Women’s Long Road to Equality

Posted by AsiaViews | Nov 6, 2017 | 0 |

Across the Malay world, people often cite the adage, “heaven lies beneath the soles of mothers” to highlight women’s perceived exalted position as mothers. These days, however, women are more than just mothers: they are factory workers, they are doctors, they are farmers, they do what job they want to take on. Still, the progress women have achieved toward gender equality is uneven around the world.

The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report is but one index to track how far we have come to closing the gap between men and women in several categories: health outcomes, educational attainment, economic participation, and political gap.

Since the Report began in 2008, gender equality in East Asia and the Pacific has been a middling affair—the region regularly finds itself in the middle range of the index although particular countries do better than others.

In Southeast Asia, gender equality is particularly varied. The Philippines is the region’s star performer at 10th place, according this year’s Report. Even so, as the Philippine Star editorial that we highlighted in this week’s Spotlight, laws in support of gender equality go unenforced and access to reproductive health services remains weak.

Meanwhile, other countries in Southeast Asia are clustered further down the 144-country ranking: Laos (64), Singapore (65), Vietnam (69), Thailand (75), Myanmar (83), Indonesia (84), Cambodia (99), Brunei (102), Malaysia (104), and Timor Leste (128). Everywhere in the region, in any case, the political gap remains wide between the genders, while performance in the Report’s other categories varies by country.

Women in South Asia, as the Indian Express editorial suggests, have a longer path to tread ahead. While Bangladesh (47) is the region’s star performer in closing the gender gap, India (108) is closing the gender gap only in terms of education attainment. The rest of the region lags even further behind.

Although the world is addressing the gender gap, it is also clear that many societies only respect women as mothers, but not women as women. This is a great irony: Would you treat your own mother as you treat women in general?

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EXTRICATING NDONESIAN CHILDREN FROM ISIS INFLUENCE ABROAD

Indonesia urgently needs to revisit the possibility of repatriating the neediest of its young citizens stranded abroad, whose families had earlier joined ISIS. Most of these children are in camps in northern Syria but there are also small numbers in the Philippines, Afghanistan and Iraq. “Extricating Indonesian Children from ISIS Influence Abroad”, the latest report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) argues that the government could begin by bringing back small groups of unaccompanied children under ten years of age, who pose minimal security risk and are most vulnerable to deteriorating conditions in the camps.“The problem is that health and security conditions are worsening by the day in the Syrian camps, and the children are growing older,” says Dyah Kartika, IPAC analyst. “They need access to schools, a nurturing environment, and medical attention. If the government waits too long, the children will be further exposed to ISIS ideology.” The new report examines a 2019 list of Indonesians in camps and prisons run by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Indonesian government has been trying to verify their citizenship, but with pseudonyms, misspellings and bad transliterations, it is a daunting task. At the time the data was collected, between March and June 2019, there were 555 Indonesians in SDF camps and prisons, including 367 children. Among the children, approximately 277 were under the age of ten and 34 were unaccompanied. In June 2021, there are fewer than ten children who are both unaccompanied and under the age of ten that could be prioritized for return. Bringing back children of ISIS families is no easy task. The report analyses the main challenges faced by the Indonesian government. These include definitional issues, bureaucratic competition, the difficulty of verifying nationality, evaluating the toll of exposure to conflict, assessing security risk, and finding relatives or others willing to provide care once the children are returned. In addition, COVID has meant stringent restrictions on travel, placing further obstacles in the way of repatriation. There are several models for rehabilitation of children exposed to violent extremism in Indonesia that could be modified to accommodate the needs of children repatriated from abroad. The report examines these models and argues that the government does not need to have every detail of rehabilitation programs in place before it starts extricating children from ISIS influence. It can start by bringing back the most vulnerable children and then modify programs as needed.

“It’s important that the government see these children as victims” says Dyah. “They deserve a chance to be children again.”

Women’s Long Road to Equality