By: Sri Suwartiningsih
Abstract
Women’s problems in Central Java are integral problems in Indonesia. They
may not face problems, if Indonesia itself doesn’t face ones. Women found themselves
depriving, facing and having problems, mostly out of proverty. Therefore, in the
beginning of this paper, it will deliberately explain on poverty in Indonesia, the
situation and condition, and especially those found in Central Java.
Then afterwards this paper will explain on women’s problems and methods to handle
social problems or especially women’s problems assisted by social workers,
accurately and professionally. For such reason, in the end of this paper the writer is
interested to propose for an idea of Social Worker Program in Higher
Education/Universities, which is expected in the future time to help resolve social
problems in Indonesia, particularly by professional women social workers.
Keywords : Women”s problems, Professionalism, Social Worker, Poverty,
1. Poverty and How to Overcome It.
Although Indonesia has celebrated its independence over half of century now, yet poor people and poverty problems remain still. It is now approximated that around 60% of poor people are those living in villages. Indeed, poverty is very much the picture of and part of the dynamic of the Indonesian society, especially in villages. As reported in Kompas—a local newspaper (August 2nd, 2006), it said that during dry season the number of poor families is increasing around 30%, from the total raskin (rice given to poor families) receivers in Central Java, that is around 1,8 millions families. Those areas in severe drought are: Rembang, Pati, Grobogan, Wonogiri, Sragen, Purworejo, Demak, Pemalang. All are in the level of district and in Central
Kompas (August 1st, 2006) reported that many families in some villages in
Sukatani Sud-district, Purwakarta, West Java, had consumed cassavas (instead of
rice) only for months since they could not afford to buy rice they need. Little money that those farmers earned had also enforced them to harvest their cassavas early before their time. “In dry season like this, peasants like me do not have much to do. The land is drying, therefore we get no income. It’s been hard for us to buy rice everyday,” told Mansur (45), a peasant in Leuwengnangkot village. Some of the families in that village have to change their rice with cassavas in order to save their expenses. It also reported that 72 families in Pasirmunjul village had also consumed cassavas, since they could not afford to buy rice.
Poverty among Indonesian population has been worsening, particularly with the phenomenon of swollen stomaches because of starvation in some villages in Indonesia. From January until November 2005, as many as 71,815 children under five years old all over Indonesia were facing mal-nutrition. From the number, 232 died. The biggest number was found in West Java Province. From 12,028 cases, 94 of them died. In west Nusa Tenggara (NTB) from 3,438 cases, 33 of them died; in East Nusa Tenggara, from 13,969 cases, 52 of them also died; and in Riau from 56 cases, 4 of
them died; whereas in Aceh (NAD) from 3,763 cases, 8 of them died. In Papua province, from 1,155 cases, 3 of them died; in South Kalimantan from 56 cases, 4 of them died and in Central Kalimantan from 39 cases, 1 of them died; whereas, in Maluku from 5 cases, 1 of them died (Suara Pembaharuan, December 12th, 2005). Nationally, swollen stomach due to starvation attack 8% of children under the age of five in Indonesia. Based on data obtained from BPS (National Statistic Agency), the number of children, aged 0-4 years old, reached 20.87 millions in 2005. It means that the number of children under the age of five suffering swollen stomaches due to starvation, recently, has reached an approximate number around 1.67 millions lives (indosiar.com; May, 2005). It has been a heart-breaking fact for Indonesia to learn, that regardless its widely popularity as being rich with natural resources, Indonesian population are mostly living in starvation and poverty, instead.
Based on the policy, the central government implements programs in the forms of: (1) reducing the percentage of population living under poverty through credits giving, business security and means and facilities provision in villages, such as Puskesmas (Public Health), Inpres (presidential supports), KUD (a village
cooperative), and many more; (2) fulfiling supply of food for poor people through the distribution of free-sembako (nine basic needs) to the poor; (3) providing appropriate health services by sending medical staffs to villages and providing the medicines needed through Puskesmas; (4) building more schools as part of giving better basic educations’ means and facilities; (5) providing work opportunities through projects of government’s means and facilities repairment, provision of credits and money to start businesses given as loans to the poor; (6) granting the poor people’s need for simple housing and sanitation; (7) supplying clean water and drinking water; also (8) distributing electricity, telecommunication medias and alike for villagers; and a lot more.
