Celebrating Kartini's day enlightens our interpretation and practices of our religious teaching

Celebrating Kartini's days enlightens our interpretation and practices of our religious teaching
By Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta

Today is the 21^st of April 2011. We are in Indonesia celebrating the day of Kartini. Kartini is one of our national heroes. She was born in 1879 in the date from a royal family in Jepara and died in 25 years old when she delivered her first baby in Rembang. She was married as the second wife of her husband who was the head of regency of Rembang.  As a Muslimah, Kartini rejected the practices of polygamy but she had to accept herself to be part of the family’s decision to continue the blood of royalty (“in Indonesia: darah biru) by marrying the married man.   Reading her book, “Habis gelap terbit terang” (translating in English as “After darkness comes light”) gives us the description of her struggles to women’s emancipation, equality, the rights of the marginal people to have their own justice and prosperity.  She built a school where she and her sisters could teach common people around her town. This is the reason why her birth on April 21^st was appointed as the national celebration.

During the Soeharto regime before 1998, on the date, all women had to wear Indonesian women custom that is called ‘kebaya’.  Kebaya is a top dress that Indonesian women wear together with a piece of cloth that uses as a skirt that is called “kain” or “jarik”.  Even each tribe has its own style of dress for women, but many of Indonesian women at the period wore the type of Kartini’s kebaya.  Kartini’s kebaya is very simple and modest. It made from a cotton fabric to design with cutting at the front from the neck down to the belly to be tied up with special clasp  that could be made from silver, or “gold plated ” (in Indonesian: sepuhan emas).  Wearing Kartini’s kebaya has to go together with the Javanese “jarik”.  To complete the dressing, the hair needs to have a special Kartini’s “hair piece” (In Indonesia: “sanggul”). We put “sanggul” after teasing our hair to stand up (In Indonesia: sasak). However in the style of Kartini, there is no “sasak” at the front part of hair, but only the “sanggul” is hanged out on the back of the hair.

http://id.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Berkas.COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Potret_van_Raden_Ajeng_Kartini_TMnr_10

Nowadays, we do not have to wear Kebaya at the Kartini’s day if we do not want because there is no obligation.  However, at the school children celebrate while they, both boys and girls wearing their traditional customs.  I sometime miss the experiences of the old day when women and men from the national to the basis structures all wore the traditional customs to celebrate Kartini’s day.

 Reformation movement in 1998 that brought Soeharto’regime to step down has changed many things in our society including the way we celebrate Kartini’s day.  During the regime, Kartini’s day was seen as a celebration of women toward their womenism.  The concept of womenism is different from the mainstream of womenism among the African American women in the US.  The US’s Womenism was created to distinguish from “feminism movement” due to the fact  that the feminism can be seen as a class movement which struggle for the rights of the white women rather than for color women.  The assumption is that the color women are the same as the color male who are like all white men to oppress the white women.  This assumption can be debted but I just summarized what I have known the distinction between feminism and womenism. In Indonesia, womenism which I refer to the case of Kartini’s day was about how to become a good woman who has to know everything relating to their domestic arena including their beauty, their cooking, carrying family and supporting husband’s work.

Indonesian women in the post Reformation want to return the original idea and practices of Kartini. Her concern was not about herself, her beauty, her wealth as a daughter of a royal family, but her struggles for a better life for all women around her.  Those women at the day knew to speak in their Javanese language, but they could not read and wrote their names.  Javanese language was their mother tongue which they picked up from their mothers and talked with their larger community. All process was carried on orally. 

Whereas Kartini as a daughter of the royal family had a right given by the Dutch to receive a Dutch education at an elite school. However, Kartini rejected. She did not want to join any school running by the colonizer because she knew that her privilege would not make any differences for other common women around her.  Although she did not go to Dutch school, she kept her vision to know the world outside her home.  She imagined the world outside hers to transform her society. She learned Dutch self-education   and practiced the language by writing letters to her friends she found from the Dutch magazines. She read and thought deeply.  She discussed different issues including feminism with them.

At the time, in Europe after two influenced books written by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) on “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” and John Stuart Mill on “The Subjection of Women” (1869). These two books condemned the discrimination given by society to women in Europe.  These writings inspired the new movement   which later on to be called feminism.  Feminism questioned the belief that has been constructed to claim women as a second creature after men.  The impact of this belief had made to the subordination of women in many appearances.  For examples, women did not have a right to vote in the election because women were not considered as a person who can  not think and participate in building a society.  Their roles were assumed to be relating with building family without any voices in the decision making.

This is still a reality in this world which keeps their way of thinking and practicing to put women as the second class in their society.   Historically I learned many women from royal family had a privilege to enjoy their rights as equal as women. Even they involved with many scandals of murders due to the competition for power among monarchies and kingdoms. Taking the examples of queen and kings all over European nations where we found their stories to be rewritten by Shakespeare to show so much intrigues and pain among royal families.

I think the same problem has happened in the life of Kartini.  However, she wanted to be freed from the entire burden by keeping her idealism to be alive.  She, who rejected polygamy and wrote to rethink what actually Muslims have to read Quran which is always used to legitimize the decision of men. Kartini brought a critical thinking and a new way to interpret the scripture to address the real problem that  effected from our bias to imply a particular belief that is actually not the heart of the religion.

