What I've Been Thinking About Emancipation

These are some of the thoughts:
1.More female in more social role.
Our society to some extent needs a balancing approach in many aspects of life; which has been overly dominated by man culture. There are roles/jobs that are best done by women for their femaleness. Some jobs require accuracy over speed, content over ambition. Our bureaucracy needs to be more sensitive, more listening, more empathy. Again, is to balance, not to be dominating. Since woman generally has more femaleness that man, inevitably she will have a certain different approaches from what man has. But this is just a quick generalization; some men may have more of female strong points over women in common (that also work otherwise).

Yes, caring and nursing are probably more suitable for woman than man. Fighting and shooting are done best mostly by men. But, why not a female fire fighter if she meets all the requirements like strength, energy and others. And so what if a man being a nurse as long as he is capable of caring and treating.

2. We need a fair labor division
Every work needs person in charge of leading, and other to assist. It doesn't imply that a leader should be a man, and woman is only capable as an assistant of male leader. Sometimes I think we've been too long underestimating the capability of women as well as underestimating the role of assistants. Both, woman and man can take both crucial positions (since one role is nothing without the other). As long as they meet the expected result of the role.

3. Emancipation is not domination in disguise
This emancipation thing has feared men along history because they think they'll have their wives lying on the couch watching TV while they ended up in the kitchen sink. I, personally thing this shows how shallow their thinking is. But no.... I won't let my future husband does the dishes (OK... maybe sometimes). I know (like all woman knows) that most wives did the housekeeping better than their partners and husbands were good in plumbing and nailing things.

Just don't limit your expectations. If somehow you find your wife is better at painting the walls while you do perfect laundry, why not do what one best at?

4. Redefinition of so called “Kodrat”
One of comments I received from my previous notes is that Kartini aimed for educating women to do best in their duty as a woman, which are bearing and educating kids, cooking, and other housekeeping.

While I don’t want to argue about Kartini’s ideas and what she implied, I kind of annoyed by this sexist female-male duties.

First it implies that all woman; all of them should build own family, bear several kids, and hopefully dedicated their lives to raise good civilians. OK..... I myself want to get married, have kid one or two and raise them. But, not all women share my dream; that KB’s dream. Some women don’t want to have own family, don’t want to get married, don’t want to raise any too (ever or yet!). They just have different dreams that might be so peculiar, so odd that it is to be called “menyalahi kodrat”.

Think about nuns, think about hermits, think about persons like Mother Teresa, and think about some women of the church who committed to celibacy. Well, practically they are stepping out of so called woman ultimate duty. But no one ever condemned them since they are taking religious responsibility. You may say they are doing God’s business but again what we call God’s business is basically service; a public service. So how about a female environment activist who decided not to get married or have any child in order to dedicate her life for her work. She is contributing something for our society, right?! Just like those nuns.

What we perceived as Kodrat is sometimes misleading. The same can be applied to man. Is man ultimate duty is to be husband, father (biologically)?? Well, if the answer is yes then we must think over the roles like pastors, monks, and so on.