Women Against Defeat

The issue of gender inequality remains a bitter reality in society. Impoverished women experience double the pressure. First, because they are poor. Second, because they are women. For a lot of women, poverty is created. Values, social processes, institutions, and practices of discrimination that are based on prejudice have systematically rendered them alienated from economic, social, and political resources.

Impoverishment of women in Bali is shrouded in the transfer of ownership of land for tourism, while in West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, it is influenced by child marriage and the new generation of migrant workers. Furthermore, there is also the transfer of ownership and function of land into palm oil field in West Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi, and Aceh.

The discussion of women impoverishment is recorded in “ A Journey Against Defeat: Narative of Women’s Rejection of Poverty”, written by Lies Marcoes-Natsir (INSISTPress, 2014). In addition to texts, the story of women’s struggle is also translated into pictures. This narrative was produced after a nine months journey to eight areas in the archipelago.

This pressing situation has not only been responded with passivity. Hayat from Aceh stood against discrimination of being HIV positive through the HIV NAD Support Group NGO. Ibu Rini from the deep forest of West Kalimantan fought against the palm oil mafia of Core Estate and Smallholder (Perkebunan Inti Rakyat) through advocacy. Mama Katarina from Ende intensively rejects the mining of ironsand, by mobilizing her church network and community groups.

Not only in Indonesia, the women struggle also occurs in various parts of the world. This social movements are detailed in the book “Ecofeminism”, a collaborative work of a physicist with a background in ecological movement, Vandana Shiva, and a social scientist, Maria Mies (IRE Press, 2005). The book examines the social movements from an ecofeminism point of view, a feminism idea which sees the connection between nature and women in a patriarchal culture.

The outcome from this publication is the vision of subsistence perspective or survival perspective, a vision for a better communal lives. They see the struggle for survival as a critical action towards things that are agressive, exploitative, and destructive. If the patriarchal economy prioritize economic growth, the subsistence economic system promotes life itself.

Ecofeminism emerged from diverse social movements in the late 1970s until the early 1980s. The term ecofeminism became popular after the actions of opposing destructions that had triggered ongoing ecological disaster. Nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island had driven a number of women in the United States to gather in the first ecofeminism conference in March 1980.

Women’s movement associated with environment later intensified, among others, with the establishment of the International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (1984), a congress in Sweden (1985), Bangladesh (1988), and Brazil (1991). From these meetings on ecofeminism, it has been concluded that women’s liberation is part of a struggle to preserve life. [KOMPAS’ R&D / IGP].