WUNRN
INDONESIA - GENDER EQUALITY BILL
FACES RELIGIOUS OPPOSITION
Indonesian women are becoming an integral part of society and political life.
Laila
Sasmi - 11 May 2012
But women’s groups are lashing out against the push by the
Islamic organizations to curtail the bill’s progression in government, saying
that “all women and men in
“We have fought a long time for this bill and are very hopeful
the government will see that a majority of Indonesians support it and it will
become a reality,” said women’s rights activist and campaigner Sunita Rajnaban.
She told Bikyamasr.com on Friday that the Islamic groups opposed
to the bill “are frustrated at the influence women are having in society and it
is simply a power play and nothing that will stop us women from demanding our
rights.”
According to reports, the Indonesian Ulema Council – an
influential conservative Islamic body – and the Indonesian Consultative Council
for Muslim Women Organizations, Aisyiah, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and the
Islamic Community Party are the leading opponents of the bill.
Iffah Ainur Rochmah, spokeswoman for HTI, in a statement said
the gender equality bill and policies that encourage women to seek employment
could only lead to conflicts within marriages.
Rochmah says that divorce rates among female teachers were high
because “wives with better earnings may feel superior to men leading to
conflict.”
In addition, the bill goes against the grain of the Islamic
Shariah law on inheritance which favors males. The bill also allows a man or a
woman to freely choose a marriage partner — regardless of religious persuasion
and seeks to legalize homosexual or lesbian marriages.
The international Women Against Shariah organization has been
accused of muddying the notions about the place of men and women in Indonesian
society.
According to the organization, Shariah law imposes second class
status on women and is incompatible with the basic principles of human rights
that include equality under the law and the protection of individual freedoms.
But for activists like Rajnaban, using religion to derail the
bill will only hurt the organizations in the long run.
“The government and local civil society groups have conducted
public opinion polls of Indonesians and they have discovered that the vast
majority of people support equality, and these groups are just using religion
to scare people,” she said.
She added that marriage rates are down in the country and that
divorce is up as a result “of women no longer being forced to live in horrible
circumstances.”
For many, the future of women’s rights in the country largely
depends on this legislation because they believe that
The government has said that the criticism they are currently
receiving from the Islamic groups is unlikely to stop the bill from going
forward in parliament.