Programs mentioned above, however, faced failures more than its successes. KUT—a credit given to support farmers, for an instance, is one of the government’s
serial programs which fails. The program places Banks, Cooperatives, NGOs and farmer groups only as credit-channelling-machines, whereas responsible for the credit itself is the Cooperative Department. In 1998, grant for KUT reached the number of 8.4 billions rupiah, 13 times higher than the former year. Farmers called it as a “six degrees mistake” for: (1) it didn’t empower the farmers; (2) the credit-channelling-machines (NGOs, Banks, Cooperatives) were not selected selectively; (3) RDKK— Definitive Plan for Group’s Needs was made unplanned, and most of them were not exist; (4) credits were given to anyone, even when they were not farmers, it was then not in target; (5) there was no monitoring in the distribution, receive and use of the credits; (6) there were some leak in the fund-distribution, started from Cooperative Department until KUD. In September 2000, it was found that unpaid-credits for farmers had reached 6.169 billions rupiah or 73.69% of credit realization. Since 2000, the KUT, considered as being a failure, was changed into a new program from the government, that was Food Sovereignty Credit Program (KKP). Its implementation was given solely to the banks, and the government only acted as subsidy giver in elementary stage. It was a success in 2004 as targetted by the government, yet it faced a failure later on due to banks’ difficulty in channelling the credits to farmers and farmers’ difficulty in paying the interests of the credits. From a sum of 2.3 quintillion rupiah, until March 2001, they only realized 3.85 billions rupiah or 1.57 billions rupiah or 1.57%. It resulted then in the scarcity of credits for farnmers in villages.
by giving financial supports and infrastructure provision. The point of the program is a mutual planning, that involve the society, men and women, including the poor. The program was designed through discussion mechanism from sub-village level to subdistrict level. The program implementation is carried out by one facilitator from the subdistrict administration, two facilitators from the village (one man and one woman in every village), and also with the assisstance of managing institution, such as UPK—A Unit for Finance Management that involving LMD—Village Institutions. The program faces failures in some areas due to lack of planning and transparancy in the use and allocation of the fund to the villagers. Recently, they undergo some work-renewal by improving work mechanism, either from the sponsor or assissted organizations.
Basically, there are two important factors which have caused the failure in the poverty reduction programs in Indonesia. Firstly, the poverty reduction programs focus heavily on distributing/channelling social aids to the poor, among other are distribution of rice for the poor and social safety network (JPS), both are for the poor. Such effort will be unlikely solving the problem of poverty, since they are not empowering the people, instead they are causing growing dependency of the poor people. Such “charity” of the government may even degrade the morality and attitude of the poor. Support program for the poor should have focused more on developing the culture of productive economy and being able to free the people from their great permanent dependency. In other side, such social support programs may suffer corruption along its distribution. It will be a lot useful when such supports are directly used to improve human resources issue, such as free-school fees in elementary and secondary schools, as well as free-medical fees for health services given in puskesmas. Second factor contributes towards the failure of the poverty reduction
program is the many parties’ lack of understanding on the very root causes of the poverty itself. This is why many of the existing development programs do not base themselves on poverty issues, which may have been caused by particularly diverse and distinguished local causes.
One of the victims of inaccurate poverty management is women. Especially, those women who cannot strongly access resources, either natural or public. Below is an illumination on women’s problems, particularly in Central Java.
2. Women’s Problems in Central Java.
In this paper, women refer to female human being from the age of 0 to over 65 (or as long as they live). Some problems found concerning women are:
a. Pre-mature born female babies
mal-nutrition suffered by the babies, and also the bad health condition of the mothers themselves during the pregnancy. Therefore, through socializations conducted in PKK (Public Education for Women) and Posyandu (Integrated Service Post), pregnant women are expected to always have their health and nutrition examined and watched. They have the so-called Tabulin program, a program made for expecting/delivering mothers.
b. Mal-nutrition cases amongst girls under five years old.
