Now here is a post that our current fly-by-night ignorami (please note I use the plural here, as it could not be that stupid, ignorant and bombastic to be just one person[sorry thing]) to sink his/her/it's fangs into - and show us racist genocidal murders all just how well off the Indonesian women really are compared to Australian women - and of course no where as genocidal as well.....

Have I missed anything here? - Probably heaps of points like - why so many Indonesian women are marrying ugly racist Australian men .....

- No?

Maybe some other points perhaps, buit seeing as how I have made the first post - I will not even bother watching for any replies - I am still removing the invective barbs of poisonous vile from the last few posting.... I feel a tsnuami of invective coming on soon

Good luck all....

Very sad, and, from my personal experience in Indonesia, very accurate

@Kekendika:

LOL, Indonesia has had one female president and one-quarter of our national cabinet are females. There are dozens of female district chiefs and one female governor in Banten (highly Islamic province). In our history, we have many female warriors who are celebrated for their fury in fighting white colonialists.

How many female PMs Australia have? How many female state premiers you have? Remember, do not confuse freedom to have sex, to strip, or to dress like a skank as "female emancipation".

PBTI, since you ask, there have been women state premiers in Australia in the past (Carmen Lawrence, WA, Joan Kirner, Victoria) though currently in office there is only Claire Lawrence, the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. However, there are reasonable numbers of women in high public office - judges (including Pat O'Shane, NSW, an aboriginal woman), parliamentarians (federal and state), local Mayors (eg. current Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney is Clover Moore). There are enough women parliamentarians in the Federal parliament to be having an interesting effect: there has been a recent phenomenon of female parliamentarians getting together to discuss issues affecting women, across political party lines, and to lobby and vote as a bloc on these issues. This is having an effect on these policy areas. And federal parliament may yet get a childcare centre! However, unfortunately there are definitely less than 50% of people in public office who are women, so we do have a way to go. I have no doubt however that career prospects for women are better in Australia than in Indonesia, the article just reinforces the obvious.

Just one other comment: I agree that people's dress sense (or lack thereof) should not be taken as having any relevance to their attitudes to issues, including feminism.

@johnj:

Indonesia had woman president in the past (Megawati Sukarnoputri), female governors (Ratu Atut Chosiyah, Banten), hundreds of female district chiefs, local and national parliamentarians. One-quarter of national cabinet are females (Minister of Health, Minister of Trade, Minister of Finance). The governor of Central Bank is female (Miranda Goeltom). There have always been lots of female CEOs in major Indonesian companies (Astra, Indofood). I have no doubt that career prospects for women in Indonesia is better than in Australia, the concrete evidence is just so overwhelmingly obvious.

The question of freedom for women is vital for the freedom of our whole society.
To quote one of Australia’s poet laureates, A.D. Hope, in one of his few poems to be included in the international Norton anthology of English poetry.

Advice to Young Ladies (1966)

(Stanza 1)
A.U.C. 334: (1) about this date
For a sexual misdemeanour, which she denied,
The vestal virgin (2) Postumia was tried.
Livy records it among affairs of state.

(Stanza 11)
It may not seem so grave an act to break
Postumia's spirit as Galileo’s,(3) to gag
Hypatia as crush Socrates,(4) or drag
Joan as Giordano Bruno(5) to the stake.

(Stanza 12)
Can we be sure? Have more states perished, then,
For having shackled the inquiring mind,
Than whose who, in their folly not less blind,
Trusted the servile womb to breed free men?

Notes:
1. Ab Urbe Condita, ‘from the founding of the city” (Rome), traditionally in 753 B.C.
In his History of Rome from its Foundation, Livy (59 B.C. – A.D. 17) records the incident narrated in the first three stanzas.
2. Vestal virgins were the young priestesses who tended the shrine of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. They were governed by the Pontifex Maximus (line 9) chief priest of the Roman religion.
3. In 1633 the great Italian astronomer was forced by the Church to condemn his own scientific conclusions and was for a time imprisoned.
4. In 399 B.B. Socrates was sentenced to die by poison on account of his supposedly subversive teachings. Hypatia was a lady of Alexandria, Egypt, noted for her learning and her beauty; she was murdered in 415 at the behest of an archbishop.
5. Both were burned at the stake, Joan of Arc in 1431 for heresy and sorcery, Bruno in 1600 for theological and scientific heresies.

(Source: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Third Edition)