The Women Existence in Gender Perspective

"Men and women are like two wings of a bird, if the two wings have the same strength,  the bird may fly to the highest peak, but, if one of them breaks, the bird cannot fly at all"

The above phrase is written by Bung Karno, the first president of Indonesia, to express the idea of equality and complementary unity between men and women. However,  awareness of equality is not equally owned by everyone in real life, and even gender issues still occur in Indonesia, especially in certain areas.

This quote came out as introductory in students' dialogue held on Friday March 2nd, 2018 with Office of Women Empowerment, Child Protection, Population and Family Planning (DP3AP2KB) and Child Protection Agency (LPA) of East Sumba with its aim to deepen participants' understanding of women's issues and other issues in Sumba. This dialogue is a follow-up activity of Stube-HEMAT Sumba training on Human Rights and Gender Equality which took place in February 2018.

The dialogue discussed gender equality, which means condition in which there are portion, treatment, position, equal roles between men and women and on the other side it related to discrimination, injustice, oppression, subordination, marginalization, etc. It should be admitted that in Indonesia still vulnerable to inequality cases and women tend to become victims. This is indicated by the low role of women in public sector and the rampant violence against women, from data of Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) on women's participation in direct elections 2017, only 44 women (7.17%) of a total of 614 candidates for regional head throughout Indonesia.

Some causes of this situation are the low understanding of gender equality and the growing assumption in society that women are weak, less tough, violence objects and only as a complement to man. Women are often targeted by males to act violently. We cannot deny that cultural factors also play role in this issue, in which country culture still tends to Patriarchy, namely to assume the role of men is more important and superior so that women are not equal with them.

During the visit, Yokhbet Martha Mara, from the Office of Women's Empowerment, Child Protection, Population and Family Planning (DP3AP2KB) said that in order to fight gender inequality in Indonesia, especially East Sumba, required cooperation from all parties. NGOs and young people were expected to play active roles to change society's paradigm as well as raising awareness, mindset and empowering women to fight for their life. One effective way is to conduct trainings or discussion forums on gender equality and women's issues to bring changes on public's perspective.

Anton Kila, from East Sumba Child Protection Agency (LPA) said that family is the basic factor to teach about gender equality to children so that they do not become perpetrators or victims of injustice. It should be realized that everything we do, how to look the surroundings and how to behave and speak are the result of family education. Let us start from family to make a better life and gender equality.

The recognition of human rights and gender equality are still needed moreover in Sumba. Young people and students need to be aware of these things and become actors of change in the struggle for human rights and gender equality, start from their own families and then community. (JUF).