In Central Java, especially in villages where lands are dry, there are around 7000 children under 5 years old who suffer from mal-nutrition. This is an important fact where attention is needed, since children in such age develop and grow their body and brain.
c. Girls have mostly low education
Data obtained from the Education Department says that per March 2007, there are 4000 girls do not continue to senior high. Thus they are only graduated from secondary schools. Most of the reason why they discontinue their schools is because their parents could not afford to pay the school fee. Aside than that, most schools are far from their homes, so they find difficulty going to their schools.
Being drop-outs, those girls then become: - Farmers/peasants (helping their parents)
- Store attendants - Factory labors - Domestic workers
- Women migrant workers to Malaysia, Arab, Hongkong, Philiphine, Taiwan, etc.
- Others
d. Unwanted Pregnancy
This is such a phenomenon that has brought many concerns for many parties, especially parents. With the free-distributed porn-movies and the changed life-style of the young, many girls now getting unwanted and pre-marital pregnancy.
e. Women Migrant Workers.
when they are working abroad but also when they are still in the country before their departure, such as:
- Pre-departure: they are tricked by illegal labor agencies. Some of the to-be migrant workers are being arrested by the police for not having complete official documents.
- In the shelter home: some of the migrant workers are locked up, taken their money, and tricked into sex workers.
- When working abroad (in receiving country): many migrant workers work for cruel employers (they are tortured, ironed and even getting pregnant). Some of them even have their bodies deformed, paralyzed and some dead.
- Post-arrival: when they go home their money are robbed at the airport, by the travel agents, etc.
Migrant worker issue has become special issue in Indonesia recently.
f. Underpayment
In some factories in Central Java, women labors are paid below the minimum wage. The Labor Office has now been doing the monitoring towards those factories to review their wage standard given to their labors, especially women labors who are most of the time given lower than their male counterparts.
g. Maternity Leave
The issue now has come to the issue of maternity leave for contract and daily women labors, since the law has only regulated the maternity leave only for permanent staffs.
h. Domestic Violence
Some victims of domestic violence are daughters and wives. Some children are being abused by their stepfathers, children who are forced by their parents to make a living in the street, etc. Whereas, for wives who have been abused by their husbands are sometimes too afraid to report thir cases. Other than the physical violence, they also experience psychological violence, such as: being cheated by their husbands, not given financial support properly, not allowed working outside their homes, etc.
i. Divorce
j. Degenerative Illness
Some women being in their 50s are getting osteoporosis, higher blood pressure and diabetes. Especially for diabetes, there has been an increase 20% higher in recent 2006-2007. Doctor Organization in Indonesia has organized many activities regarding this disease, and many people seem to be interested in their programs.
k. Low participation in various fields, such politic, social, and culture for lack of opportunities. Whereas participation in economic field is high, even tend to be exploited and carry double burden.
l. Right to women’s healthy reproductive has not yet fulfiled. Women could not decide when and how many children they could have, or what contraception should be taken.
m. High number of children and women trafficking due to low education and poverty.
Women problems above cannot be resolved by themselves, it requires then cooperation with various parties. We cannot count on the government only; therefore we need to find other actor who could be the mediator, communicator, initiator as well as coordinator to resolve those problems, which take women mostly as the victims. The actor is called social worker, who concerns towards social problems and could resolve or handle such problems precisely.
3. Professionalism of Social Worker.
Society (read: women) possesses naturally the strength to resolve their own problems and create life by their own. The society is capable of analysing theirown problems, designing a plan, carrying out, monitoring and evaluating an activity.
We could observe the many initiatives of problem solving which come from the people themselves, with theirown ability to survive and continue life. It is the society themselves (the women) who fight for better life sustainability.
Social Workers (CSW), the writer wishes to cite some of the content of the CSW Manual, which was published by the Empowerment of the Central Java Social Welfare Workers in 2006, to learn why even 2 years after its formation the CSW has not yet established its existence and service in the society? Why could this happen?
