Gender Class

Basic Understanding of Gender

What is GENDER? Why do we need to discuss and understand it? The first question came from Ariani Narwastujati, SS, M.Pd., the discussion facilitator to all participants in Understanding of Gender. The discussion was held by Stube HEMAT Yogyakarta on 23 March 2013.

Yohanes, one of the participants tried to highlight the Bible stories, that we must admit that the men were more dominant than women. It can be read on the stories of Abraham and Sarah, David and Bathsheba, or Queen Vashti. They were based on the past traditions. Thus, now the Bible readings must be reconstructed by understanding the story with the equality perspective between men and women. "So, gender can be understood as a concept to give new perspective for men and women equality," he added.

While Trustha reminded that based on the Bible, eventhough women are still culture-marginalized, as they were never mentioned in family geneaology,  there were some women playing very important role such as Mary, Rahab, Ruth, Deborah, Mary Magdalene dan Esther. In todays Indonesian context, another participant, Maria told that girls or women in Adonara, Nusa Tenggara Timur, studying to other islands were mocked, because the local people assumed that women did not need to have higher study. Even the local custom treats women to have meal after all men in every banquets.

Gender understanding is often associated with sex (male or female), whereas gender is different from sex. Etymologically, 'gender' is derived from the English language meaning 'sex' (John M. Echols and Hassan Shadily, 1983: 265). Long process of gender discriminations between men and women happen and  they are constructed by social-cultural and religious conditions. Because of its long process, gender is  often considered as God’s destiny or cannot biologically changed. Furthermore, the social and cultural constructions, values​​, mental, emotions and other factors are used to distinguish men and women. It may be found in such conventions that women are restricted to laugh loudly, to go out at night, or pink color belongs only to women, only women are for domestic work, and  women should absolutely obey men.

Through gender discussions, participants learned about gender and understand the distinction between men and women based on social construction what exactly causes gender inequality in society. ***