The dream of an Indonesian peasant woman

At the beginning of this year GERWANI, the Indonesian, women's movement, held a seminar on peasant women's problems, the first of its kind ever held in the country.

It was preceded by thorough preparation. Many meetings were held at all levels — local, regional and provincial — and the needs of peasant women were studied in detail by militant women who had voluntarily shared their modest life and their difficulties for long periods.

Such sacrifices were necessary to find out how the peasant women themselves can contribute to the rapid elimination of the colonialist heritage and the vestiges of feudalism under which they suffer, and also because "the women's movement could not fight effectively for women's emancipation without the participation of peasant women..."

How many "Djenabs" turned hopefully to this seminar where their representatives passionately discussed and formulated their demands and proposed concrete and rapid solutions to satisfy them!

Djenab was sitting in the conference hall, an eleven month old child sleeping in her arms. Her head was raised eagerly as she listened with keen interest to the speeches of her mates, country women from all over Indonesia assembled at the National Seminar.

Djenab, a peasant woman from the Pabuaran village of West Java, was one of the delegates from her region. She told me what her life had been like. She had had 12 children, but hunger and privation had taken six of them.

Picture of hall during speech given by Umi Sardjono, President of "Gerwani". The slogan reads: "Assure peasant women the right to become Chiefs of villages."

The land belonged, and in the main still belongs, to big land owners and the peasants often become burdened with debts at high interest. They are even compelled to do unpaid labour. Due to outdated customs the peasant woman suffers many hardships. Often they are married off at a very early age and then husbands can arbitrarily divorce them. As peasants, local administrative posts are still closed to them.

During the seminar, concrete measures were proposed to remedy this situation, such as abolition of the law forbidding women to be village leaders, which dates from the colonial period, and immediate creation of local legislative assemblies with women guaranteed the right to take part, as well as other local bodies.

The participants demanded rapid and consequent application of the land reform decided upon in 1960, recognition of women's right to own land, that women should take part in the land reform committees and the peasants' consultative bodies at all levels, remedial reorganization of the crop-sharing law and abolition of the extremely heavy crop tax.

Stress was placed on the need to wage a resolute struggle against certain prejudices and customs such as ostracism of childless women or women who do not bear sons. And the custom of sacrificing a woman to be buried together with a local feudal king when he dies, which still exists in some areas.

In regard to the national plan for raising production, the masses of peasant women, and particularly GERWANI members, were called upon to strive to expand food and industrial crops, with technical assistance from the government.

Finally it defined the task for GERWANI, decided to increase its efforts to help peasant women, to organise and to carry on social and cultural activities.

Attached to the hall was a small nursery where the delegates could leave their children during the seminar. "How practical and fine", Djenab told me, "I wish we could have such arrangements in the villages". Other delegates joined us and the conversation passed to women who already enjoyed equality of rights and all guarantees for the execution of their rights, which presupposes such arrangements even in the remotest villages.

"Well, I think that this is also what we work for," Djenab told me after a while. Her voice was firm and her face alight and I could only agree with her.