A Woman Concept of The Oppressed

Though it was already familiar that a woman is a gender being, and of a female other than male, a man. As gender being, it is academically accepted as well part of con census among feminist that woman embedded with social construction. In Indonesia the term of woman is perempuan. But due to different understanding about the concept as a gender-being as term of woman, and a biological being as female, Indonesian feminist still using woman-perempuan to opposed women’s constructed patriarchal as woman, not a female. While in reality, word of perempuan continuously use by feminist to promote women’s awareness and progressiveness against patriarchy. I guess, within this term, I will use woman-perempuan as term of human creature who is oppressed/marginalized as a concept, as well as reality and a symbol of the ultimate word “the oppressed”, and this woman is struggle to get away with the oppression condition to become aware, of their rights by using feminism as a weapon and tool. While female, wanita or betina as a female creature is not yet have the ability to understand that they are being oppressed, and most of them still using patriarchal constructed to female creature for their ‘benefit’. Within this context the wanita, or betina is not only could adopt patriarchal role of being male-man and being female, they seem to not wanting to get away with the constructed condition by patriarchal system. So perempuan has internal meaning within the word as awareness of being oppress and has power within to claim perempuan to be able to empower themselves.

Susan Mausart, WIFEWORK what marriage really means for women

Perkawinan

Perkawinan monogami, menjadi lembaga tujuan hidup perempuan, paling tidak fase baru pengalaman hidup perempuan dan menjadi tempat berlindungnya. Tapi sebaliknya, itu pun lebih merupakan harapan ideal perempuan tentang perkawinan. Pada realitasnya, hasil penelitian memperlihatkan perempuan menjadi lebih tidak bahagia, 80% pengajuan cerai dilakukan oleh perempuan (hal.123 ). Lebih lanjut, penelitian juga melukiskan kontinuitas dan bertambahnya wifework (apabila punya anak) dalam perkawinan, tetapi semakin berkurangnya wifework saat bercerai (tak menikah, tetap lajang)dan laki-laki menjadi lebih bahagia dengan menikah, lebih terurus, serta kehidupan seksnya lebih baik.

Ada banyak pergeseran tentang konsep perkawinan, terutama pada makna istri, menunjukkan adanya perubahan yang signifikan pada perempuan melihat perkawinan, tetapi tidak pada laki-laki. Jadi ada yang tetap dan ada yang bergeser. Kebutuhan perempuan dan laki-laki untuk menikah. Laki-laki lebih konservatif menilai perkawinan. Fakta dan data provokatif menguak kegelisahan yang amat sangat perempuan menikah. Sepertinya perempuan Indonesia tidak sedahysat pengalaman saudarinya di negara tersebut di atas, meskipun tentunya Pseudomutuality-nya tetap ada. Suatu situasi di mana sesungguhnya ada ketidak cocokan (terutama pada perempuan), tetapi keduanya tetap menahan diri untuk perkawinan dan berpura-pura saling membagi secara egaliter, padahal tetap saja peran yang stereotip gender ada di dalamnya.(hal.22). Perubahan yang cepat atas kondisi dan status perempuan dibanding ratusan tahun lalu, tidak diimbangi oleh perubahan pihak laki-laki tentang perkawinan, telah menyebabkan perempuan sulit bahagia. Karena ternyata hasil penelitian membuktikan institusi perkawinanlah, ranah kehidupan yang belum beranjak untuk melakukan perubahan pola ketidak adilan gender. Division of emotional labor, perempuan harus menjadi “istri” dengan jobdeskripsi tersulit menjadi “Relationship Manager”, penjaga harmonisasi rumah tangga, bagian dari full-time job(hal16)

Bagaimana pun perkawinan adalah suatu lembaga kompromi antara perempuan dan laki-laki. Ada tiga stake holder di perkawinan bila ada anak. Suami-Istri-Anak. Pada akhirnya secara struktural ada tiga peran stakeholder ..the result is a role structure which benefit men enormously, children adequately, and women insufficiently (hal.14) Orang menikah dan membentuk keluarga untuk berketurunan. Atau sederhananya, Susan Maushart menyatakan, bahwa laki-laki menikah dan punya anak maka ia akan punya Certificate of Ownership sedangkan perempuan punya Contents Insurance (hal.42) Dalam kondisi masyarakat umum di mana pun, perkawinan dicoba untuk dipertahankan demi anak. Bagi perempuan, sesungguhnya kehadiran anak juga merupakan kerja tambahan, dan untuk pekerjaan ini ia butuh pendukung, suami. Pekerjaan mengurus anak adalah tuntutan moral pada istri, tidak pada suami. Berbeda dengan binatang mamalia yang setelah lahir cepat mandiri, anak manusia membutuhkan bimbingan lama. Ini pulalah yang membuat perempuan sulit untuk membesarkan anak tanpa dukungan pihak lain. Mungkin saja seorang laki-laki juga mengasuh anak, tetapi mengasuh anak tak pernah menjadi job deskripsi laki-laki saat menjadi suami, sama sepertihalnya, menjadi pencari nafkah tak pernah masuk jobdesk perempuan saat menjadi istri. Meski kadangkala keduanya mungkin melakukan keduanya, tapi faktanya menunjukkan perempuan karena gendernya, melakukan pekerjaan rumah tangga atau second shift bagi perempuan juga bekerja di luar rumah, lebih banyak dibanding lelaki.

