A Gloomy
Picture of Indonesian Women
The Struggle to Live in an Oppressive
Cage Interwoven by Imperialism and Patriarchal Feudal Vanity
When
land confiscation under the name of development went rampant, when development
affects the environment and inflict spring droughts, when farmers are worker in
his own land guised under food and energy sustainability; when agriculture,
power, health, and education subsidies are minimalized, or even cut completely;
women are the most affected of those. Because as the supposed controller of
family needs, it is women’s duty to ascertain her family’s daily needs are
fulfilled.
Women in the midst of imperialist
domination
The domination
of international Capitalist monopoly system, or imperialism, keeps creating one
crises after another. United States of America (USA) as the country with
foremost control on imperialism is putting a leash on secondhand and parasitic
system with armed aggression and intervention. Anti-USA government are
overthrown, electoral voting systems which is full of manipulations are
promoted, and acceleration on free trade areas which benefits the USA multiply
sufferings all over the world. All of USA’s efforts mentioned above has
depraved so many lives of their rights to live in their own countries, and
directed monetary profits to only a small percentage of people.
Under the
domination of imperialism, women are bearing the burdens:
1.
By
working 2/3 of jobs in the world (there are more women than men in the work force),
but are only got 10% of the world income and control only 1% of production
factors;
2.
With
116 million of 15-24 years old girls in developing countries never have the
chance to finish their education, while 2/3 of 774 millions of women are
illiterate;
3.
Women
are paid less than men for the same job—even in the USA, women earns 81 cents
USD, for 1 dollars a man makes. Asia and Africa has the average of 60% of wage discrepancy between men and women;
4.
Women
and children are the makes up most war refugees;
5.
More
than 64 million underage girls are married;
6.
One
of 5 girls under 18yo gives birth in developing countries and makes up 70.000 deaths
due to childbirth;
7.
Seventy
percent of populations living in poverty are women;
8.
Thirty
five percent of women experienced domestic violence;
9.
Women
only makes up to 20% of parliaments all over the world; most of them were
coming from ruling class.
10.
Most
victims of human trafficking who ends up as unpaid sex workers are made up of
women.
Donald
Trump’s election as US president will accelerate US, be it political, economic
or cultural. Trump, who is portrayed as an anti-globalization in imperialist
schemes, shows manipulated dramas between US and People’s Republic of China’s
economic contestations, with propagandas that lies to the world. Even in a
global economic meeting event, PRC
president gave out statements that are shaped to look like he opposes Trump,
while in reality the two countries are interlaced in a scheme where Trump
dominates, Chinese economy poses as a balance to US power, and behind it,
imperialism triumphs.
Imperialists
nowadays are increasing its aggressions and military interventions to expand
its control and dominations. Few of USA’s imperialist actions includes:
1.
Aggressions,
military interventions, and altering regimes;
2.
Ballistic
support and financial back-ups for military industries;
3.
War
provocations and military bases expansions;
4.
Supporting
authoritarian regimes, terrorist groups, and armed civilians armies in various
countries;
5.
Militarization
of civil bureaucracy, national budget, academic institutions, and repressing
democratic civil freedom;
6.
Resurrecting
neo fascist, xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia; and
7.
Turning
a blind eye on gender-based violence, harassments, and rapes as a utilized
weapon in aggression backed by the US.
US
military policies will always be a link between military bureaucracy power and
weapon trade industries, which is a major income source for imperialism. Major
military industries will benefit with political advances between countries,
such as the Middle East and European countries. Terrorism will persists—and
will be elevated with the migration issue in the Europe and US by anti-Muslims
policies implemented by Trump’s government.
Trump’s
military policies won’t pull US and NATO soldiers in Russian borders. With
NATO, Trump’s policies are driven towards ensure other military powers such as
Russia and PRC do not develop, by enhancing border and international sea
patrols. Trump will also continue going against insurgencies which fights for
national independence or people’s movements with terrorism issues. As part of
imperialism, the US will maintain its military intervention towards countries
which shows signs of reluctance in obeying the US, such as Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Libya-Mali, and Yemen.
