Sex and Gender Roles in Indonesia

This topic is a lively one, and I apologize in advance for not having a lot of time to write about it. My main interest here is the role of women in Indonesia. The topic could also include discussion of what are called the erotic temples. We’ll see what we can cover in the time available.

There is an article in a Garuda Indonesia magazine entitled, “Women in Politics.” It cited recent polls concluding, “In terms of competence and intelligence, it is currently perceived that there is no significant difference between men and women in politics.” My Indonesian woman friend in Hong Kong agreed with this. Furthermore, “…more than half of the public find women in parliament have increasingly improved the performance level…According to male voters, women are more honest and trustworthy…Women in politic are also perceived by more than half of the voting public as being able to curb corruption in government.”

The article goes on to enumerate some traditional attitudes that still exist, yet it is amazing to me to see women so accepted in policy-making positions in this Moslem country. I was also heartened by the attitude towards educating children. According to our Jojakarta tour guide, a former history teacher, if the parents can’t afford to educate all their children to the highest level, the first consideration will be scholastic aptitude, not sex.

I’ll skip over commentary on how Moslem society may still be limiting to women in Indonesia, and go on to a specific exception, the matriarchal society of West Sumatra. There the women rule. When daughters marry, they stay in their family compound, and their husbands join them. A woman can divorce her husband easily if she wants to do so, but our guide said that since the whole village would know why, the woman might not get another man if people felt her husband had been wronged. Slava asked how men felt about being treated as Number Two in the family. “Well,” said our guide, “if you ask the children, they’d say that their father is Number Four. Their mom is Number One, Two, and Three.” All this was hard for Slava to take. “Don’t the men want to run away?” he asked. “Actually, they do,” our guide responded. “Sometimes they go to other islands and open restaurants, although they don’t cook at home.”

West Sumatra is Moslem, which makes it particularly remarkable that the social order there is matriarchal. In the mosque men and women are separated as usual, with the men in front, and the women behind a curtain. Imams are men, as usual. For the people of West Sumatra, their ancient matriarchal society is perfectly compatible with modern Islam. They saw no need to adopt the patriarchal system of social organization when they adopted a new religion.

The Hindu religion can be frank in its references to sex. Near the city of Solo on the island of Java there are two Hindu temples dating from the 14th century that have clear sexual symbols, male and female. In a symbol for the female womb I saw symbols of good and bad, so one could conclude that babies are born having both elements. The male penis was clearly shown on statues in case an anatomy lesson was needed, and was also shown upright by itself. Hindu couples may make the trek to these temples if they have trouble conceiving children. I recommend that any visitor to Java go to the temples, but if not to have children, then to have a spectacular drive up a mountain. The steep hillsides of terraced rice paddies were breathtakingly beautiful. We saw tea plantations above the rice paddies, and small plots of corn incongruously planted near palm trees.

I’ll need to wrap up here if I’m to get this message sent out today.

Mostly Moderate Moslem

The population of Indonesia is overwhelmingly Moslem (91 percent), and most Moslems here are moderates (a small but vocal percentage are not). According to Bambang, our tour guide in Jakarta, Indonesians are by nature “soft.” What he calls soft, we might term gentle and tolerant. Islam is not a state religion here, and therefore the flag doesn’t have the Moslem crescent moon on it. About 6 percent of the population is Christian (many of them Chinese), and 2 percent Hindu or Buddhists.

Tolerance extends to letting radicals have their say. Bambang thinks that the militants are mostly ones who went to Arabic countries for education. They can be noisy, but they don’t have a lot of public support. In my opinion, Indonesia can be taken as an example of how Islam and modern society can meld.

What we have seen so far of Indonesia is the island of Java. There are 17,000 islands in the archipelago with cultures so varied that there are over 260 languages. Tolerance is often a hard-won virtue, and not always practiced. But tolerant behavior is deemed wise and appropriate.

