JP/ Nurhayati
Dian Kuswandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
| Wed, 04/21/2010 8:59 AM | People
Little Saskia Eleonora Wieringa felt tortured every time her parents asked her to dress up like a girl.
“I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy,” recalled the 60-year-old professor from the University of Amsterdam. “My parents were angry at me. They wanted me to dress up like a girl.”
So, Wieringa’s rejection of gender stereotypes started at an early age.
“The culture in the Netherlands was so patriarchal back then. It was torturing me,” she confessed. “Women were taught to be housewives. I couldn’t agree with that. I didn’t want to be a housewife.
“I wanted equality; I wanted freedom,” she added.
Wieringa then found her freedom during her university years in the mid 1970s, when she occupied herself with women issues. At that time, she founded several women’s organizations and published journals highlighting women issues.
Her interest in women issues led her to visit Indonesia in 1977. At the time, her goal was only to complete her academic research on women batik workers in Surakarta, Central Java. The supposedly short-visit, however, became a lifetime attachment for her, as Wieringa spent years doing research on the outlawed Gerwani (the Indonesian Women’s Movement).
“At first, when I started my research on the women batik workers, I found out these workers lived in very poor conditions,” Wieringa said during her recent visit to Jakarta for the Festival April event. “At that time, I thought I should share this problem with local women groups.
“I met with women groups like Dharma Wanita, Dharma Pertiwi and PKK [Family Empowerment and Welfare Movement], but I was very surprised to learn that these groups only carried out activities like cooking and costume shows – things that looked silly to me.”
Wieringa had her own reason to feel surprised. Back in the Netherlands, she said, she had heard about a very influential wo-men’s movement from Indonesia, called Gerwani. Gerwani members, she said, were known to be smart and prominent in defending women’s and workers’ rights at many international forums.
“So, at that time, I was wondering, what has happened to Gerwani? Where are its members?” she said. “I asked many locals about Gerwani, and their responses were: ‘Ooow, yes we know Gerwani – they were all prostitutes.’”
The responses surprised Wieringa, because she had heard that Gerwani was a socialist movement, and that socialism was against prostitution. In addition to that, she understood that Gerwani was totally against polygamy, making her believe that the rumor that Gerwani’s members were involved in sex parties must be nothing but slander.
“I sensed something wrong was going on and that was how I started to find more information on Gerwani for my research,” said Wieringa of the movement banned by former president Soeharto following the alleged 1965 coup attempt by the subsequently outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). In the tragic events that followed, six military generals and an officer was killed, and Gerwani – said to be an affiliate of the PKI – was deemed responsible for torturing them to death.
But the more Wieringa studied Gerwani and the accusations made against it, the more she had questions dancing in her mind.
“There’s no way girls aged 13 to15 would mutilate the private parts of those 60-year-old something generals,” she said. “It’s illogical. Where would those very young girls get such an idea from?”
Such thoughts led her to dig deeper into countless documents to satisfy her curiosity. Luckily for Wieringa, she found a very important document, containing autopsy reports on the generals. The reports, part of scholar Benedict Anderson’s papers, clearly stated that there was no trace of razors and penknives on the generals’ bodies, and that their genitals were intact.
“So, those stories about Gerwani were all fabricated by Soeharto. Those women never tortured the generals and didn’t cut off their genitals,” Wieringa lamented.
Forensic evidence also confirmed Wieringa’s previous interviews with some Gerwani members she met in the early 1980s. Under the highly traumatic conditions following their arrest by Soeharto’s people, these women maintained that they were not involved in the massacre.
“At that time, I found many of them were in a traumatic state after surviving Soeharto’s cruelty,” said Wieringa, who co-founded the Kartini Asia Network. Following Soeharto’s banning of Gerwani, she went on, thousands of its members were murdered, while many others were held in prison – tortured and sexually abused.
“It was difficult to talk to Gerwani members at that time,” said Wieringa, who was once banned by Soeharto from entering Indonesia. “There were military officers who were always keeping their eyes on them.