Status quo of Indonesian women
under imperialism and patriarchal feudalism domination
Indonesian
women, along with women from other agriculture-based nonindustrial countries,
are times worse than those of capitalistic countries. While women’s state is deteriorating,
Indonesian government fails to come up with a redeeming and independent
solution. Ever since the May Movement in 1998, Indonesia has been a subject to
‘democratization project’ led by the US and other capitalist countries. The
agenda includes encouraging ‘moot participation’ of women as much as 30% which
in lots of programs and projects—the number of women are even set to a quota in
parties and parliament. Then, imperialists facilitates a few women who would
oppresses other agendas and represent the interests of feudal lords, capitalist
bureaucrats, and bourgeois. These women who are situated to overshadow real
participations in economy-politic decision making in Indonesia contributes to
manipulating Indonesia to be the third biggest democratic country in the world.
At
the same time, women of lesser financial abilities, of rural upbringing are
forced to stay an overshadowed subject to the women who represent the reigning
power’s interest. Millions of women in rural areas has to make do with
sufferings while working in factories, being sent as migrant workers, and
working as housemaids in order to free the others from oppression, without any
protections Up to this time, Indonesia government are riding on imperialistic
policies in addressing women’s economy and social rights by subjecting women of
poverty with programs like Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which is now
updated to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The policies are dictated
by imperialistic values, as can be seen from Direct Cash Aid (BLT), Family Hope
Program (PKH), World Bank’s Conditional Cast Transfer, Bantuan Beras Miskin
(Rice Aid), and Health Care Insurances, Housing Aids, Students of Poverty Aids,
Operational School Aid Budget, Kartu Indonesia Pintar (Indonesian Education
Card), Kartu Indonesia Sehat (Indonesia Health Card) and the likes.
Government
claims that those imperialistic programs succeeds, and that women and
children’s welfare are handled. SDGs targets these days, including women’s
active participation, is claimed to have experienced improvement. But in
reality, maternal and children’s death caused by poorly managed healthcare
systems are still there, and tend to increase instead of decreasing. Low
quality policies and public education facilities not only oppress women, but
specifically also targets mothers of school-aged children. School-aged children
who come from poverty are victimized by education system which eliminates them
from the opportunity of having quality education the children deserves.
From
the start of his reign, Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has put a rise on fossil-based
fuel (BBM) prices, which affects to the multiplication of daily needs prices,
and at one side depraved women of their already limited wages. Wages and market
commodity prices doesn’t have any improvement towards the wellbeing of working
caused by exporter and importer monopoly. Women are stuck in the middle, having
to meet up the social construction of being able to hold a very limited family
financial under control while daily needs prices are rocketing.
Oppression
which takes shapes in violence and discrimination towards women in both rural
and urban areas are deeply rooted in imperialism and feudalism, combined with
the reign of a few people who holds power. The number of women and children who
are victimized by this systematic oppression is increasing without any effort
to resolve the phenomena. Jokowi has
decreed a set of economic policies which doesn’t benefits the people,
especially women, at all. The policies, instead, tend to eternalise a form of
society that is half colonialised, half feudal that benefits bourgeois
compradors and land owners.
Jokowi’s fake Agrarian Reform
program; legalizing land confiscation and monopoly, and how they damage women
in agriculture sectors
Women
are chained down by a variety of forms feudalism takes shapes in in rural
areas. Government’s inability to provide healthcare, education, power, clean
water, transportation, and communication systems strengthens the systematic
chaining down. Working the same job with equal difficulties as men worker in
various land owner’s major plantations, women receives way less payments than
men. Women eventually falls victims to loan sharks with high rates of interests
and are often can’t pay back their debts. They are often involved in child
marriages, death by child labor, and the lack of healthcare system and
education for their child.
