Yogyakarta, May 28th 2022─Gadjah Mada University’s Family of Social Development and Welfare Student (Kapstra) worked alongside BRI Work UGM to hold Inspirational Talk #1 titled “Women Empowerment and Development” on Saturday (28/5). The event which was held through Zoom Meeting invited two speakers which were Linda Afriani, the founder of Jogjakarta Empowered Foundation and Suzanna Eddyono, as a lecturer in UGM Social Development and Welfare Department.
The first point discussed in this event is about women’s low participation in development and the public sector. Women are still seen as a subordinate who do not have the same rights as men. Women are only seen as housewives without any participation in the public sector.
However, with the passing of time, women are starting to rise up. They are able to show that their existence is important. Indonesian women’s skills and cleverness especially, can’t be taken for granted because they contribute a lot to the state’s development.
“Women these days are starting to be more active in the public sector and in the economy. For example, Khofifah as the Governor of East Java, Susi Pudjiastuti as the ex-leader of the Ministry of Ocean and Fishery who contributes a lot in empowering communities in the fishery sector,” Linda said.
Based on the report from Creative Economy Workforce, BPS, and Bekraf, women have been the main player in the creative industry since 2011 which amounts to 53,86%. This shows that women are already active in the development sector. During the pandemic, small creative industries are able to survive and increase their income.
“The small creative industry absorbs 97% of the total of our workforce, it gets 60,4% of investment, 60% of it is run by women, and the numbers rose during the pandemic,” Linda said.
Meanwhile, Suzzanna said that access for women in the public sector is still very minimal because the gender gap continues. During the last ten years, we see that there is a democracy deconsolidation, negative identity politics also portrays women in a bad way, there are also anti-gender movements in europe.
“There is also detraditionalization of family and women’s roles, where women is only valued in a family, meanwhile men is positioned as the main citizen while women is positioned as the second. There is also a tighter control over women’s bodies which limits women’s movement in public spaces,” Suzzana said.
Furthermore, even though there are already advocacy efforts to support gender equality, like giving a 30% room for women in the political space, and the mainstreaming of gender, when we see the reality it is still not enough. However, the progress that we can see in 2022 is the approval of Law on the Elimination of Sexual Violence which gives a safe space for women, especially in the public realm.