Mengapa Perempuan Menikah

Perempuan menikah dan memasuki perkawinan monogami, karena empat alasan kebutuhan; reproduksi, ekonomi, sosial dan psyko-seksual. Agar bisa membesarkan anak, agar bisa mendapat kestabilan ekonomi, agar bisa mendapat identitas sebagai orang dewasa di komunitas dan agar mendapat pengalaman cinta dan berpasangan.(hal.60) Prioritas dari ke empat itu kini berubah. Kadang kala, tanpa menikah pun perempuan bisa mendapatkannya. Laki-laki menikah untuk hal yang sama untuk menjaga dan mengetahui keturunannya, mendapat pelayanan seksual, sosial, emosional dan pisikal dari perempuan. Penelitian tentang perempuan dan laki-laki lajang menunjukkan, bahwa perempuan tidak terlalu lagi menganggap penting perkawinan. Bahwa perkawinan masih menjadi penting bagi perempuan adalah karena anak. Mempunyai anak, penelitian menunjukkan hanya 11% dari pasangan subur yang tak memiliki anak (hal 36). Bagi perempuan tentu saja penting untuk menikah dan punya anak, karena mulai dari menyusui hingga umur tertentu masih memerlukan perhatian ibu, dan ini perlu bantuan orang lain pula, suami. Sederhananya, perempuan …want a mate to protect and provision them and their offspring—at least until those offspring are off their hands (hal.36). Untuk memperoleh hal ini perempuan harus membayar dengan harga, kehilangan otonomi seksualnya, kehilangan garis keturunannya sendiri, bahkan terputusnya tali solidaritas dengan perempuan lain.

Bagaimana pun perkawinan adalah suatu yang hanya bisa dihasilkan dari interdependensi, maka itu monogami adalah pilihannya. Sementara bagi perempuan monogami juga menolongnya tidak menghadapi terus menerus melahirkan, dan mengalami penderitaan persalinan. Tentunya alasan ekonomi, psiko-seksual tetap menjadi penting. Karena hingga hari ini pun, perempuan masih mencari laki-laki idaman sebagai suami minimal dengan penghasilan yang lebih tinggi apabila tidak intelektualitasnya. Sepertinya perempuan pun sudah tahu konsekwensi yang dibayar untuk keamanan yang di dapat dalam perkawinan, yaitu menjadi wife-istri dengan sejumlah jobdeskripsinya. Situasi pembagian peran berdasarkan gender yang menempatkan perempuan yang tidak berubah sejak berabad-abad lamanya.

Pekerjaan Rumah Tangga = Gender

By Vandana Shiva,Economic globalization has become a war against nature and the poor.

In Java, small farmers cultivate 607 species in their home gardens. In sub-saharan
Africa, women cultivate as many as 120 different plants in the spaces left alongside the cash crops, and this is the main source of household food security.

A single home garden in
Thailand has more than 230 species, and African home gardens have more than sixty species of tree. Rural families in the
Congo eat leaves from more than fifty different species of tree.

A study in eastern
Nigeria found that home gardens occupying only 2% of a household’s farmland accounted for half the farm’s total output. Similarly, home gardens in
Indonesia are estimated to provide more than 20% of household income and 40% of domestic food supplies.

Research done by fao has shown that small biodiverse farms can produce thousands of times more food than large, industrial monocultures.

And diversity is the best strategy for preventing drought and desertification.

What the world needs to feed a growing population sustainably is biodiversity intensification, not chemical intensification or genetic engineering. While women and small peasants feed the world through biodiversity, we are repeatedly told that without genetic engineering and globalization of agriculture the world will starve. In spite of all empirical evidence showing that genetic engineering does not produce more food and in fact often leads to a yield decline, it is constantly promoted as the only alternative available for feeding the hungry.

THAT IS WHY I ASK, who feeds the world?

This deliberate blindness to diversity, the blindness to nature’s production, production by women, production by
Third World farmers, allows destruction and appropriation to be projected as creation.