Jokowi’s
agrarian reform policies are also oriented in trying to silence demands coming
from agriculture workers and women, who are most likely don’t have lands of
their own. Jokowi’s government officially decreed that they will distribute as
much as 9 million and 12,7 million hectare of lands in all over Indonesia. The
ownership of those lands can fall to everyone, where there is no certainty as
to what the qualification and the process of the distribution will be. Agrarian
reform under the Jokowi reign is more like ‘asset sharing’ and land ownership
(hak milik) certificate mass publishing. The program is a fraud because it goes
against urgencies and the interests of agriculture needs and Indonesian who
doesn’t own land. At the same time on the other hand, palm oil, sugar canes and
other major plantations are monopolizing land in tremendous amount using
foreign investment and debts as its income source. Jokowi’s agrarian reform is
also unable to repossess colonial-inherited lands during the Soeharto Era, and
during the following reigns. The lands that remains outside of the national
possession of land are now under the possession of major plantation companies,
mining companies, and national parks and conservation programs that are backed
by foreign investments.
Agrarian
reform is not always about lands. Lots of agriculture workers cant work on the
soil of their land because they lack of budget and is eventually involved with loan
sharks. Lots of agriculture workers who are finally able to work on their soil
receives a minimum profit due to agriculture commodities being low in price
while at the same time, other substantial resources are rocking in price.
Agrarian reform are supposed to improve the quality of wage received by
agriculture workers based on their burdens of works.
Women
will live in prolonged poverty and under everlasting and deteriorating crises
if they keep living without their own land or live with a limited land.
Majority of agriculture worker are very limited in budget or don’t even have it
caused by the low price of agriculture products and the high price of
maintaining. True agrarian reform will work on to solving those fundamental
problems, while fraud agrarian reform will only give out the illusion that
agriculture workers are well-cared for while in reality working to silence
their voices and tone their demands down. The same thing is painted in Jokowi’s
agrarian reform which is essentially a scheme to intesifies monopoly and land
confiscation.
The
oppression elucidated above also happens with multiplication towards minorities
(SBM). They have been a victim of forced land and natural resources confiscation
throughout the colonial era, Soeharto’s regime and even now. Indigenous lands
belonging to SBM are subject to mass concessions to plantation, mining and
national lands without considering their economy and social aspects. Land
confiscation has depraved their opportunity to advance and catch up with other
cultures in Indonesia and the world.
PP 78/2015 about wage system; a
new scheme of wage confiscation in Jokowi-JK’s reign and how it damages female
workers
PP
78/2015 is the most recent formulation that regulates on payment and wage
systems, authorized during the Jokowi era. Through the regulation, Jokowi
instructs provincial governors to restrict wage increase in their respective
municipalities by synchronizing with the national economic development and
national inflation rate. Indonesia’s national development rate sits at the
average of 5% and the national inflation rate is 3%. According to the
regulation, wage raise can’t exceeds the two rates. If there’s going to be a
raise, a worker has to work harder to achieve a certain amount above the rate
to increase national income.
The
inflict harm towards workers because their wage is way lesser than their daily
maintenance budget. Now the country is only capable of controlling worker’s
wage, but are not capable of controlling the daily needs price in the market.
The country is also not capable of controlling the capital profit taken by corporations
from the hard work of the workers.
Women and children plantation
worker problems
Women and
children who are working in big scale plantations has fate that is not
different than those who work in the industrial sectors. Women who works in
plantations still experience wage gaps, where their works are paid less than
men’s. Women also doesn’t have safety insurance against chemical substances,
sexual violence, isn’t granted time off for period, maternity, and is
struggling with the lack of lactation facility in the workplace. Those
conditions has to be bearded by the women, to contribute to fulfill her
family’s daily needs.