Outsiders often judge a Moslem society by how women dress. In the city of Jakarta almost every woman we saw wore headscarves and coverings from wrist to ankle. Quite often women wore black leggings and black knit jersey tops underneath long colorful tunics. Headscarves matched the tunics, and were often jeweled or decorated in some way. Loose, flowing clothing would be cooler in this humid climate, but it seemed to me that the current fashion is show the body shape more directly. In other words, the clothing is supposed to be modest, but it can be attention-getting. The women we spoke with said that they feel it is their decision what to wear. And one Christian woman we met was as modestly dressed wrist-to-ankle as her Moslem counterparts.

The five-time-a-day call to prayer is broadcast through loudspeakers, starting before sunrise. We’ve seen a number of mosques, including one that can supposedly house 100,000 people, but going inside a mosque has not been part of our program in any city.

A good Moslem anywhere in the world is supposed to memorize as many verses of the Qu’ran as he can, and that is to be done in Arabic. But the imams, or spiritual leaders who matter here are Indonesian.

A few words about the Indonesians who are not Moslem. The largest number are on the island of Bali, where 85 percent of the people are Hindu, 10 percent are Moslem, and 3 percent are Christian. Hinduism on Bali has evolved from the Hinduism of India. It defines in large part the Balinese way of life.

The following comments are from Nyomar Reis, who is Balinese. His first name, he told us, informs people that he is from the fourth caste, the commoner class, which is the lowest in Bali. His name means Number Four. There are only four names (or numbers) given to children in his caste, and since he was the seventh child, there are two in his family named Nyomar. This highly educated man said that being in the lowest caste did not prevent him from getting a good education or a prestigious job. And, he said, the room boy in our hotel might be from the Brahmin caste. But the caste matters in social relationships, and especially marriage. Nowadays parents don’t try to prevent their children from marrying who they want, however inter-caste marriages do provide complications. For instance, a lower caste woman would be elevated only to a half step below her husband’s family, and she might not be allowed to eat with them. A higher caste woman would be formalistically“expelled” from her family for marrying someone beneath her (contact does continue).

A book on Bali says, “Life, death, rebirth. This cyclical conception of existence lies at the very heart of Balinese Hinduism.” Nyomar told us that the Balinese believe that reincarnation occurs within the family, and that when a baby is 105 days old the family has a consultation to determine whose soul the baby has. It might be, for instance, a great-great-grandfather’s. (It would seem strange, he said, to think it could be the reincarnation of a neighbor’s great-great-grandfather.)

It can be inferred that the release of the soul at death is very important in Balinese culture. The physical body is returned to the five elemental substances: solid, liquid, radiance, energy and ether. Only then can the soul be released and reincarnated. Weeping near a corpse disturbs the soul and makes it unwilling to leave, so grief is expressed in private. The cremation ceremony is elaborate and complex. It may last for many days and involves not only the burning of the corpse, but also vast quantities of valuable ritual objects especially created for the occasion.
The ceremony is so expensive that cremation may be postponed until the family has enough money for it. The corpse may be temporarily buried for months or even years. Nyomar told us that if he never accumulated enough money to cremate his parents properly, the family obligation would fall to his children.

If I maintained a proper balance in my words about religion in Indonesia, 91 percent of this posting would be about Islam, but in writing about Hindu culture I can show that Indonesia truly has room for diversity.

Politics, Religion, and Sex

I’ll forgo a description of what happens when the person who is to meet you waits for the wrong plane. In the category of Lessons Learned, I recommend that when giving instructions over the telephone to someone who doesn’t understand English very well, ask the listener to repeat what was said.

In my first impressions of Indonesia I’m going to comment on politics, religion, and sex. A few hundred words on each subject will cover the entirety of my knowledge on each subject.

Today’s topic is politics. Indonesians are thrilled that the incoming president of the United States spent his boyhood in Jakarta. The one sentence in English that every Indonesian knows is “Obama!”

There are at least three things that may be conveyed by that one-word sentence. The speaker might mean that he is glad, as one person said, that “the new American president ate our food as a boy and drank our water.” The speaker might mean that the reputation of America has been enhanced by showing how democracy at its best reflects the will of the people. And the speaker may mean, as one said, that he feels hope for his own children living in a better world.
It’s a refreshing change, as an American traveling abroad, to find yourself being received so warmly. Slava and I have felt like celebrities, because everywhere we go people want to have their pictures taken with us. Of course, we look like gentle giants to the diminutive Indonesians.

