Women-led households ‘robbed of rights’

Women-led households ‘robbed of rights’

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Fri, November 29 2013, 7:53 AM



The lack of recognition of households headed by women has led to difficulties for members of such families accessing basic services, a coalition of women’s groups claims.

The coalition, the National Forum of the Association of Women-headed Households (PEKKA), defines a woman-headed household as one where a woman is the breadwinner, whether she be single, divorced, widowed, or with a partner who does not work, or who can barely provide for the family because of absences from the home for long spells due to work.

It also applies to households where the father of the family is absent because he is providing for other families in polygamous marriages.

The coalition said that the 1974 Marriage Law did not recognize the role of women as heads of families as it stipulated that men are the heads of households, while wives only take care of the families.

Women’s rights activist Kemala Chandrakirana, said that “For 40 years, women have been robbed of their legal rights. The legal barriers strengthen structural discrimination against women,” she said.

Data from the National Statistics Agency (BPS) shows that more and more female heads of households are looking for basic services such as free health care, but PEKKA claims they have difficulties accessing such services in many areas due to bureaucratic obstacles.

In Yogyakarta registration for this service is free, while in Madura, East Java, some local administrations still charge Rp 25,000 (US$2.13) for documents such as the family ID card or family registration card.

Director of Social Protection and People’s Welfare at the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), Vivi Yulaswati, urged women to ensure that they had all their identification documents as a prerequisite for accessing facilities.

Chairperson of PEKKA, Nani Zulminarni, said a national survey conducted by the coalition showed that official figures from the BPS failed to show the actual condition of households led by women, who are mostly poor and illiterate.

“Figures were particularly high in Lombok [West Nusa Tenggara] and Bangkalan [East Java], where the rate of illiteracy reached 80 percent,” Nani said.

PEKKA’s survey in the first half of 2012, involving 89,960 families in 17 provinces, among other results, showed that 57 percent of women who were heads of households were illiterate.

Data from the BPS in 2012 on the other hand showed 26.83 percent of women of similar status in the same provinces were illiterate.

PEKKA also found that four out of 100 families experienced domestic violence.

“There is a strong correlation between the absence of certificates, underage marriage and domestic violence,” said Nani.

With two out of every 100 marriages found to be polygamous, Nani said women mostly agreed to a polygamous marriage due to their economic situation, while men took other wives when they became better off financially.

Since polygamous marriages are unofficial such women frequently lack key documents like marriage and birth certificates for their children.