The lack of a well-managed and
conducive workplace with proportional pay for women and Indonesian people in
general
The
percentage of jobless Indonesian is increasing. The amount of foreign
investment that is intended to repair and uplift the economy under Jokowi’s
economic policy assumptions is proven to be ineffective. The existing programs
are only as good as creating a limited workplace that are temporary and with a
lower-than-standard incomes where workers’ risk of working in a certain
workplace doesn’t go hand in hand with their payment. Even in a company where
the income source is a huge investment from foreign sources, can only provide a
low wage for a job with a high risk for agricultural worker who works without
any temporal contract.
The
condition of underpaid agricultural worker—men and women—in rural areas are
still discriminated in waging and resource domination. Major companies in
mining, agriculture and farming sectors are financially backed up from imperialist
capital finance, have dominated and monopolized land ownership and natural
resources. Women in general doesn’t have much chance of owning a land, and
works in a land with underdeveloped technologies. While women with no access to
economic independence in rural areas will have to sell their time and energies
to work as migrant workers abroad, where there is no guarantee on their safety
and the work they’ll get.
While
in the urban areas, women laborers are forced to work under an unsafe workplace
and risks, with underpaid wages. A lot of women workers’ democratic rights are
not fulfilled. Their workplace is a vulnerable place to violence and
harassments. While their risks and vulnerabilities during works are not even
enough to fulfill their daily needs and the basic need prices are skyrocketing.
Women who lives in poverty in rural areas has to make do with working contract-free
jobs without certainties while struggling to keep their children cared for. All
the while they can’t even access healthcare for their reproduction system and
education fees for their children.
Core problem of Indonesian
migrant workers and the lack of government protection
Migrant
workers are victims of inaccessibility’s towards natural and economic resources
and job opportunities both in rural and urban areas. The government’s in
capabilities to provide a quality job field for the people are the main reason
why women try their luck to go abroad as migrant workers leaving their families
behind, ascribed to negative stereotypes, drowning in debts, stuck with
manipulative broker agencies, prone to human trafficking, and with no legal
protection provided by the country.
Subsidy annulment and how it
affects women, the standard power price (TDL) and other basic needs prices that
puts women in a tighter bind
Jokowi-JK
has decreed lots of anti-people oriented policies in the 3 years of their
office. Fossil fuel funding annulment and healthcare funds cancellations all
caused the basic needs prices to rise further and further away from the
people’s economic capacity. And the most affected of them all are of course,
the women. Because they are the one often and endowed to be responsible in
managing daily needs. If Jokowi’s government still refuses to give a raise to
worker’s wage, then they would have to be able to control marker prices to
protect workers with minimum wages.
How women’s movement cope under
the hybrid of colonialism and feudal systems
Women’s
movement is not something new in Indonesia, for it has been around since before
and has actively contributed to the independence. During the independence
movement, women are not just striving for the independence from colonialism,
but also brings out women’s struggles and rights. But after all its progress
through the year, the movement now has to swallow a bitter pill in the form of
forced domestication.
Up
to this day, the women’s movements are still predominated by movements under
feudal patriarchal and imperialist’s dictations and conservatives under the
country’s control. But there are also movements which hails social-democrats
and reformists. But there isn’t just a few of women’s movement in Indonesia
which carry liberalist ideas, another imperialist shot at women’s movement
bending and altering.
The
movements mentioned above are derivations of mainstream inspired by gender
equality concepts which develops Indonesia and internationally. Women
emancipation is viewed by the quantitative representation as indicator without
actually seeing qualitative variables—such as culture, religion, and interests—each
representative actually bears. From the many sector women’s movement present
and developing today in Indonesia, there still hasn’t a movement which is based
on Indonesian concrete reality, and for that, SERUNI presents itself as an
answer to the need.
Indonesian women must rise up and build up and
advanced women’s organization, together with people fighting for a better life
and a just, non-violent, non-discriminative society. As a part of the women’s
and people’s movement, SERUNI strives to broaden the fight and uphold nation’s
democratic politics. []
.jpg){kind=avatar}
Posting Komentar