“I secretly and carefully carried out my research because we [my sources and I] were in danger,” she added.
Being trapped in such a dangerous situation also forced her to halt her research. It took years before she could return to Indonesia to continue and crosscheck her research in 1995.
At that time, although she managed to complete the research for her dissertation under the title The Aborted Women’s Movement in Indonesia, she needed to hide many identities of her sources for safety reasons.
However, the research, which was later published in the form of a book, has been regarded as the most influential work on the Indonesian women’s movement and inspired many Indonesian feminists and right activists.
Now, 30 years after she first deconstructed the myths about Gerwani, Wieringa took the chance to launch the revised version of her book, entitled Penghancuran Gerakan Perempuan: Politik Seksual di Indonesia Pasca Kejatuhan PKI (The Destruction of the Women’s Movement: Sexual Politics in Indonesia after the Downfall of the Indonesian Communist Party).
“It took me a long time to publish this [revised version of my] book because my research was considered dangerous and I was blacklisted [by Soeharto],” she said. “I had to hide many facts in the previous version, but here [in the revised one], I revealed everything.”
Although she finally had the chance to share her research with the Indonesian public, who has lived with Soeharto’s lies about Gerwani for years, Wieringa said she wouldn’t stop working on women issues in the country.
“I’ve become so attached to Indonesia and these Gerwani women,” Wieringa said, referring to a number of older women, who attended her book launching that day. “I just couldn’t come taking facts from them and [then simply] say good bye. I don’t want to leave them.”
That was why, Wieringa went on, she was planning to spend the rest of her life in Indonesia.
“My plan is to move to Indonesia after retiring from teaching at the University of Amsterdam,” she smiled. “I’m also a mualaf [a convert to Islam] now. So I feel that Indonesia would be a perfect place for me to spend the rest of my life.”
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/04/21/saskia-eleonora-wieringa-debunking-myths-indonesian-women%E2%80%99s-movements.html
| Wed, 04/21/2010 8:59 AM | People
Little Saskia Eleonora Wieringa felt tortured every time her parents asked her to dress up like a girl.
“I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy,” recalled the 60-year-old professor from the University of Amsterdam. “My parents were angry at me. They wanted me to dress up like a girl.”
So, Wieringa’s rejection of gender stereotypes started at an early age.
“The culture in the Netherlands was so patriarchal back then. It was torturing me,” she confessed. “Women were taught to be housewives. I couldn’t agree with that. I didn’t want to be a housewife.
“I wanted equality; I wanted freedom,” she added.
Wieringa then found her freedom during her university years in the mid 1970s, when she occupied herself with women issues. At that time, she founded several women’s organizations and published journals highlighting women issues.
Her interest in women issues led her to visit Indonesia in 1977. At the time, her goal was only to complete her academic research on women batik workers in Surakarta, Central Java. The supposedly short-visit, however, became a lifetime attachment for her, as Wieringa spent years doing research on the outlawed Gerwani (the Indonesian Women’s Movement).
“At first, when I started my research on the women batik workers, I found out these workers lived in very poor conditions,” Wieringa said during her recent visit to Jakarta for the Festival April event. “At that time, I thought I should share this problem with local women groups.
“I met with women groups like Dharma Wanita, Dharma Pertiwi and PKK [Family Empowerment and Welfare Movement], but I was very surprised to learn that these groups only carried out activities like cooking and costume shows – things that looked silly to me.”
Wieringa had her own reason to feel surprised. Back in the Netherlands, she said, she had heard about a very influential wo-men’s movement from Indonesia, called Gerwani. Gerwani members, she said, were known to be smart and prominent in defending women’s and workers’ rights at many international forums.
“So, at that time, I was wondering, what has happened to Gerwani? Where are its members?” she said. “I asked many locals about Gerwani, and their responses were: ‘Ooow, yes we know Gerwani – they were all prostitutes.’”