PART 1 COMMUNITY SOCIAL WORKERS (CSW) A. DEFINITION OF CSW
CSW is a citizen, who departs from social conscience and responsibility, and who is enforced by the feeling of togetherness and social solidarity voluntarily devotes her/himself towards the development of the social welfare.
CSW based their works/duties on: 1. Social conscience and responsibility 2. Voluntarily and not by force
3. Devotion and sacrifation to struggle for the development and society.
4. Work unconditionally and hope for nothing, but for the interests of the society being assissted.
B. CHARACTERS OF A CSW Characters of a CSW are as follow: 1. Believed in One God
2. Solely loyal towards Pancasila and UUD 1945 3. Promote human’s dignity
4. Be willing to sacrifice, never give up, brave and honest in demonstrating his/her struggle and work for humanity, development, and social welfare
5. Put priority towards humanity works than personal or communal interests 6. Be sensitive towards environment
C. CSW’s POSITION IN THE SOCIETY
CSW comes from the society, which has been developed by the Social Department. CSW doesn’t belong to the Social Department, instead they belong to the society. CSW is the participation pillar for National Development, generally, and Social Welfare Development, particularly.
Functionally and/or technically, CSW is trained by the Social Department. In general, CSW is alsi trained by other Instances, especially related to their works, where CSW conduct inter-sectors works from various Instances.
D. POSITION, DUTY AND FUNCTION OF CSW 1. POSITION OF CSW
CSW’s position is being one of the pillars for social welfare development, which help and together with the government apparatus carry out social welfare activities.
2. DUTY OF CSW
CSW functions to carry out social welfare activities in line with the specialty of their services, based on the government policy in social welfare development. 3. FUNCTION OF CSW
a. As a Motivator
- To motivate their environment, including those having social welfare problems.
- To find potentials of social welfare problems as well as self-resources and social funds which can be earned to overcome social welfare problems.
- To formulate steps taken in overcoming social welfare problems.
b. As a Dynamist
Think and act dynamically, to move and direct, either individuals or groups.
c. As an implementor of duties related to social welfare development and other development in general.
- To carry out social welfare activities professionally, in line with the field and level of services.
- To conduct activities, either by the government or the society themselves.
- To implement activities of social welfare based on self-initiatives and efforts.
Answering the above question of why the designed CSW is taken as invisible among the society? There are some factors which may the reasons of why social worker concepts are hard to implement, they are:
1. Social workers taken as volunteers would be something rare for the Indonesian to do, since most of the Indonesian people look for paid jobs. With ‘volunteer’ status, then works would not be something carried out in maximum efforts.
3. Social workers formed by the Social Department, whereas in fact, attitudes and work-performance of the bureaucrates in Social Department themselves are not entirely professional.
Things to change are:
1. The position of social workers is not only as volunteer, but as chosen profession with wages above the minimum wage.
2. Social workers are those actors possessing the minimum standard of formal education (S1) along with other knowledge on social issues and social welfare, as well as equipped with skill of community development planning, communication, networkings, emotional intelligent, etc.
3. The position of social workers is not only under the Social Department but also under the Higher Education Department.
It means that a social worker (an outsider) who is about to and in the midst of assissting the community should be able to “think.” This thinking process then becomes the basis of the process on how the social workers assisst and facilitate the community in solving social problems. Correct logical thinking will result in correct facilitation, and vice versa. So, it may be said that the process of a social worker’s thinking will determine a process and steps of a community empowerment program.
The role of social worker is far different from conventional programs. In the conventional programs, they place themselves as people who know about everything and tend to take themselves as experts. In this context, social workers function more as facilitators, that are people who encourage the community to express, share knowledge and experience, study and formulate a plan.
The term `facilitator` is derived from two words, `facilis` means `to make easier` or to make quitely different people understand or do something easily, `ate` which means `active ti action` or do some activity. So, facilitator means `someone who can easily make something be understood or done by different people.
should have the knowledge about children psychology. A social worker who never develops their skills or knowledge will limit their logical thinking and capability in solving problems. A social worker should have a motto of “social work is a long life study.”
