establishment of Annisa Swasti Foundation (Yasanti), Kalyanamitra, and Women's Resources Development Center in the 1980s. Women's organizations based on feminism appear to change the New Order's gender ideology in addition to trying to degrade its over-ruling New Order leader.

Their existence triggered a surge in the rise of the women's movement in the 1990s. Women's Solidarity, the Mardika Women's Foundation, the Institute for Women and Children's Development (LSPPA), and the APIK Legal Aid Institute added to the strength of the women's movement that emerged a little earlier.

In the struggle, the movement of women to build poetic emotions. The empathetic politics whose source of caring ethics is used against patriarchal and militaristic authoritarianism. The action taken to the streets of the Women's Coalition for Freedom of the Press (KPKP), for example, was aimed at opposing the 1994 press bans. Similarly, Suara Ibu Peduli (SIP) conducted a demonstration to respond to the 1997 economic crisis, set up to mobilize empathy for the masses and build awareness on mothers who can not afford to buy child milk.

Action SIP, according to Ruth, displays women's political peculiarities, namely the resistance to the economic-political crisis based on ethical concern. The SIP campaign attracted public concern and strengthened the power of the masses against Soeharto's authoritarian regime.

The women's movement continued to grow, culminating in the 1998 Reform. Women wanted to change the ideology of patriarchy into egalitarianism. The women's movement sought to prevent the state from putting women into wingking but giving political access and social welfare.

The changes that the women's movement fought for were all based on caring ethics. Reform and democracy based on caring ethics, avoiding group egoism, brutality, arbitrariness, and discrimination against both women and marginalized groups. The political culture that the women's movement wants to grow, Komnas Perempuan's statement in its press release, is true democracy, not an authoritarian and fascist democracy.

During the 20 years after Suharto's downfall, according to Ruth, the women's movement was busy filling out the policies, the idea of ​​women-friendly development but instead neglecting the attacks on women in the social sphere. Consequently, the values ​​of intolerance and conservative ideas that tend to target women rise wildly without supervision.

"This 20-year reform is too much used to push women into the public sphere. We forget the private arena that is intervened by fundamentalist conservative forces, "Atnike said.