Dee

Indonesian female emancipationist Raden Ajeng Kartini died 102 years ago and rates a national celebration, but has anything really changed?

To the average hail-and-farewell visitor who just notes dress and public behavior, females seem as free as in the West. But try looking deeper.

A good place to start is newspaper WANTED columns for sales and administration. The requirements are specific: Good command of English and maybe Mandarin, a degree from a top university and experience.

Plus something extra not seen in Western countries where discrimination is illegal: Must be under 25 and attractive. Photo required.

So however incandescent your intellect and diligent your record, if you're blemished by acne or past the quarter century don't bother applying.

The visible workforce in the flash offices is overwhelmingly female and young. Older women survive only in the government or in backroom jobs. Being unmarried and over 30 is a single-life sentence; if unemployed, prospects are minimal.

The demand for secretarial jobs is huge; some of the best and brightest from prestigious tertiary institutions are rotting behind reception desks and customer service counters across the archipelago.

They may be polymaths outside but in the workplace their greatest challenge is serving tea without spilling. Their role is decorative and subservient.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4410

Must be why the Orang-gille is over here - could not even find a second hand woman over there stupid enough to put up with him - and is surviving on second rate pity from the greenies over here who know no better.....

Care to follow?
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4410#40368

@dee:

LOL, is it OK for communists to murder thousands of nationalists and religionists (Islamic and Christian clerics) like what the Indonesian communists did?

Is it OK for whites to murder Aborigines and wiped out their culture just because the greedy whites want to steal Aboriginal land?

@Kekkendika:

LOL, Indonesia has had one female president and one quarter of our national cabinet is female. How many Australian female PMs have you had? How many female state premiers have you had?

Remember, do not mistake freedom to have sex or to strip as "female emancipation".

PTBI - I’m sure that every one of the alleged Communists was guilty of murder and that every one had a fair trial under Indonesian law before being killed? And of course you know for a fact that every person killed was (1)a Communist, and/or (2)a murderer of ‘nationalists and religionists’? Has Indonesia compensated the families of the alleged Communists in any way? That’s right, I forgot, they were all guilty …

The moral of the story is that people in glass houses (in this case, Indonesia) shouldn’t throw stones. It reeks of hypocrisy.

The Police Mobile Brigade (Brigade Mobil, Brimob) in Wasior Sub-district, Manokwari District, Papua Province (formerly known as Irian Jaya) from April to October 2001 was one of the largest operations by the Indonesian security forces seen in Papua. Local human rights organizations estimate that over 140 people were detained, tortured or otherwise ill-treated during the course of the operation. One person died in custody as a result of torture; at least 7 people are believed to have been extrajudicially executed; 27 people were sentenced to terms of imprisonment after unfair trials. Hundreds of people from villages in the area were internally displaced as a result of the operation and dozens of houses destroyed. Have these people been compensated? Has the Indonesian govt. said ‘sorry’?

“How many Australian female PMs have you had ..”
Does this matter?

“ do not mistake freedom to have sex or to strip as "female emancipation".’

Nobody I know confuses the freedom to strip/have sex with ‘female emancipation’ (quaint phrase). You are showing your own ignorance and confusion in this area, yet you presume to lecture others. The point is that women have the right to choose – if they wish to take the low-rent road, they have the legal right to do so. This is called 'freedom'.

Dee - More Indonesian freedoms

Women’s rights activists say mobs used rape as a "weapon of terror" in May 1998, attacking and raping 168 women and girls, from Indonesia's Chinese minority. Twenty women died, some in homes set afire; one of the victims was only 9 years old. Human rights groups and other groups filed a class action lawsuit against the government and security forces accusing them of failing to control the violence. Lawyer Ester Jusuf of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute said the groups are demanding $3.7 billion in compensation for victims of the rioting. The suit was filed against General Wiranto, the defense minister and armed forces commander, as well as several police chiefs. ("Activists protest Indonesia military," Associated Press, 17 July 1998)

168 women were raped during riots in May following the resignation of President Suharto. Of this number, 20 died during or after the assaults. Human Rights investigators presumed many other women had either fled the city or were too traumatized to report their rapes. Some had been silenced by the threats or by rumors of further attacks and rapes. The investigators themselves have been threatened. Other women have committed suicide, saying they had heard reports of additional rapes and sexual assaults after the riots. Attacks were directed against the Ethnic-Chinese, who have often been made scapegoats in times of conflict or hardship. The human rights workers said their investigation reinforced their belief that the rapes, some involving girls as young as nine years old, had been organized and coordinated in the same way as the looting and arson. "Rape crisis" Straits Times, 21 July 1998)

The gang rape of ethnic-Chinese women in Indonesia during the May 1998 riots should be seen as a war crime, say Singapore women's groups. The groups have sent a letter to the Indonesian ambassador and are calling for discussion of the matter by ASEAN leaders. Regional governments seek justice, as victims no longer live in a safe environment. Indonesian women have been talking openly about the rapes and want justice. ("Gang rapes in Indonesia," Straits Times Interactive, 27 July 1998)

Kekenidika - The rape of the Chinese women reminds me of the Japanese attitude to the WWII Korean 'comfort women'. I suppose the Indonesian government has never acknowledged the rapes, compensated the victims and apologized? Didn’t think so. This mistreatment seems to be the result of the position of women in much of Asia – decorative appendages (like the Japanese ‘office ladies’ who were there to make tea and do the photocopying). Asian governments do not comprehend that half the national intelligence is wasted by confining women to trivial lives; and since Asian countries do not have laws to guarantee that females get the same opportunities as males, pretty young girls are exploited (while they are still young and pretty). The fact that an employer can legally request a photograph of a woman before hiring her negates all the female politicians in Asia.

At first glance, South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) looks good for women in politics. Indira Gandhi became PM of India in the 1960s; Benazir Bhutto became leader of Pakistan; two Bangladeshi women, Sheikh Hasina Wazed and Khaleda Zia, have alternated as government leaders for more than a decade; the president of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Kumaratunga, is a woman whose mother had been PM several times; Gloria Arroyo in the Philippines and Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia - but not one of those women got into politics on her own merit. All were the daughters or widows of national leaders who were assassinated or executed or who died without male political heirs. And not one of them has made a high priority of improving the lives and status of women in the country she governs.

Australian women have not shown a huge interest in entering politics, but I guess Australia will one day have a female PM – when that time comes she will be voted into office. She will not be handed the post on a silver platter because of her male family connections.

PTBI

The situation in West Papua is essentially the same as it was in Australia in the 19th century.

Aborigines were displaced, gently and only to a limited extent at first. The Europeans were not too worried about them being out there beyond the settlements and later beyond the expanded farming country. But they were concerned about conflicts that arose when Aborigines attacked the invaders or stole their produce. Of course reprisals on them were much more severe than those attacks.

Some were killed in a deliberate and cold-blooded manner, but most died of diseases that they had no immunity to.

Especially in the north, large areas of land were set aside for Aboriginal use, albeit the poorer lands. However, Aborigines had successfully lived on these lands and could have continued to do so if they hadn’t been subjected to and seduced by white man’s food, tools… and alcohol.

Many Aboriginal settlements are very sad places, but it was never the intention of whites to make them such. Just the opposite.

The story is complex. But it is nothing like your assertion of “the racist genocidal Australian whites!”

I don’t resile from the fact that there were really horrible elements to the treatment of Aborigines by Europeans, but it was not a simple case of invade and annihilate.

Again, I cannot see that in essence it is much different to the West Papuan situation.