Advocate of Women’s Equality

Name: Advocate of Women’s Equality
Uploaded: 2021-05-07T01:52:33Z
Duration: 20 min 32 s
Description: For Karmila Jusup, women should have the courage to argue and develop their potential. Never have the feeling of being subordinate to men

For Karmila Jusup, women should have the courage to argue and develop their potential. Never have the feeling of being subordinate to men

Tatang Mulyana Sinaga

· 5 minutes read

As a church minister, Karmila Jusup, 55, does not merely dedicate herself to serving the congregation. She also take the initiative to deepen her understanding of women’s equality issues. She educates, provides guidance and fights for women who fall victim to violence.

Karmila believes that God created males and females as equals. Neither of them are more superior nor warranted to dominate. However, in social relations women are often positioned as the inferior party and they are vulnerable to unfair treatment.

She wants to debunk the myth of female inferiority. “This problem also constitutes a theological mission for the church. It’s to struggle for the basic rights of women to secure justice and live peacefully, free from violence,” she said in the Pasundan Christian Church (GKP) Synod Office, Bandung city, West Java, on Wednesday (21/4/2021).

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Her move to fight for women’s equality started with a discussion in the church community in 2004. She was then Secretary of the GKP Synod

Women’s Service Commission. The issue of domestic violence (KDRT) was brought to the fore at the discussion. A number of congregants claimed to have experienced it. But most kept quiet about it for being regarded as something common.

There’s a gender issue here. There should be an awareness in the congregation to recognize the forms of KDRT and prevent them.

Karmila warned that viewing violence as a normal practice was wrong. From then on, they were more intensely engaged in discussions to find the root cause of violence against women. “It turns out to be a matter of power in the relationship. There’s a gender issue here. There should be an awareness in the congregation to recognize the forms of KDRT and prevent them,” she said.

More than just physical violence, what women experience can be verbal and psychological violence. Unless prevented, its impact may sequentially take aim of children. Along with several ministers, Karmila was then determined to arrange special service for KDRT victims, which required skilled counselors to assist the victims.

The determination led Karmila to delve into the issue at The Presbyterian Church in South Korea (PROK) in 2011. For three months, she trained at Durebang Center, a women’s service institute at the church. Originally, Durebang Center focused on guiding Korean women who were exploited as sex workers in U.S. military camps during the Korean War in the early 1950s. But today the center also serves migrant workers who are violence victims. Besides training in Korea, Karmila and four peers also learned the skill of assisting female violence victims at Rifka Annisa Women Crisis Center in Yogyakarta in 2012.

The crisis handling center for women at the church where Karmila was assigned was finally set up in 2013 in cooperation with the GKP and PROK. It was named Women’s Crisis Center of Pasundan-Durebang.

Hundreds of victims

To date, WCC Pasundan-Durebang has provided guidance for more than 200 female violence victims. A larger number of victims served come from outside the church congregation with different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

This center focuses on the prevention and handling of violence cases. The cases involving the victims are diverse, including KDRT, being put in the locks, and rape. To prevent violence, WCC Pasundan-Durebang trains members of the congregation and public to enable them to identify forms of violence against women. “Its participants are not only women, but also men. This is meant to make both parties understand each other,” she said.

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Meanwhile, the handling the victims should be very carefully done because not all of them are prepared to recount the violence they underwent. They also entrust their family members or peers with reporting their cases.

In the case of KDRT, for instance, usually the wife is afraid of being found out by her husband if she reports directly. “But when the situation is dangerous, like a victim under the threat of being killed or wounded, we will pick up. There was once the case of a wife being hacked by her spouse so that she had to be safeguarded in a shelter,” she added.

Quite a number of cases have been taken to court. They are generally cases of underage child rape. Karmila related that in 2015, her team assisted a girl aged 15 in Padalarang, West Bandung regency, who fell victim to rape by five men.

Three of the five perpetrators were caught by the police. They were tried and sentenced to 9.5 years in prison. “In many instances, the families of victims refuse to have their cases taken to court because they consider it a disgrace,” Karmila pointed out.

Personal experience

Women should have the courage to argue and develop their potential. Never have the feeling of being subordinate to men.

Karmila’s awareness to pursue equality for women is inseparable from her bitter experience as a child. Her family lived in the shackles of patriarchal culture so that education for women was not prioritized. “After finishing primary school, my father didn’t support my higher education. My mother did, but she was confused over what to do,” she recalled.

Karmila insisted on continuing her studies. This prompted her mother to make a living with her sewing and cake-making skills. “It turned out that my mother was capable. But her skills were buried for not having been previously used,” she noted.