Woman's Role Since Independence

by HERAWATI DIAH

ALL MY relatives and the family’s friends were shocked when I announced in 1937 that I was going to the United States to study at a university. ”Let her go to college here where you. can at least keep an eye on her,” one of my aunts said. Another suggested that I join a Dutch family, who were about to repatriate, and study in Holland under their guardianship. In a word, it was considered. “ un-Indonesian” for a girl to leave her parental home and pursue higher education abroad.

Now that I am safely returned to my country with the knowledge and broadening which my education at Barnard College in New York brought me. I can look back with amusement at the objections raised at the time. I can calmly remember, too, how I was publicized on my arrival back home in 1941. I was something of a curiosity. I was even offered a contract to be a screen, heroine. Later when I took a journalistic job, people still looked askance at a woman working when she was not compelled to.

It now seems hard to believe that scarcely more than a decade ago Indonesian women were still deprived of many economic, social, and cultural privileges. At best, if she could afford it, a girl could enter a secondary institution for the study of home economics. There were instances of thirteen-year-old girls having marriages arranged for them. Yet even in my childhood, there were a few signs of progress. A couple of women had become physicians, there were a few lady dentists, and one woman had a certificate for teaching at a full-fledged primary school.

Today the situation is different. The Provisional Constitution, promulgated in 1945, guaranteed equal rights for women, and the results have been immediate. We women can now be proud of the two members of our sex who have held ministerial rank in the Cabinet, and of the women members in the Parliament and in local provincial councils. With surprising speed our women have begun to appear on platforms at public functions, in private jobs as executives, doctors, nurses, journalists, public relations officers, and directors of businesses. A few even hold positions in the foreign service, and more and more are enrolling in the diplomatic school in Jakarta. Several have represented our country at various international conferences, and at embassies, and other missions.

Since the independence of our country — and the women fought for this freedom during the revolution as if imbued with a holy mission, even to the extent of carrying arms and crossing enemy lines — we have been extending our long-awaited emancipation. To be sure, it is the city girls from prosperous families who have taken the lead, but the new schools which are multiplying throughout the country will give basic education to boys and girls alike, and our village social traditions, which always respected the dignity of woman and gave her more freedom than was accorded in many other Asian countries, will insure, in due time, a genuine equality of opportunity.