Celebrating a Belated International Women's Day

This is a better-late-than-never post on the celebration of International Women’s Day (March 8). I celebrated by way of a few events last Wednesday.

At the conference on advancing women in Muslim societies, the audience warmed to the remarks of Dr. Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, Director of the Bureau of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction for Aceh. He scrapped the carefully crafted speech his staff wrote for him on the topic of gender in Islam. He opened with an anecdote instead, one that conveniently celebrated the role of women in communities in the developing world, in this case, Aceh. He described water use and the need to maintain clean water supplies. He said, if you want to see something done for the community (and I am paraphrasing here), you turn to the women. I am very intrigued with the reasons why this is a reality. It seems, in the world of development, this is a given.

Sitting next to me at the conference was one of the foreign service officers from the U.S. embassy. She invited me to reception for a women’s social club, Soroptimist, at the home of the Deputy Chief of Mission (U.S. Embassy, Jakarta) that night. Fortunately (again this is Jakarta), he lives in the general area where my hotel is located. The event marked International Women’s Day with a short program and time to mingle with prominent women in Jakarta. Among other things, I learned a very important lesson—“casual dress” in Indonesia is not the same as “casual dress” in the U.S. Fortunately I had opted for a decidedly “snappy casual” black dress pants, printed shirt, and heals.

The DCM shared briefly about the success of Hillary Clinton’s visit to Indonesia in mid-February. While there were some protests surrounding her visit, I am told most people were very excited that she came. I heard from someone else that her visit here was the most successful of the trips she made. The DCM quoted the refrain she repeated at many of the events here in Indonesia. “If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia,” (story). It’s no wonder that the U.S. would be interested to see what happens here and how these things may coalesce elsewhere.

There's still room for growth, as there is in any democracy. As Indonesia nears a legislative election (April 9), it’s that clear representation of women in the political sphere is lacking. There is a law that states that 30 percent of the candidates running must be women, but it’s not likely this will amount to women actually filling seats in the legislature.

After meeting a good number of women and men who are advocating for the advancement of women, I am feeling very encouraged and grateful to be in a place where progress is visible, if slow at times. Here's to women everywhere...