We’ve had a crash course in the political history of Indonesia, but I’m only going to comment on some points related to the state motto, “Unity through Diversity.” It has much the same connotation as “E Pluribus Unum,” but Indonesians came to this doctrine of respecting diversity in a different way.

During the centuries of colonial rule by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English, and Japanese, the main strategy for maintaining control was “divide and conquer.” Where there were domestic rivals, a colonial power might support the weaker leader, who would have to cooperate with the foreigners after beating his rival. Independence came only when Indonesian leaders worked together for a larger good. People united after the shared suffering of the Japanese occupation during World War II.

Our tour guide in Jakarta told us that during World War II, the Japanese forced his father to dump truckloads of rice into the bay, with the intent of killing Indonesians by starvation. The Indonesian troops the Japanese had trained to fight the Allies had turned on the Japanese, and the Japanese in turn punished the civilian population.

I’ll skip over Suharto’s 35-year-rule after independence and the strong men who followed him. True democracy in Indonesia, with vigorous political parties and a free press, is only about 10 years old. Corruption is still endemic, yet it’s being fought in multiple ways. For instance, both the person giving a bribe and taking a bribe are subject to penalties. Just this week a government ministry was forced to close a website that had been outsourced to a private company for the processing of payments. It seems that there was some skimming action going on.

Indonesia has a presidential election coming up in July. I know that I’ll be paying attention and cheering from the sidelines for good government. The 220 million people here deserve it. And as the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia has importance.

The current conflict in Gaza causes anguish here. Indonesia wants to send humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and fervently hopes that there can be a UN-brokered cease-fire. But to my surprise the reaction isn’t entirely anti-Israel. There is recognition of provocation by Hamas, and so the blame to Israel goes largely for the use of “disproportionate force.”

I’ll excerpt some letters from today’s issue of The Jakarta Post. The theme, you’ll see, is anti-Arab.

“Why should we waste time, money, and effort to defend Palestinians when their fellow Arabs cannot? Arabs, especially those in Saudi Arabia, look down on us because too many of us work there as maids or laborers. Why don’t we put our energy instead into creating jobs back home so nobody has to go to Arabian countries to work…”

“Why should we help when the rich Arabs cannot help their own? Did we see Arab volunteers coming to help us during the tsunami?”

“The Muslim leaders of the world bear full responsibility for the conflict in Gaza and in the Middle East in general. They have not made any real effort to eradicate this problem. By being passive and indifferent they are actively creating generation after generation of human suffering… They have done nothing to eradicate the refugee camps, leaving their ‘brothers and sisters’ stranded in limbo, not creating jobs, education, or health care and leaving them with no identity, no dignity, and no hope for a brighter tomorrow. They prefer to build islands in the sea, create seas on land, and purchase property in London and New York…”

“…Gaza was fully liberated and the Palestinians had full autonomy over the territory, yet they continued with acts of aggression against Israel – why? Israel has tried calling on them to negotiate and uphold a cease-fire numerous times, but to no avail. It’s time Muslim leaders wake up and understand violence is not a practical solution, especially when Muslim groups do these acts in the name of Allah, which only desecrates his holy name!”

Tomorrow I’ll talk about religion in Indonesia.

Between Two Planes

There is no airport in the world that offers more activities for transit passengers than Hong Kong. Those who have six hours or more between planes can take a city excursion (I had 5 ½ hours). Terminal 2 has an exciting array of entertainment (I was in Terminal 1). A short taxi ride away in one direction is outlet shopping, and in another direction is a traditional Chinese bazaar. All those treats are best enjoyed by people who haven’t been thoroughly discombobulated by nonstop travel.

I might have taken advantage of a day spa that offered massages and other delights, but I ran out of time. Let me explain.

