I’m writing this reflection as I’m not ‘that’ satisfied with my thesis submission. My research project was about understanding gendered impacts of coastal flood and gendered needs to adapt with it in Pekalongan City, Indonesia. I feel like I need more time to completely analyse and understand the whole pictures I have encountered during my fieldwork in Pekalongan. Even since I submitted my report last week, I started to continue reading (again) the key concepts of planning through gender lens.
My first encountered with the idea of
narrowing gender gap was actually in around 2017, when I read Women at Point
Zero by an Egyptian feminist writer, Nawal El Saadawi and Tuhan Izinkan
Aku Jadi Pelacur (God, Allow Me to be A Prostitute) by a (leftish, I
believe) novelist, Muhidin M Dahlan. Both books were part of my life stage
where I started to question the whole conservative-Islamic values in an ideal
family. Additionally, I began to ‘rebel’ against the doctrines I received since
I was a kid. It was tough, yet fun with a lot of debates with parents and
friends, especially when I realize that I had been living for almost two
decades in a ‘special feudalism region’ neighbourhood, limiting my skill in
critical thinking!
So, there are five points, or more
likely provoking thoughts inside my head. The first two points are about
realizing how the world of planning is still abstract to me, trying to figure
out what kind of planning that suits my interests! The last three are the surprise
findings I’ve got from the fieldwork. I will close this reflection with a
summary of how confused I am now.
Firstly, why do I choose to conduct
such research?
Well, during my undergraduate study
(2015-2020), I mostly spent my time doing community services in rural areas of
West Java, teaching homeless-street kids and joining social protests against
slum relocation in Bandung. In those times, I met and discussed a lot with planners
and developed passions in community development. In fact, I spent more time
outside the uni-life with planners rather than oceanographers! Sometimes I get
the feeling of fear of missing out as my classmate (oceanographers)
starts to expand their skills in quantitative data science and analysis, but I
grow interested in planning and its social-qualitative aspects.
So, I decided to study planning as I
believe I might have more wider opportunities to delivers my passion above. To
integrate it with my oceanographic background (to justify my linear academic
path[1]),
I decided to conduct a one-year thesis in understanding gender-perspective in
coastal flooding adaptation. I chose to conduct such research mainly because I
like to engage with the community, not because I had a passion for
gender-equality.
‘I don’t understand what I don’t
understand’, that was my initial response when I was about to write my
literature review. I started by reading an old framework of gender planning by
Carolina Moser
(1993), just to give me a
historical timeline of gender discourses, including gender roles and gender
needs. I was pretty sure that both concepts would be my fundamental objective
in this research project. However, by the time I conduct the fieldwork, I noticed
that Moser’s framework emphasizes too much on the separation between men and
women. I started to read (again) the various gender framework by March
et al. (1999), then I can finally
understand that isolating men and women as a separate group would not examine
how the power relation is constructed between men and women. Additionally, I
think I relied a lot on my two ‘what’ research questions – what the impacts of
coastal flooding to the livelihoods and what gender needs are required in the
adaptation – rather than understand the process of ‘how’, which is essential in
qualitative study as its ‘exploratory’ nature (Creswell,
1998). Fortunately, I spent a
lot of time with the local communities, to understand ‘why’ they choose to do
something, and ‘how’ their actions impact their daily livelihoods.
I did remember when Sonia – my
supervisor for this project – and my friends who are conducting PhD in
gender-related studies told me that Moser’s framework is (way too) old. There
have been a lot of improvements since 1993. Even Ammar – an amazing PhD student
in gender political-science, a friend of mine – told me that probably Moser
also already changed her mind, no longer emphasize on the separation between
men and women. ‘Why don’t you use feminist-ecologist approach, Zeke?’ Well,
honestly, I don’t know. At that time, even though I prioritized my last two
semesters in research, I couldn’t really answer that question. It is annoying
until now as this question keep whispering in my head, justifying my impostor
syndrome that I wasn’t good enough conducting my thesis, not being responsible
for my own proposed idea.
