Women Emancipation

By Amy Sarinah Tan
(11 Science 2 / 11 level A)

Nowadays, most of us take men and women equlity for granted. It didn’t happen in a year or even a day. For hundreds of years women and men have worked for the emancipation of women. And yes, women aren’t the only ones working for gender equality. Throughout generations, people have been fighting for gender equality and now an equal world for women is reached after years of being oppressed by society where women didn’t even need education. Their opinions didn’t matter, they had to sit there and look pretty.

Now, women have the right to vote and the right to have the same education as men. Many Asian countries have also recognized women as their leaders, like Indira Gandhi in India, etc.
Indonesia is definitely one of those countries where gender equality is extremely hard to achieve. Women are still more likely to be kept home as housewives, even though women are given the same opportunities in education, the best jobs are given to men. This is due to the old traditions that Indonesians still have where men are entitled to work for their families. The subject definitely arose during the recent Indonesian presidential election. Before Ms. Megawati was nominated as one of the candidates, a lot of people had opinions about it that I would find as sexist. They didn’t believe women could lead a nation even though countries such as India had women as their leader. They said that there is a religious law, which forbids women to lead a country. Ms. Megawati was expected by many to win, but surprisingly she lost.

The reason women are treated differently has been a huge subject for many years, but I feel like it is a deep cultural thing.  A lot of Asian families think that having a son is more helpful and beneficial than having a daughter. A lot of people will try to deny this, but you can’t hide the fact many would choose to educate their sons in foreign countries and their daughters in their own.
Overall, gender equality in Indonesia has definitely improved. Women in Indonesia have gained equality in education, career, health facilities, and political rights. I would say other countries are further in gender equality and we are still far behind.

I am a women and I’m proud. I am not writing this to side only with women, but I am writing this with one sole purpose that all humans should be treated equally.