21 April! A female movement day for us Indonesians. A day when we're all free to talk and raise awareness about sex gender equality, especially for women. A very respected Indonesian heroine figure, Raden Ajeng Kartini was born on this day, so Indonesians refer to this day as Kartini day. What did she do? Long story short, the so messed-up education system in Indonesia decades ago which forbade women to go to school, was changed due to Kartini's role in unwavering and persistent acts against such unfair education system. It might seems insignificant but in all actuality, education holds the biggest role for human to be fully functional in society, it's the root to live your life. Note that with no advance technology supporting decades ago, there's no easy access to knowledge except from school. While men went to school getting smarter, women stayed home getting dumber. While getting labeled as 'stupid' affects a person's life as a whole, how about a big portion of female population did? What did it change? The way women were treated? The men's perspective of women? This whole thing led us to bigger issues that still exist years after, sexism. or even worse, misogyny.
Two days ago I experienced my self the 'honor' to witness such issues practiced at my own working environment. I was in charge of observing my company's production line this week so I stayed at my company's factory. Little background story, I work at a very prestigious brand of car and was located in one of their biggest factory. They produce a lot less than most of car companies do but that doesn't change the fact that the numerous production lines they have are still huge and well, sophisticated. While observing, I also had small talk with the operators assigned at each of the workstations. Mind you, the 'operator' function I mentioned might sound impressive but they are what the other developed countries refer as labor. Most of them are high school graduates (if lucky, some are even junior high or elementary school graduates) which is not abnormal in 200 millions population of developing country. They were recruited by some basic assessment and trained by company to expertise on.. well car stuffs. Basically a mechanic or a repair, with a paycheck of labor.
There were two working operators at the workstation I observed. One was a married man in the middle of 30s, thin, tall, and full of smile. He greeted me first when we met that morning, and quite talkative. He joked and laughed a lot, but still did his works diligently. The other guy was a twenty something single man. Unlike the first one, this guy was not too thin, built even, average-height, and didn't look too friendly. He didn't talk much when we introduced each other, didn't really smile a lot. But then he worked hard and fast. This kinda intrigued me a little though, since it's not everyday I met this kind of worker. Most of them are like the first one, friendly, playful, very open while talking to me. And since my work also required me to videotape them while working, I decided to focus on videotaping this second guy and followed him around the workstation.
40 minutes into filming, one of my colleagues, a male, visited the workstation I was at. My colleague said hi to the older operator first, then walked towards me and the younger operator. This younger operator turned out to be friend with this colleague of mine. Upon seeing my colleague, the young operator immediately teased him.
"Man, where have you been," he stood up, "You let a girl alone to do the work. So rude of you."
I was not sure where he was going with that statement so I, as the subject in talk, while videotaping the whole conversation, tried to make the situation not awkward by laughing it off. I didn't even find anything remotely funny with that but yeah ok.
My colleague followed my suit before muttering, "it's okay, you know. It's an era of gender equality and stuff."
The operator shook his head,"Nah. They are two different things," he glanced at the older operator who still worked at stuff nearby, "Isn't it so rude of him?"
The older operator and my colleague just laughed at him while I was still pretty confused about where this conversation was going. Was he being a gentleman who's really considerate of women's being or was he just being a tease to my colleague by objectifying women... I was really not sure.
Well, not until his next statement that my confusion was gone.
"So you want to be equal with women?" He shot back at my colleague, "I don't even want to think about it."
Dang. This is it, I thought. So this is where he's going.
"Well, I guess I have no problem with it," said my colleague.
The young operator continued, "If we're equal with women, then they'll tell us off to wash the dishes, take care of the children, ugh." He even laughed. Laughed.
Like, seriously. What the hell was that? What was he trying to imply? Blatant sexism? Downgrading women's right? I hope no one noticed but I almost certainly could feel my eyes about to pop out hearing what he just said. I managed to school my face into my default smiley expression throughout though.
After that he went on and on about how women's roles were supposed to be done only by women, because in his defense women simply take things for granted. Like, he literally said, quote unquote, if equality of genders were to be well-established, men would end up bearing children and giving birth to them. Okay what? This really left my jaw hanging in all actuality. I stopped giving the man the benefit of doubts and judged him really hard for what he just said.
He didn't stop though. He even went on and challenged my colleague who stopped responding his –super– silly dumb arguments.
"What? Can't you counter my arguments back? I am right, arent I?"
I stopped smiling by this point and just wait for my colleague to answer. He didn't.
The operator went on, "How could a high school graduate beat a graduate student in this debate?"
Well, that's it. If it wasn't for me remembering my position at the company, I'd probably have kicked his sexist ass hard. I stopped my camera immediately and left without any single words shared.
The whole conversation kept rolling in my mind for the rest of the day. It's a pity, you know to realize how real and deep-root this issue exists in our society. I thought and thought hard about what I could do for real to handle this, to let the operator know his mistakes in genders' role concept. It's useless to just tell the operator off without any real education about humanity. Right now, I acknowledge my very limited strength and I have no power over that. This whole thing was really upsetting, how I'm so powerless to fight this unfair discrimination.
But on this Kartini day, again I got reminded that I'm not a lone fighter. My timelines of social media were full of women appreciation thoughts and words. It's a good thing. I got my confidence back. Someday, maybe, someday, when I'm already in a better place, I'd do something about this.
I will.
“Habis gelap, terbitlah terang.“