My first activity was the game of Up Against the Bureaucracy. Here’s the opening gambit from my opponents: Before giving me the airline ticket paid for by Cathay Pacific, Garuda Indonesian Airline wanted me to sign that I was willing to pay to have my unaccompanied baggage delivered to me. Naturally I objected. With time to kill I took my objections from one person to another. What if I refused to sign? Would I be stuck at the airport in Hong Kong until my suitcase showed up?

Eventually I buckled. The charge that I would incur would not be for shipping my bag from East Anglia, Africa, if that’s where it had gone. The charge would only be for having a local Indonesian driver deliver the bag from the airport in Jakarta to my hotel. And I could pick up the bag myself at the airport when or if it ever arrived.

While at the Garuda ticket counter I met three women who had been on my flight from Vancouver, and who were also trying, so far unsuccessfully, to get to Jakarta. One was an Indonesian woman with a son in Canada. Another was Canadian, with a son in Indonesia. The third woman was the Canadian’s sister-in-law. The four of us decided to go off together to have a leisurely lunch with the lavish allowance of $75 HK we had each gotten from Cathay Pacific.

It turns out that $75 HK doesn’t buy very much. It’s the equivalent of about $8 US, and for that I got a bowl of fish ball soup and a pot of green tea.

My $15 HK phone card from Cathay Pacific bought a 3-minute call to Bali, allowing me to tell a travel agent to have someone at the Jakarta airport meet me on GA 863 instead of on CX 777. I also asked that they call the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel in Jakarta and leave a message for Mr. Slava Timashev, to let him know that his wife would arrive 5 ½ hours late. What I didn’t learn until much later was that the person who took my call didn’t understand English very well.

Up in the Air

Supper at 7:30 a.m. I’ve been traveling for 15 ½ hours and am somewhere over the icy part of the Pacific. Outside the airplane window the sky is dark. I know my watch is wrong, but in a few more hours it will be right again. I’m traveling through 12 time zones, from Washington, DC to Jakarta, Indonesia.

Going west I am experiencing two consecutive nights with few hours of daylight in between. The plane races the dawn, and the airplane is winning. We’re traveling the Great Arc from Vancouver, Canada, up to Anchorage, Alaska, then down by Kamchatka, Russia, and Seoul, Korea. Only when we angle towards Hong Kong will dawn catch up with us.

Cathay Pacific Airline is flying one of Boeing’s newest planes, a 777-ER. The “extended reach” plane make the 13-hour trip to Hong Kong with a flight crew of four, a cabin crew of 14, and a passenger load of 301 (assuming every seat taken, which seems to be true on this flight).

We have the requisite number of babies who express their discomfort in voices loud enough to hear throughout the Economy Section. I don’ think there are any babies in Business Class.

The Business Class on the Boeing 777-ER itches my envy area. The layout has individual compartments of lounge chairs in angled rows. A person could really sleep there!

In the Economy Section the seats cleverly slide down rather than lean back, so you aren’t bothered by the inconsiderate slob in the row ahead of you. But for Cathay Pacific Airline the seats have been scrunched together in a way that is tolerable only for Asian clientele under the age of 12. The rest of us have our knees jammed into the seats ahead of us. For diversion, however, we have our choice of 100 movies, 350 TV shows, 888 CD’s, 22 radio channels, 70 videos, and innumerable games. I settled down for a slickly satirical newscast from Onion News Network, then viewed a brutally honest episode of HBO’s “The Wire,” and rounded out my viewing with a sweet documentary about Abba and the making of “Mamma Mia.” The rest of the time I listened to my idiosyncratic music mix.

When we crossed the International Dateline we were just 8 hours from Hong Kong, where the local time, we were told, was 25:08. We had lost a day – something we could regain on the trip back.

Our landing in Hong Kong was uneventful, except for the problem that we were a bit late. A freak snowstorm in Vancouver had delayed us for deicing the wings, and we arrived in Hong Kong too late for me and a lot of others to catch our connections. Cathay Pacific service personnel greeted us with tickets already prepared for later flights, and gave us $75 HK in food vouchers and $15 in phone cards. It was all very efficient, except the baggage handling. My suitcase was lost.