The logical thinking of a social worker is like a doctor, doctor thinks to cure his/her patient from the illness they suffer. Before he/she cure the patient, he/she has to find the source of the illness in the body of the patient, in the medical terminology it is called diagnosing. Afterwhich, the doctor could decide on steps to take to cure the patient’s disease and determine the medical action.
Social workers are not people who know about everything. They function as partners, be equal with the people they assisst, as active doers, commit their actions after identifying problems, do some analysis, empathy and multi-direction communication.
An example would be violence against women migrant workers, who mostly happen to be from the Central Java. In 2007 there are over 50 cases of women migrant workers who worked in Malaysia, Arab, Taiwan and Hongkong. Those cases are:
b. Getting pregnant c. Beaten to paralyzed d. Missing migrant workers e. Unpaid work.
f. Being cheated by husbands in home. g. Etc.
The migrant worker problems may not only be handled by the government and the agencies alone, but it needs other independent and professional party, they are the social workers. What their jobs are?
a. To prepare knowledge and skills of the to-be migrant workers to meet the qualification expected by the employers.
b. To learn about the employers of the migrant workers, profile of the future employers, their job-descriptions, wage sum, and other facilities received during work. This is done transparantly and accountably.
c. Legal protection given when women migrant workers face risky situation. d. Advocacy towards the family of women migrant workers in Indonesia,
regarding domestic management (child education, parents-children relation), and household economy management.
Social workers play roles as:
b. A helper in a process, to guide/lead towards a decision to act and to give a judgement.
c. A source person, who finds solutions. When people decided that they will act upon a problem, they start to share knowledge on intended topic.
Good social workers possess the following characters: a. Not taking any sides.
To involve and respect, either men or women, and treat them equally as adults. b. Respecting opinions.
Respecting the ability and opinion of the people and others; becoming good and attentive listeners, maintaining good eye-contact, showing that they listen carefully by making good body language; saying “yes” to encourage participation, and giving appropriate comments/responses.
c. Liking what they do.
Having sense of humour and laughing with the people. d. Respecting local wisdoms and traditional methods.
Building empathy to whatever activities people do, involving themselves in practice instead of watching.
e. Understanding that their knowledge is different, yet and not better than the
people’s knowledge.
Using simple language and terms, closely to local mother tongue of the community, and willing to learn from them.
With the social worker program in Indonesia, it may create professional social workers, where in time social problems could be resolved, especially those faced by women. It would be an advantage if the social workers are women as well.
Graduate Program for Social Workers should consist of knowledge, skills and attitudes a social worker should possess. Their knowledge covers community development, social welfare, human rights, governmental, psychology, sociology, etc. Skills cover: skill of interpersonal communication, group communication, lobbying and negotiating, coordinating a meeting, and skills of research methodology and project development, etc. Attitudes, a social worker should have are: be responsible, have strong commitment, honest, patient, be flexible, friendly, willing to listen, wise, etc.
CLOSING
Hence, this paper has described some thoughts on social workers. Hopefully it may give inputs for social worker program, to which they are expected to lessen social problems, especially women problems in the world.
REFERENCES:
Central Java Social Department, 2006, Manual for Community Social Workers (CSW).
Kompas, Tuesday, 1st August 2006, Rice is Expensive, People Eat Cassavas. Raskin is limited, Many get nothing.
Kompas, Friday 22nd September 2006, Farmers have no choice but to sell their waterpump.
Kompas, Wednesday, 2nd August 2006, The impacts of drought, Rice for the Poor is lacking.
Sahdan, Gregorius, 2005, Overcoming Poverty in Villages, Article on People Economy and Poverty, March)
Samiyono, David, 2006, Sedulur Sikep: Study on Sikep’s Community in Sukalila, Central Java, A Doctoral Thesis, University of Indonesia, Jakarta.
Shiva, Vadana, 1997, Free from Development, Yayasan Obor Indonesia, Jakarta.
Soetrisno, Loekman, 1995, Towards a Participative Community, Kanisius, Yogyakarta