The responses surprised Wieringa, because she had heard that Gerwani was a socialist movement, and that socialism was against prostitution. In addition to that, she understood that Gerwani was totally against polygamy, making her believe that the rumor that Gerwani’s members were involved in sex parties must be nothing but slander.
“I sensed something wrong was going on and that was how I started to find more information on Gerwani for my research,” said Wieringa of the movement banned by former president Soeharto following the alleged 1965 coup attempt by the subsequently outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). In the tragic events that followed, six military generals and an officer was killed, and Gerwani – said to be an affiliate of the PKI – was deemed responsible for torturing them to death.
But the more Wieringa studied Gerwani and the accusations made against it, the more she had questions dancing in her mind.
“There’s no way girls aged 13 to15 would mutilate the private parts of those 60-year-old something generals,” she said. “It’s illogical. Where would those very young girls get such an idea from?”
Such thoughts led her to dig deeper into countless documents to satisfy her curiosity. Luckily for Wieringa, she found a very important document, containing autopsy reports on the generals. The reports, part of scholar Benedict Anderson’s papers, clearly stated that there was no trace of razors and penknives on the generals’ bodies, and that their genitals were intact.
“So, those stories about Gerwani were all fabricated by Soeharto. Those women never tortured the generals and didn’t cut off their genitals,” Wieringa lamented.
Forensic evidence also confirmed Wieringa’s previous interviews with some Gerwani members she met in the early 1980s. Under the highly traumatic conditions following their arrest by Soeharto’s people, these women maintained that they were not involved in the massacre.
“At that time, I found many of them were in a traumatic state after surviving Soeharto’s cruelty,” said Wieringa, who co-founded the Kartini Asia Network. Following Soeharto’s banning of Gerwani, she went on, thousands of its members were murdered, while many others were held in prison – tortured and sexually abused.
“It was difficult to talk to Gerwani members at that time,” said Wieringa, who was once banned by Soeharto from entering Indonesia. “There were military officers who were always keeping their eyes on them.
“I secretly and carefully carried out my research because we [my sources and I] were in danger,” she added.
Being trapped in such a dangerous situation also forced her to halt her research. It took years before she could return to Indonesia to continue and crosscheck her research in 1995.
At that time, although she managed to complete the research for her dissertation under the title The Aborted Women’s Movement in Indonesia, she needed to hide many identities of her sources for safety reasons.
However, the research, which was later published in the form of a book, has been regarded as the most influential work on the Indonesian women’s movement and inspired many Indonesian feminists and right activists.
Now, 30 years after she first deconstructed the myths about Gerwani, Wieringa took the chance to launch the revised version of her book, entitled Penghancuran Gerakan Perempuan: Politik Seksual di Indonesia Pasca Kejatuhan PKI (The Destruction of the Women’s Movement: Sexual Politics in Indonesia after the Downfall of the Indonesian Communist Party).
“It took me a long time to publish this [revised version of my] book because my research was considered dangerous and I was blacklisted [by Soeharto],” she said. “I had to hide many facts in the previous version, but here [in the revised one], I revealed everything.”
Although she finally had the chance to share her research with the Indonesian public, who has lived with Soeharto’s lies about Gerwani for years, Wieringa said she wouldn’t stop working on women issues in the country.
“I’ve become so attached to Indonesia and these Gerwani women,” Wieringa said, referring to a number of older women, who attended her book launching that day. “I just couldn’t come taking facts from them and [then simply] say good bye. I don’t want to leave them.”
That was why, Wieringa went on, she was planning to spend the rest of her life in Indonesia.
“My plan is to move to Indonesia after retiring from teaching at the University of Amsterdam,” she smiled. “I’m also a mualaf [a convert to Islam] now. So I feel that Indonesia would be a perfect place for me to spend the rest of my life.”
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/04/21/saskia-eleonora-wieringa-debunking-myths-indonesian-women%E2%80%99s-movements.html
