Crisis in Asia Adds to Women’s Burden

In the photos from last month’s anti-government protests here, they are the smiling women wearing flowers in their hair, the “concerned mothers” delivering lunch boxes and clean clothes to the student demonstrators, the people behind the scenes.

But not for long.

When former President Suharto relinquished his 32-year stranglehold on Indonesian politics last month, he lifted the lid on decades of pent-up frustration among Indonesian women who hope to use their newfound political freedom to push for an improvement in what they view as their second-class status.

“This is our shot,” said Debra Yatim, a co-founder of one of Indonesia’s first women’s groups and an organizer of the Coalition of Indonesian Women for Justice and Democracy. “We can’t afford to lose out as we did in 1945 and in 1967”--respectively, when the country declared its independence from the Netherlands and when Suharto’s predecessor, Sukarno, was removed from power.

But in a cruel irony, the very economic crisis that has opened the door to democratic reforms in countries like Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea is also unmasking sexist attitudes and traditions that were often obscured by Asia’s years of prosperity.

Since a currency crisis brought Asia’s expansion to an abrupt halt last summer, women at all levels of society--rich and poor, urban and rural--have borne a disproportionate share of the pain, according to women’s advocates and Asia observers.

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Women are more vulnerable because they are viewed as secondary breadwinners, are concentrated in industries that have been particularly hard hit and are expected to place the needs of their husbands and children first in what are still male-dominated societies.

“When there are any economic hardships, those who suffer the most are those in the underclass, and women suffer twice,” said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, who is among the chief economic advisors to Indonesia’s new President B. J. Habibie.

Across Asia, even professional women with college degrees have discovered that they are the first to be laid off in times of economic hardship, since they are expected to have husbands or families to take care of them.

In developing countries, most women with jobs work in low-paying export industries such as textiles and electronics that have been battered by the collapse of currencies across the region.

Poor rural women whose husbands have lost their jobs in the cities are being forced by circumstances into prostitution or driven to risk their lives by seeking work in hostile neighboring countries, according to women’s groups and international aid officials.

It is too early in the crisis to have factual data to document these trends, but there is ample anecdotal evidence that women in Asia are suffering disproportionately, according to one World Bank specialist in poverty and women’s issues.

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Here in Indonesia, these serious setbacks have placed even greater pressure on women’s leaders to gain some political clout so they can move these issues to the top of the new government’s already crowded agenda.

Within days of Suharto’s resignation, a coalition of more than 100 women’s organizations had swung into action, and at least one women’s political party has already been formed. The new government has promised to hold general elections next year, which it promises will be free, and has launched a campaign to open up the economy.

“We want to dismantle the peculiarly Suharto notion of women as supporters of men,” said women’s leader Yatim. “We are the majority, and we’ve been treated like a minority.”

Unlike many Asian countries, Indonesia was long a matriarchal society. Historically, women controlled the households and ran the markets, and property was handed down to daughters.

But the power shifted with the importation of Western values during Dutch colonial rule. And after Suharto wrested control of the country in 1966, according to women’s groups, he established a national policy that reflected the Islamic belief that a woman’s primary role is to support her husband and children. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country.

Though laws were passed to protect women’s rights, they were not generally enforced, according to Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, an attorney and director of the Indonesian Women’s Assn. for Justice.

She said conservative attitudes toward women were enshrined in the Suharto government’s political structure. That included the establishment of the dharma waniti, a “shadow” Cabinet of civil servants’ wives whose rankings were equivalent to their husbands’ status. This group, which was headed by Suharto’s now-deceased wife, was relegated to handling social functions and welfare work.

When educated Indonesian women entered the work force, they were generally routed into secretarial jobs or other lower-level positions. Now these Indonesian women are finding themselves at the mercy of “selective dismissals,” according to Apong Herlinashe, a women’s specialist at the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation in Jakarta.

Moreover, said one World Bank official, “The people who take the hit within the household are first the mothers and, amongst the children, the girls, so malnutrition is likely to hurt women more than men.”

Meanwhile, prostitution is on the upswing across Southeast Asia as a result of the economic crisis and is of particular concern to health experts given the spread of AIDS in the region.

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There has also been a tenfold increase in the number of women attempting to leave Indonesia illegally to seek work abroad, according to Tati Krisnawaty, who works with rural women through a group called Women’s Solidarity for Human Rights.

These women are making the dangerous trek by boat across the crowded sea lanes to Singapore and Malaysia, where at least eight illegal immigrants have been killed this year in clashes with guards in detention camps.

For Tati, however, there is a small silver lining in this very dark cloud. In a country where being apolitical was a way to stay out of trouble, women in the most remote villages are for the first time openly discussing why they are poor and who might be responsible.

“For a long, long time, no one questioned the corruption and nepotism,” she said. “This has caused people to open up their eyes.”