ALFP e-magazine issue 5: Gender Issues

A Collective Battle for SpaceMaria Hartiningsih1 (Indonesia)
Writer / Independent Journalist / ALFP 2006 Fellow

True equality means holding everyone accountable in the same way, regardless of race, gender, faith, ethnicity—or political ideology.
Monica Crowley

Without true equality, it is impossible to make substantial democracy a reality.
The movement toward women’s emancipation and gender equality is perhaps the longest, mostsignificant and sustainable social movement in history. It does not only seek to annul the power
relation inequality between men and women but also all kinds of power relation inequalities insociety, thus taking the social movement out of the exclusive binary gender context of men andwomen to encompass gender diversity in general with the various problems of injustice happening
within the framework of unequal power relations.2
That is the core of the struggles in promoting substantial democracy.
Historically speaking, women’s ideal role in various nations is by no means that of a subordinate—
it is quite the opposite. Until the end of the Java War (1825–1830), aristocratic women, especiallythose in the southern part of Central Java, enjoyed the privilege to take actions and personal
initiatives unknown to their sisters who lived in the time of Raden Ajeng Kartini (1879–1904).
Kartini’s predecessors even penetrated two sectors typically considered as exclusively men’sdomain: military and political affairs.
A Quick Glance at Indonesia
Under Indonesia’s authoritarian New Order regime (1968–1998), the role of women in society, as
explicitly written in the regime’s policy framework for long-term development plans, was limited
to the exclusively domestic roles of being a mother and a supporting wife subject to the husband’sauthority.
The 1990s marked a very important turning point in the dissemination of discourse pertaining towomen’s rights. Two important international conferences on the issue were held during that era:the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, and the 1995
1 Maria Hartiningsih is a journalist working for the Indonesian morning daily Kompas from 1984 to 2015, focusing

on human rights, as well as women’s and marginalized group rights. Currently, she expresses her passion as ajournalist by writing books, opinion pieces and starting to write short stories.
2 Further reading, R.W Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics, (CA: Stanford UniversityPress; 1 edition 1987); Kathy Davis, Monique Leijenaar, and Jantine Oldersma, The Gender of Power, (New York:Sage Publications Ltd., 1991).
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ALFP e-magazine issue 5: Gender Issues

Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. Mainstream print media outlets had also
started to publish more stories on women’s rights issues than ever before.
A watershed moment for women’s issues in Indonesia happened when the May 1998 riots occurredfollowed by reports of rape and sexual violence against Chinese-Indonesian women by the rioters,
thus shocking the international public. Influenced by the spirit of the reform era, a number ofmainstream media outlets began to expose what had actually happened to these women during theriots, albeit through only official sources, because several rape victims had disappeared while some
witnesses refused to speak up out of fear for their own safety. The new government then respondedby establishing the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komisi Nasional Penghapusan
Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan—Komnas Perempuan). From then on, women’s issues started tooccupy more space in print media, entering the mainstream news reporting of these media outlets
on a national level.
In the 2000s, violence against women became the main issue for the women’s rights movementwith the regional autonomy initiative freeing local officials to issue various regional bylaws thatheavily discriminate against women. Up until November 2018, Komnas Perempuan had listed
more than 421 bylaws that discriminate against women, including women-only curfews andprohibitions against transgenders to work in hairdressing salons.
Acts of violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals across Indonesia
were happening, especially in the last few years. Apparently, the Indonesian society also subscribes
to what the American writer Adrienne Rich (1980) refers to as compulsory heterosexuality,
describing how society imposes heterosexuality as a singular absolute truth among its social
subjects.3
Out of this attitude, the stigma against ‘the others’—non-heterosexual individuals—was born andthe resulting prejudiced categorization against them further reduces the value of ‘the others’ as
human beings, especially those coming from lower socioeconomic brackets.
Indonesian media outlets still treat news stories on communities with different sexual
preferences—namely, the non-heterosexual community—as a commodity that “sells” the news.
They would sensationalize the communities’ “different” lifestyles by illustrations of public orderofficers chasing transgenders down the streets, their engagement in criminal acts or telling their life
stories without any critical perspectives whatsoever.
Ironically, historian Peter Carey recounts that there was a time when men and women in Java could
fluidly shift their identities. Men could dress in women’s attire while women also fought as soldiers
under the banner of the celebrated national hero Prince Diponegoro in the Java War.4

3 Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston, and Stuart Allan, News, Gender and Power, (London: Routledge, 1998).
4 Peter Carey and Vincent Houben, Perempuan-perempuan Perkasa di jawa Abad XVIII-XIX [Mighty women in Javain the XVIII-XIX centuries], (Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 2016).
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ALFP e-magazine issue 5: Gender Issues

Achmad Sunjayadi (2018) sums up the various stories related to sexuality in Indonesian society
covering the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial eras. Chronicling the stories using various
primary and secondary sources, these tales expose realities which are typically forbidden andconcealed, both in the domestic and public spheres.5
Media, the Fourth Estate?
Indonesia’s mass media has been rapidly evolving after the fall of the New Order regime and its
repressive bureaucracy. At the same time, a new media power has become the new norm: aparticipatory one which comes out of the grassroots. Ross Tapsell (2017) writes that Indonesians
are the most active social media users in the world.6
Social media makes it possible for us to disseminate news items directly and, therefore, the various
forms of violence against women and children become apparent through various social media posts.
A social reform where the public calls for a rapid transformation has to be realized through ourcollective hard work and determination to annul discrimination and violence against women, alongwith many other marginalized groups. However, we have to answer this challenge on a practicallevel: whether there is a willingness among all the components of the society to collectively change
our situations for the better, more equal and just. Indeed, mass media provides a forum to discussand broadcast what is going on in our society right now and yet it does not have sufficient power
to change our circumstances.
Amid a constantly changing world and technological innovations which run at the speed of light,
the function of the free press should remain the same: to enlighten and elevate human dignity as
all of us are created with various functions which complement each other, requiring us to mutuallylearn, grow and develop in our effort to create a substantially equal and just setting.
To cover issues related to violence due to power imbalances requires journalists to have specificunderstanding and perspective: other than requiring them to collaborate with feminist activists andscientists, this endeavor also requires them to have a militant spirit to battle for their rightful space.
Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston and Stuart Allan (1998) observe how various issues are interlinked
when we talk about gender and media: ownership dynamics, media convergence, the importanceof feminist studies in journalistic works, the feminization of news narration and a divided audience.7
Again, the mass media is still a very male-dominated sphere. Whoever sits at the decision-making
positions—whether editorial or commercial—in these outlets is vulnerable to become swallowed

5 Achmad Sunjayadi, (Bukan) Tabu di Nusantara [(Not) a taboo in the archipelago], (Jakarta: Penerbit Buku

Kompas, 2018).
6 Ross Tapsell, Media Power in Indonesia: Oligarchs, Citizens and the Digital Revolution, (London: Rowman & Littlefield
International Ltd., 2017).
7 Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston, and Stuart Allan, News, Gender and Power, (London: Routledge, 1998).
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ALFP e-magazine issue 5: Gender Issues

whole by media capitalism which is very patriarchal in nature and is no different from everythingelse which occupies our public sphere.

The contents of this article reflect solely the opinions of the author.

© 2019 International House of Japan and Japan Foundation