Take the case of the much-flaunted “golden rice” or genetically engineered vitamin A rice as a cure for blindness. It is assumed that without genetic engineering we cannot remove vitamin A deficiency. However, nature gives us abundant and diverse sources of vitamin A. If rice were not polished, rice itself would provide vitamin A. If herbicides were not sprayed on our wheat fields, we would have bathua, amaranth, mustard leaves as delicious and nutritious greens.

Women in
Bengal use more than 150 plants as greens. But the myth of creation presents biotechnologists as the creators of vitamin A, negating nature’s diverse gifts and women’s knowledge of how to use this diversity to feed their children and families.

INDONESIA CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM

Ø By the year1980s enter a “new” perspective to liberating women. Indonesia’s women students and activist learnt about liberal feminist ideology mostly from US and UK.

Ø State of Indonesia forced by (US) to have women’s empowerment minister. In 1978-1983, there was a first Young State Minister of Women: Lasijah Soetanto.

Ø Women students engage with ‘male stream’ left organization (mostly discussion groups).Women who joined male organization, later on formed a new women organization with feminist as their main perspectives to criticized society and state. One of these was Kalyanamitra. In order to be saved as organization from scrutinized New Order regime, Kalyanamitra chose their operation as women’s information centers.

Women Against the Higher Price Fuels

Women do not share ownership in many oil companies. And the second used energy of fuels are for domestic, mostly manage by women, and it was not always petroleum, it is too firewood. For petroleum product, women are consumer, not producers. They do not own capital, skill, and natural resources for petroleum exploration or exploitation. Women do not have much chance to works offshore and involved to explore and exploit earth for oil. Male domination in public is rigid for mechanic works, especially in Oil Company. But it was women who actually have to deal with oil for daily basis of human lives. Women need fuels for cooking. Now, petroleum is the only fuels provide in urban areas, and kerosene is replacement of firewood.

22 DESEMBER 1928,PEREMPUAN BERSATU MELAWAN KEKERASAN PEREMPUAN

Sejarah Gerakan perempuan Indonesia tak lepas dari gerakan social pada umumnya. Perempuan aktif dalam kegiatan organisasi pemuda organisasi berlatar belakang kedaerahan seperti Jong Java, Jong Sumatra atau Jong Ambon. Perempuan Indonesia juga aktivis pergerakan nasional, meski nama dan kerjanya tidak dicatat sejarah. Faktanya perempuan ikut mendeklarasian Sumpah Pemuda 28 Oktober 1928. Saat itu pada organisasi umum juga divisi perempuan seperti Wanito Tomo dari Boedi Oetomo, Poetri Indonesia dari Poetra Indonesia dan Wanita Taman Siswa dari Taman Siswa. Organisasi perempuan yang berdiri di awal gerakan di antaranya adalah Putri Mardika, 1916.

Perempuan pelopor yang menjadi panitia pelaksana Kongres Perempuan Indonesia I 928 dan ikut dalam deklarasi Sumpah Pemuda 1928 antara lain Soejatin, Nyi Hajar Dewantoro, Sitti Sundari dan lain-lain. Merekalah inisiator dan penggerak Kongres Perempuan Pertama 22 Desember 1928.

Women’s Politics Representation in Media

Politic Representation and Media

Gerakan Perempuan Indonesia Tanpa Ideologi

Hasil pengamatan dan pengalaman saya, gerakan Perempuan Indonesia yang selayaknya memiliki ideologi feminisme ternyata tidak berideologi feminisme. Feminisme yang saya amati selama lebih dari sepuluh tahun berkiprah dalam gerakan perempuan sekedar feminisme sebagai cara praktis berkegiatan (seminar, diskusi, pengorganisasian massa atau komunitas), dan bukan bentuk feminisme dalam artian metode strategi gerakan (sosialisme, radikal), tetapi benar-benar metode pelaksanaan kegiatan yang mungkin bagian utama dari strategi feminisme liberal. Feminisme yang tumbuh dalam gerakan sebagai cara praktis dalam seminar, rapat-rapat, diskusi dan mungkin beberapa sudah menerapkan dalam organisasi maupun struktur, tapi belum diadopsi menjadi ideology pribadi (persons politics) yang aktif maupun yang pensiun dari gerakan perempuan. Feminisme dalam konteks ini adalah feminisme gerakan kolektif dan individu yang secara simultan mengimplementasikan (terejawantahkan dalam keseharian) tujuan melawan dan menghapuskan seksime serta secara simultan melawan rasisme, klasisme yang ada (yang antara lain didorong oleh sistem kapitalisme).