However, I remember very much when I
typed ‘gender in climate change adaptation in Indonesia’ in Scopus, there were
few that talk about gender studies and climate change in Indonesia. Gender
studies predominantly focus on fast-onset disasters such as tsunami and volcano
eruption (World
Bank, 2010). Furthermore, gendered
impacts of climate change have been merely focused on agricultural and forestry
community, not coastal community (Manginsela
et al., 2021; Partasasmita et al., 2019; Perdinan et al., 2022; Rondhi et al.,
2019). One study was conducted
in coastal communities of Cirebon, but it focused on what the existing gender
gaps are without exploring how the frequent coastal floods have affected and
constructed the gender gaps (Pratiwi
et al., 2017). Additionally, another
gender study on flood adaptation was conducted in Semarang but not specifically
target poor households (Rusmadi
et al., 2018). Therefore, to keep
positive thinking, I believe that my study might contribute by initiating an understanding
of gender perspective in coastal flooding adaptation in Indonesia from the
scratch/basic point.
Secondly, what is planning through a
gender lens?
I like Sonia’s comments when she
pointed which concepts that I lacked critical thinking. Indeed, most of them
were due to lack of sense in gender studies and lack of reading for
most-updated gender articles. However, the comment that need weeks to
contemplate is what my definition of planning as a planner in my project.
Honestly, if someone asked me what I am, I will be more confident to say that I
am oceanographer, not a planner. There are a lot of grey areas of planning
theories, there is no right or wrong. Even though I got high distinction in
city-making, I am not quite sure that I understand the tradition of planning
thought. I always find it hard to visualize when a planning-related articles
started to talk about economic and politic such as neoliberalism, capitalism,
and other isms.
I would say that planning with a
gender lens is planning as a means, the process of how we do it rather
than outcomes. It is the process of creating urban forms that consider
different needs and roles of men and women. At the final week of this semester,
I conceptualized planning in my project as the process of decision making in
climate change adaptation – I aimed to understand how this process considers
gender needs and roles.
Somehow, when
I think about it, I often asked myself, I’m interested to engage with the
community and doing something to empower them, why didn’t I continue to master
of development practice instead of urban planning? What was I thinking back
then? In the past two years, I feel like the urban planning here at UQ has
given more emphasized to a physical built form, rather than the social context
assessment such as the community engagement.
Before we
jump to the next point, I would like to present a brief context about my study
cases. Pekalongan City is a northern coastal urban area in Central Java
Province, approximately 100 km to the west of Semarang. The city is known for
its massive home-industrial production of Batik. I choose this city as it is
experiencing a decline in gender empowerment index since 2010 (BPS, 2022). I focused
on two villages in the coastal areas, B and P. B is like a fishery community,
where most men engaged in fish-catchment activities on the submerged farmland
through fishing and netting. Most women here are mostly unemployed. On the other
hand, P is a Batik community, where most men and women are Batik labourers. In
both communities, men received more income due twofold: having jobs (in B), and
more physical-demanding roles at the Batik industries (in P).
Figure 1 illustrates
the similar poor conditions of both study cases. The sea and river level are higher
than the land, which is only separated by thinner wall of river dikes. The
water from the previous flood is clogged in the drainage, cannot return to the
ocean. The water turns to black, filled with plastic and waste (due to unproper
sanitation), and polluted with Batik-colouring chemicals (in P). The houses’ floors
are elevated, looks shorter with cracked and mouldy walls. Some roads and
alleys-ways are permanently inundated due to water-leaking from the river nearby.
Both communities are officially listed as slums.
Thirdly, what are the
government effort to mainstream gender-perspective in climate change
adaptation?
I think I need to elaborate first,
what the government means of integrating gender-perspective in adaptation. The effort of
mainstreaming gender perspectives into climate change adaptation has been long
set up by the Ministry of Planning (BAPPENAS) and Ministry of Environment
(KLHK). It has been acknowledged in the latest national adaptation plan (BAPPENAS, 2019): adaptation should
increase women’s access to resources and participation in the planning
process.
Furthermore,
the guideline to mainstream gender perspectives into regional’s policies and
programmes has also been set up by the Ministry of Women (Kemen-PPPA). There
are three things that the local governments including Pekalongan City should do
according to this guideline: disaggregating all data between men and women (including
age); assessing their policies and programmes against the indicator of Gender
Assessment Pathways (GAP); and Gender Budget Statement (GBS) (KemenPPPA, 2015). GAP is a 9-checklist to
analyse a program whether it has accommodated men’s and women’s needs. Its main
component is whether the program disaggregate gender data for access,
participation, control, and benefits. It results in what the existing gaps are
as an input and evaluation to re-design or create new programs and to set
indicators of outcomes. Whereas GBS is the budget plan to address the gender
gaps identified from GAP.