According to Kartini, any religion has to give salvation to all human beings to the better life of the people and nature. She criticized the colonial system of the Dutch power who claimed to be Christian but they turned out not living with their teaching of love, compassion and equality.  Dutch colonized Indonesia for 350 years. Even after the declaration of the independence of Indonesia in 1945, Dutch wanted to return to continue her power  that brought to the creation of  another revolutionary war among the Indonesian people and the Dutch.  This was why the capital of Indonesia after the independence in 1945 was moved to Yogyakarta until 1949 when the United Nations forced Dutch and other  countries  to admit Indonesia’s new liberation.

She came to the conclusion if religions have blocked the ways for all people to achieve their rights, human beings have to dig out the core teaching of religion and put it to the face of the master, the leaders who might be all men in order to touch their heart for a change. This is the argument why the value of Kartini’s thoughts needs to be returned in our current lifetime in Indonesia. Women post Reformation stand for a better way to read their sacred texts that have messages of liberation, equality and justice for all human beings. This hope has been a reality in Indonesian society now. 

One of the three foundations of national development in Indonesia states about the gender mainstreaming that needs to be applied in all aspects of development to across to various disciplines of departments.  The first foundation relates with sustainable development and the second one refers to the good governance to create an accessible system from all people, accountability and the abolition of corruption.  The policy of gender mainstreaming is about how to have balance in a power relation between men and women in to participate in building their society and country.

In early post reformation, the gender maintaining was supported by the presidential regulation.  Then it opens for many national regulations to be produced to give place for women to participate in our national development.  For example, the national regulation was issued to relate with the quota of 30% for women to be nominated at the political parties.  Indonesia also now has a national regulation on the protection toward women against domestic violence.  With some reconsideration of the mechanism of nomination which at the last election the update regulation was evaluated  by the Constitutional Court (Indonesian: Mahkamah Konstitusi), I think the spirit of women’s participation into our society has been supported by all people in Indonesia.

Our problem is how we as women can fulfill the expectation as it has been protected in the national regulation. What are conditions that can support to the increase of quality for women to be ready working  as public officers to the national and local offices.  This is a heavy task that we have to work together to support to women who are called to be leaders in many aspects of their life.  This question brings me to examine who are the people around us as women  and men who can support this vision.  I teach a course on theology feminism for my graduated students at Duta Wacana Christian University. I asked my students to report what has happening with women as a leader at their churches. To come to a surprise,  I can see that the new development that has been made in our nations by giving opportunities for women to be part of development does not go together with the reality of women’s leadership in the churches.

Taking examples from the church of HKBP which is a Bataknese Protestant Church which has the  headquarters   in North Sumatera. This synod still has a bias to allow women priest to be in the middle level of leaderships at the church. They can be the priest at a local church to lead a parish but they cannot be the leaders for the head of Classis or synod.  A fact of women as the priest whose husband are also a priest will have to be honored less because of the assumption that her rights to earn for the family living costs is included  already through the husband’s portion of salary. Therefore the women priest cannot get her own rights to earn the living cost in the name of family. If both wife and husband serve as a pastor, the woman has to follow the husband.  She cannot also has her own parish, because she has to be the wife of the priest. 

This report sounds like the system of payment developed for  women workers at factory  owned by a multicooperation as I did my research in Halmahera (Adeney-Risakotta:2005). I named this system of gendered ideology which is implied to support an economic growth of  many international multicooperations that have moved to the third world countries  due to the availability of cheap labors.

We could argue that many Christian churches have their women leaders now. However, what has happening is after the women leaders passed their service as a bureaucrat  at the church structures.  There will be no women leaders to continue the mission.  I guided my student to do research at Toraja Church to come out with a conclusion that women in the structural position might not aware on how to build a system that will channel  many women after the persons leave the structural position  the churches.  There are many factors need to be considered such as the building of women’s sensitivities toward issues on women and working together to create legal documents and fair structures that have to be created to guarantee the sustainability of policies toward women’s involvement at  the churches.  Assuming that the churches already gave a space for women section such as associations of women at their churches, does not automatically represent what I mean with women’s involvement as a leader at the church. It should relate with the application of  gender mainstreaming at the policies of the churches.

Among Indonesian Women Coalition, I have raised my awareness on the policy of government to create the minister of empowerment and protection of women and children. However, we have to make surely that this minister is not created to block the idea of women’s involvement in many aspect crossing the departments.  If we practice the minister as what we understand that women’s involvement can be only channeled through women’s section, it means that this national developmental policy has gone far from its own original idea on gender mainstreaming which emphasizes having gender perspectives in any programs implying by government. So this carefully observation can be implied into the body of religious institutions of all religions in Indonesia.

Celebrating Kartini’s day this year supposes  helping  us to be honest for what has happening in our society. When our nation has opened for women national wide, we still can find no supports within our religious communities even our traditions. We all women in Indonesia need to work faithfully in the line of God’s ways to change of real situation among Indonesian women.  Kartini’s spirit to challenge us for rethinking about our interpretation of our sacred scriptures will lead us to carry into practices to what we believe in as the word of God for all people, including women, men and marginal group in our world. We need to continue our struggles for working together with our male partners to educate ourselves  and larger society for a better change in the public policies whether in the secular base sector and sacred domain arena.