Violence to Women

LRC-KJHAM, one non-governmental organization concerning on women and children in Semarang, Central Java, reported that during November 2006-june 2007, there were 412 cases of violence to women in Central Java. The highest number, 125, was rape cases, and the second highest, 113, was domestic violence. Some other cases were violence done by boyfriend to girlfriend (66); sexual abuse (13), violation of female migrant workers’ rights (34), violence toward female prostitutes (54) women trafficking (7).

Fatkhurozi from LRC-KJHAM said that the high cases of violence to women mostly are caused by the weak law to protect women, supported by patriarchal culture that still marginalizes women so that they are very vulnerable to physical, sexual, and psychological violence, plus exposed to trafficking.
Even though the government already issued the law on domestic violence, it does not mean that Indonesian government is really serious to diminish the discriminative treatment toward women. There are still many government officials who still do not understand gender equality in making public policies. Women parties view the Marriage Law number 1 1974 as very discriminative and oppressive toward women, there are still many parties who do not realize that, and even think that the law is to protect women. (For this, you can check my post I entitled Islamic Law in Indonesia).

This bad condition is supported by the (still) gender-biased media in reporting cases. For example, when reporting a rape case, the media still views women, the victims, as the seducer, who triggered the rape to happen. In this globalization era, one cannot deny the strong influence of the media in life. When the media is still patriarchal, it will be more difficult to “change” the public way of thinking.
Referring to my previous post, it is really high time to include women’s studies into school curricula to introduce the idea of equality between men and women in all aspects, without any exception. It is also high time to give gender awareness to the media workers (newsmakers).

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