During my fieldwork, I summarized the
city’s programs to adapt with the coastal flooding (Table 1). I recalled my
discussion with Audrey during my first semester at UQ: to understand the
difference between social-reform and social-justice, it is essential to look at
the power relations behind the existing socio-political structure. I would say
that all of the programmes are merely social-reform, rather than social-justice
as they all are top-down approaches with narrow points of view as they only
emphasize the ‘what’ disadvantages views of the poor without seeing it as a
whole structure, ‘how they end up to be the poor’ (Marcuse, 2011). One may
argue that the Conditional Cash Assistance (PKH) and Substandard Housing (RTLH)
are participatory programs (part of social-justice) as the beneficiary have
full control and access to allocate the fund. However, those programs can only
reach the household level, without disaggregate what men’s and women’s
interests. Such will be counterproductive as they were not designed to touch
the matter of equal command over resources between household members (Wratten, 1995). They do not
touch on the systemic gender inequality.
Table 1 Pekalongan
City’s Programs for Coastal Flood Adaptation
Women were
often in control of PKH, but the fund was only sufficient for practical needs
such as buying additional foods and renovating the house. The fund was only
enough to respond with the environmental degradation due to coastal flooding (Fitrinitia & Matsuyuki, 2022). The same
case for RTLH, as the fund could only be used for upgrading the house. Such
programs do not support the two dimensions of empowerment (Kabeer, 1999): resources –
embedded in economic materials and social capital – and agency - the internal
ability within individuals that portrayed in individuals’ everyday actions,
women in this case still have no power in adaptation decision-making.
The only
program that engages women a lot is Pelatihan Kerja Kewirausahaan,
business trainings in food packaging and only marketing. The coordinator of the
program emphasized this action as efforts to add additional household income,
so that the women will not be ‘unemployed’. Indeed, such does not challenge the
existing gender relation. At this moment, I think that such an action is just
like Women in Development (WID), meeting women’s needs within existing gender
roles. Furthermore, not every woman was able to join this training. These
trainings were only represented by female neighbourhood head (Bu RTs). The
question is, to what extend these particular women (RTs) should be taken as
representative for all women (Cornwall, 2003)? During my
FGDs with women, they expressed their lack of involvement in those trainings,
the neighbourhood head did not share all the knowledge.
The other
thing that made me sad is there was lack of women engagement in talking about
the coastal flooding adaptation. If I need to evaluate it using the framework
proposed by Waal (2006) (Table 2),
Pekalongan City or probably most Indonesia’s regions are still far away for
gender transformation. During my fieldwork, I found no discussion on coastal
flooding adaptation that engage women in the community level. An official FGD
conducted by the local council also had less women participations. In terms of
gender parity – an equal representation and participation of women and men, the
lowest objective of gender mainstreaming – the objective of gender
mainstreaming is not achieved yet, let alone gender transformation.
Table 2 Framework
for gender mainstreaming evaluation (Waal, 2006)
Fourthly, what does the
women feel about it?
Women in
Pekalongan City felt that the daily roles and work division is already equal
between men and women. Women tend to accept their roles without questions. I
couldn’t really say that the women were able to identify their strategic
interests to challenge the existing gender relations. In B, where most women
are unemployed, they expressed their interest to have well-paid jobs and new
skills but without leaving their domestic roles at houses especially in taking
care of the kids. On the other hand, I did not sense that women’s in P interests
was as strategic as women in B. Women in P are working in Batik industries:
cutting the clothes, sewing them, and packaging them. Even though both men and
women in P work at the same industry, women received less income compared to
men as their roles at the Batik industry do not require massive physical energy
like men. Their role at this industry is considered easy and can be done at
home ‘comfortably’ and doing the domestic task at homes.
