4 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 distributingchannelling 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
The number of pre mature born weight under 2 kgs female babies in Central Java is still very much high, either in rural or urban areas. This caused by mal-
5 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 expectingdelivering 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:
- Farmerspeasants 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. Problems faced by women migrant workers, particularly those from
Central Java are many and complex ones. Problems are to be found not only
6 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 The number of women who are proposing for divorce has recently
increased compared to the former time. Mostly due to the presence of other women, and because husbands who wish to re-marry again
7 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.