Saya berkesimpulan sebagian kegagalan perempuan selama ini adalah karena feminisme belum menjadi ideologi gerakan, apalagi ideologi personal para aktifis perempuannya. Mengapa saya harus membedakan antara ideologi dan cara praktis. Cara-cara feminisme sebagai praktis memang telah diterapkan pada kurikulum pemberdayaan perempuan di berbagai lini komunitas bawah, menengah maupun atas, tapi yang membedakan ideologi Feminisme dengan ideology lain yang ada dimuka bumi ini adalah kata-kata inclusive-exclusive (femin(e)-isme, perempuan. Yang berarti barang siapa perempuan yang mengaku feminis, taruhannya adalah ideology (gerakan) itu sendiri. Tolok ukurnya sangat kasat mata (perempuan/female/wanita/woman) manakala seorang yang memakai cara praktis feminisme belum tentu ia berideologi feminis. Buktinya tapi apakah sebagai ideologi telah diterapkan didokrinasi sehingga menembus dan menetap ke alam bawah sadar aktifis perempuan (laki-laki) saya sangat menyangsikannya. Hal ini terutama karena sepanjang perjalanan sebagai aktifis saya mendapati bahwa feminisme sebagai cara-cara berorganisasi dan berkegiatan belum ‘menjadi’ dan ‘menjati’ pada diri aktifis perempuan yang berkegiatan dan mengunakan metode feminisme tersebut.

INDONESIA’S WOMEN LOCAL CULTURE

This paper will describe how women too practiced its values, in general term act for solidarity between women gotong royong and tolong menolong (mutual help). These practiced has been and still done by ethnic groups in many areas in Indonesia, and become informal institutions. These institutions have important implications in field of economics as refereeing to a technique of teamwork[10], but in neither case is it possible to distinguish between individual obligation and group interest (guyub). And with this aura of global culture, could women still could preserve this institution, or how do they manage to react on what is coming into their life? And how does the role of the state within this context, is it actively involve to maintain or ignore?

Beyond Differences Women’s Culture and Global Culture

Woman work is daily work, it part of their live as women, as mother, sister and human being. In maintaining culture, their activities are part of daily basis in preserving their family, their environment and their future generation. These were said and unsaid by women, but we could look right through their activities as it were something with meaning, a great meaning of as part Indonesian women identity and as Nation. Throughout women activities we could almost always seen solidarity as part of their action.
Indonesian women have different culture for each tribe, island and class background. And in its differences there are almost always have similarity. Within this paper I would like to describe a bit about the differences and similarity between women from random big island in Indonesia that could be in Sumatera, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Nusatenggara, Papua or Bali. Due to limited funding, and time for research, I will only make example from what I find through literature and my personal observation.
The daily activities of women cultures are shown in differences activities in related wedding processes, labor, mourning commemoration of a deceased person, crops production process, financial owner and decision making within family. The similarities are their value for religious fervor, position in traditional board (Lembaga Adat), solidarity and mutual help/assistance or gotong royong, respect with each other, and sharing method of healing for ill.
Gotong royong is usually shown in marriage ceremony, labor (gave birth), death commemoration, beginning cultivating, harvest, or if neighbor of colleague friend hospitalize and traditional ritual in related to religious or ongoing activities as arisan; a social gathering whose member contribute and like to an aggregate some money. Money is not the aim, but communality in essence is act of sisterhood/brotherhood or silaturahmi (good with each other).
Solidarity and respect are shown in almost activities of women. Most women who have to leave the house for work, she could ask her neighbor to look after her children. Respect each other as women regardless their differences of religious, ideology, work status, or even class as shown in women organization. These women’s cultures are still persisted today, while the world has come to global culture. How women still maintain this culture, with this speedy of invasion of global culture, especially by television? Is it still existed as it was, or changed or modified?

WOMEN ON STATE DISCOURSE, NEVER HEARD, NEVER PUBLISHED

Many of social activities that being conduct through civil society organization, especially women’s organization were/are to reconsidered social contract for women as citizen. They start upsurge the questions of rights of women as citizen. Do women have rights to have their own name after marriage, do women have rights to bear children after divorce, do women have to get husband’s permission to submit loan, do women independently could go for election; become candidate, do women could get a higher career and go abroad for duty without husband/father permission, to state acknowledge women as part of citizen to defend their country with the way they chose non gender’s way. Those questions are part of women’s power to redefined social contracts. Like what already been stated by Carole Pateman,”…that the very theorytical structure of modern system of power ignore female sexual difference by absorbs it into an abstract paradigm of the individual which is understand a male and universal”.

In Indonesia, women denial to participation in politics as part of citizen rights is acute. More often than not, women become fear, and lack of self esteem were/are to actively involve in state politics. The New Order government has managed to exploited stereotype of women in advantage of greater space for masculinity/militaristic control of all individuals. The exploitation is implemented in suppressed and control of women in politic/public and domestic. Women could never enjoy to able to express their opinion, not even proud of. The New Order government maintain stereotype by introduced women’s dignity and valued after their task as mother. Women must be good and be angel. Double standard is only for women. New order’s fall in 1998 yet still lingering this condition.