Table 3 Different
interests (needs) of women in B and P
|
Women in the
fishery community (B) |
Women in
the Batik community (P) |
|
Well-paid jobs |
Unflooded houses |
|
Tools in daily works: tools on
fish processing |
Gardens to grow fruits and
vegetables, for sale |
|
Diversifying economical
sources: online marketing, open mini grocery, and food street |
More clothes during the floods |
|
Equipping new skills: online marketing,
how to make fish chips |
Road elevation |
|
House without flooding |
|
|
More clothes during the floods |
|
At this moment, I was confused. What if
the women’s preferred interests perpetuate the traditional gender roles rather
than challenging the status quo? I kept reading and found a similar
situation when an Oxfam’s project tried to include women in a food security
project in Kebkabiya, Sudan (Cornwall, 2003). There was a
tension when Oxfam implemented participatory research action – known as PRA, it
seeks to questioning the natural assumptions, whether discursive or
ideological, to try introducing ideas about power and differences, creating new
spaces or transforming the existing ones – and found that women’s interests
were in handicrafts and poultry raising near the houses in which those
interests might perpetuate the traditional gender roles, reinforcing women’s
inequality rather than empower them.
The difference between Oxfam’s expectations
and the local women encapsulated the unresolved debates over ‘objective’ and
‘subjective’ interests. Women's
attachment to and stake in certain forms of patriarchal arrangements may derive
neither from false consciousness, nor from conscious collusion but from an
actual stake in certain positions of power available to them (Cornwall, 2003). Then
I imagine myself, working in NGO to empower women in Pekalongan. It will be dilemma,
should I prioritize what I think is best for women’s empowerment, or should I
honor the local women’s interests even if they might seem to reinforce
traditional gender roles?
Perhaps, their
expression on the (only) practical (not strategic) interests are due to strong belief
and acceptance in the social norm construction. In my study cases, there was a
strong practice of the local religion. Somehow, I felt like I was biased, I
felt like I wanted to blame poverty due to strong practice of it.
Fifthly, conflicting rationalities
I may conclude
that gender study is not the really the main concern in the Global South like
Indonesia. This ‘gender lens’ is too western to be applied in Indonesia, I
guest. In her paper, Watson (2009) proposes a term ‘conflicting rationalities’
between the state (and the market) and the survival efforts of the poor and
marginalized. Even though this article emphasizes the conflict of rationalities
between the current techno-managerial and marketized systems of government VS
service provision and other impoverished urban populations surviving largely
under condition of poverty and informality, I thought I can say the same thing
for this research. I felt like the concept of gender lens might be more
suitable for planning issues in Gender North where there is a relatively small
number of poverty and less population growth in the urban areas.
I argue that mainstreaming
gender perspectives into climate change adaptation in Indonesia is not even a half
glass full. A latest empirical study shows that alleviating poverty in climate change
adaptation is prioritized over gender equality (Liswanti
et al., 2020). The adaptation has no
gender analysis and budgeting as it is believed that ‘what benefits the whole
community, is good for women.’ This is indeed a practice of gender-neutral
policy – ensuring that interventions target and benefit both sexes effectively to
meet their practical gender needs within the existing gender roles division (March
et al., 1999). Pretty much similar to
the table 1, Pekalongan City’s programs on flooding adaptation.
And then I disagree that gender lens – a concept initiated in
Global North – is not applicable in Global South as poverty is more prioritized
than gender equality. During my interviews with the local government agencies, I
often heard notions that alleviating poverty in the Cash Assistance and Housing
Upgrade programs do not see whether it is for men and women. Women are in a
more high number of poverty than men, not only in term of income, but also of
time, access to resources, and opportunities (Chant
& Datu, 2015). Poverty alleviation and closing
gender gap should not be separated as one productive role and domestic task
will be easily done together.
What I learn?
For sure, I’m developing a curiosity on gender issue and climate
change adaptation in Indonesia. I may be an expert on this matter. I would love
to dig more. However, my scholarship requires me to return home right after my
graduation. I am pessimistic that there is a job market for gender issue in my
beloved Indonesia.
Furthermore, I would love to have a career in academia, PhD
might be another choice as well. But if I have to choose LPDP as my scholarship
or to join BRIN, how I can justify my expert linearity from a quantitative
oceanographer to qualitative gender researcher?
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[1] I have a long-term plan to work in academia field. In
Indonesia Research Institute (BRIN) or Indonesia’s universities, they require
applicants to have linear academic background. But I believe a linearity cannot
be justified only from the major field of study.
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