Misconception of Mother’s Day

Every year, we celebrate Mother\'s Day, but every year, a misconception about Mother\'s Day keep coming up. Generally, people know about the Youth Pledge event, but they do not understand Mother\'s Day, even though the two are closely related.

Has our historical narrative lost the history of women\'s movements to the extent that we don\'t study them at school and are alienated from them? The first Women\'s Congress, held on 22 December 1928 in Yogyakarta, is what we commemorate. Not the Mothers\' Day commemoration as in western society that glorifies mothers’ domestic role.

Also read: Politicization of Women’s Bodies

The first Women\'s Congress gave birth to a federation consisting of various interreligious women\'s organizations, becoming the Indonesian Women\'s Association (PPPI). The goal was to fight for the fate of women, nationality and Indonesia with parliament. It turns out that the agenda of the congress remains our problem in the 21st century: domestic violence, child marriage, child trafficking, labor, women\'s education, religious conservatism. Women at that time were already active in the public sphere, fighting for national politics.

It is not difficult to explain why women from among the ordinary people are always present in maintaining democracy and the rule of law. Women are often put in a disadvantaged position by making them a political commodity, unnecessary laws and policies are made [for them], but it is difficult [for them] to get the laws they need.

Also read: Family Resilience Bill is Antifamily

This article aims to explain who women are constructed as, why they fight and how women relate to the state in historical and sociological contexts.

KOMPAS/PRIYOMBODO

Participants in the action unfurled protest posters in an action to commemorate International Women\'s Day 2020 with the Alliance for the Women\'s Anti-Violence Movement (Gerak Perempuan) on Jalan MH. Thamrin, Central Jakarta, Sunday (8/3/2020).

Who are women?

Women are not a single and uniform identity. They are constructed with other identities, such as race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, skin color or education level. Not all women experience discrimination, depending on other identities that are intertwined with their sexual identity as women.

The lack of access to justice for Indonesian female migrant workers in destination countries is because they are constructed as “other”, based on differences in race, nationality, class, educated and gender (PK-WG-UI, 2011). Women of ethnic Chinese descent experienced genital damage in the May 1998 riots because they were constructed as "other" due to differences in race and religion.

People often ask what Indonesian women are now looking for, because there are women who have already become president, ministers and have various professions and positions. The group that asks such questions is usually the middle class, whose interests are not compromised. Because the issue does not touch their interests, there is no sensitivity toward other women, such as the millions of female migrant workers without adequate education and skills, who work in households of rich countries and have limited access to justice.

Also read: Empowering Female Heads of Family

Or the millions of women and children caught up in trafficking that are turned into sex workers, drug dealers, beggars and slaves.

The solution needed is a policy on poverty eradication. However, what has been issued is 421 bylaws prohibiting women from going out at night and domesticating women in the name of morality as interpreted by regional politicians. Not to mention the high mortality rates among mothers during childbirth and the high prevalence of stunting in children. The budget policy needed is one that is gender responsive, but what has been produced is a budget policy, including the social assistance for the poor during the pandemic, that is prone to corruption.

Women are also victims of child marriage and forced marriage, where Indonesia ranks seventh in the world. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of women and children are victims of violence every year, including sexual violence, and every day, there are new victims. Within two hours, there are three victims of sexual violence, some of which happens in the house or the domestic sphere (incest).

Also read: Involving Female Household Heads in Empowerment Program

Women and children need immediate approval of the bill on sexual violence eradication. They do not need the family resilience bill, which denigrates the dignity of Indonesian families, which are considered immoral so that the state must monitor them in order to enforce morals unilaterally determined by political parties. They cannot distinguish between the ethical and legal domains, which, if forced to become one, will actually rot one another (Hart, 1961).

Women\'s resistance

Women are most vulnerable to politicization in the name of religion (especially), ethnicity, class and whatever. When the politics of identity and claims of truth in the name of God are shouted out by religious politicians, the most affected are women. This includes name-calling using words that demean women. Unfortunately, such practice was approved by those who wanted to be in power through regional or village head elections.

Also read: Blurry Portrait of the Law

Then came the most brutal campaign. As if being a leader does not seem to require traces of competence, achievement and community service. Simply shout out identity politics and populist policies. Then came out various regulations that impose moral values on women (not on men). The title is appealing, for example "Antiprostitution" [Law], but most of them prohibit women from going out at night. In fact, the poorer a society is, the more women have to work hard and go out at night to work in factories or hawk food.

Kompas/Priyombodo

Various elements of society who are members of the Alliance for the Women\'s Movement Against Violence (Women\'s Movement) held an action to commemorate International Women\'s Day 2020 by conducting a long march from the front of the Bawaslu building to the State Palace, Central Jakarta, Sunday (8/3/2020).

They (politicians) are not thinking about the interests of the people, seeking to eradicate poverty, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals program. Or providing water and a clean living environment, quality health care and educational facilities, stopping violence against women and children. Even indigenous women, the cultural stakeholders of the forest, are increasingly losing their living space, because the conversion of forests into industry is rarely carried out with their consent, even though women are the "mother of the earth" and forests are a source of food and life.

That is why women fight in the most respectful, maternal and procedural way legally possible. The resistance of RA Kartini in the late 1800s to fight for the voice of women to overcome backwardness and poverty had a very big impact. In 1915, the Swara Mahardika organization sent a motion to the Dutch colonial ruler demanding equality before the law. The Women\'s Congress of 22 December 1928 resonated in the archipelago. Many women from the generation of 1928 sent their children to school to Java so that the natives would not be treated as the lowest caste (inheemsche) in the Dutch East Indies.

Women know when it is time to struggle in the public sphere and when it is time to return home to become ordinary mothers.

In 1930, the Indonesian Housewives\' Association sent a motion asking for political rights in the city council elections, and in 1938, there were already women sitting on the city council. After that, women never stopped organizing congresses, fighting on the front lines, but also manifesting their maternal instincts by running the “public kitchen” and the Red Cross around independence. Scorched villages were part of the second military aggression in Java and Sumatra (1945-1949) (Limpach, 2015), and it was women who handled the victims.

Kompas

Dr Sulistyowati Irianto

The Indonesian nation has proven to be able to go through all ordeals thanks to the movements of civil society, including women. However, women also oppose the state when the people are unprotected. This is justified by the rule of law and democracy, which now must be understood as not only to win the most votes, but also to win the right ones. Let\'s learn from Indonesian mothers. Placing women in traditional roles contradicts historical and sociological facts. Let them discover their new social space. Women know when it is time to struggle in the public sphere and when it is time to return home to become ordinary mothers.

Happy Mother\'s Day!

Sulistyowati Irianto, Professor of Law Anthropology, Faculty of Law, University of Indonesia.