Tell us about Bali Sruti.
Bali Struti is one of the NGOs in Bali that really care about women in Bali. It was founded in 2004 by Luh Riniti Rahayu, an academician and our director, Sita Van Bemmelen expert in gender, and Kusumawati, a legal expert. Bali Sruti consists of journalists, midwives, academicians, and lawyers.
What issues do you work on?
We fight gender inequality in Bali. For example, we try to encourage women to participate in politics. We arrange training to explain how exactly they can do it. The major problem women have in Bali is discrimination because of the strongly patriarchal culture. Women feel like the second class in society. We found out that there are women who still don’t have a legal identity and health insurance. It’s difficult for them to get social assistance and health service.
The major problem is domestic violence and sexual assault. Also, we discovered that women, especially in Bali, are afraid to report when they experience sexual harassment because they are blamed by society. Even their family finds it shameful to report this kind of crime. We went to three villages in Denpasar and tried to collect data ourselves. But women don’t want to talk about it. The official statistics say 245 cases were reported in Bali in 2022. But as most women don’t report or even want to talk with NGOs like us, we can’t estimate real numbers. However, it’s much bigger than the number of reports.
How does the government help women in this kind of situation?
We run a campaign about the new law in Indonesia concerning sexual crimes. One of the points of this law is that if a woman loses a job when she reports sexual harassment, the perpetrator has to pay for the victim’s loss.
But why would a woman lose her job?
Because once she reports it to the police, everybody knows about it. As society tends to blame women for what has happened to them, they are too ashamed to go to work. “It’s because of your clothes,” “it’s all your fault” – these are the typical things survivors might hear.
What exactly do you do to help women?
We do campaigns through social media and now we have a project in villages in Denpasar. In those campaigns, we explain the importance of having legal identities for women, the importance of reporting domestic violence and sexual crimes, and how society has to support the survivors. We do the same online through our website, podcast, and social media. Women can always contact us if they need help.
And how do women react to the idea of gender equality and feminism in Bali?
There are so many points of view when we go to a village, especially, they don’t even know that there’s gender inequality. When we go to small villages and tell women that we want to help them, they tell us, “Why? It’s already OK!” Same for men, they don’t understand why we need to change anything, they think we are already equal. But it’s normal in Denpasar, people know how important it is.
What is the cause of gender inequality in Bali?
First of all, it’s a strongly patriarchal culture. And also, the misconception of what in Bali we call Purusa and Pranana. So Purusa is a child, it can be a man or a woman, who carries the family obligations. While Pranana – it also can be a man or woman – is the one who marries out. And they carry their spouse’s obligations. But in Bali, it became normal that Purusa is identified as a man, while Pranana is always a woman. That’s why cases when a woman stays in the family or a man wants to marry out are not very common.
Bali has a very special religion. How does it affect women’s rights here?
As it’s stated in Manawa Dharmasastra, the Hindu code of laws, “Where women are respected, the gods feel happy, where they are not respected, there should be no sacred ceremonies, and gods are unhappy”. So actually, in Hinduism, men and women are equal, but the implementation is not there. Our religion already says that we all should have equal rights. We just need to follow it right.
Is there any way expats can help without being intrusive?
If expats or tourists want to help us, we will be very happy. They can contact us and donate through Bali Sruti. The last time we got money from our sponsor, we gave it to several women for their small business development. Women make their own money and become independent. It empowers them and the other women in Bali who see it happening. They see what kind of life they can have if they dare to make a change.
