Dancing for gender equality, to end violence
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Some Indonesian teenage girls have joined an annual global campaign to fight against abuse, assault on women
Watching movies, hanging out in a shopping mall or chatting in a coffee shop – this is what most people think teenagers do at the weekend, but for some young girls, change isn’t coming from these places.
Binar Mentari Malahayati, a third-year junior high school student, said she will take part in the “One Billion Rising” (OBR) worldwide dance performance to raise public awareness to end violence against women.
“We live in an era where violations against women still happen and a lot of women consider domestic violence a common occurrence,” Binar told The Jakarta Post at the dance rehearsal in a house in Kemang, South Jakarta.
OBR Indonesia will join the annual global campaign, which was started by American women activist Eve Ensler in 2013, to perform a dance every Valentine’s Day with the mission to urge women to talk, dance and rise up against violence.
Binar added that she deplored the fact that a lot of housewives in this country were still stuck in the narrow patriarchal mindset that allowed them to be a victim of domestic violence.
“We must break the chain of violence and encourage women to speak up when their rights are violated,” the 14-year-old girl said.
As the first-born child of Mugiyanto, former chairman of the Indonesian Association of Families of Missing Persons (IKOHI), the dance campaign was not the first social movement that she took part in.
Binar had joined her parents to stage public rallies on Labour Day last year and participated in protests in front of the State Palace every Thursday called Kamisan to demand that the government resolve past abuse cases.
“My friends at school said that I take this life too seriously, but my defence is that I do these things for a good cause and I cannot stay silent when there is still injustice out there,” she said.
Rising number of crimes
Another teenager, Elsi Yulianti, a 15-year-old senior high-school student, said she wanted to take part in the OBR campaign because she was upset with the rising number of crimes against women and the ongoing stigma that women were considered a more vulnerable class in society.
“A lot of people still think woman are weak and therefore they treat us differently. Gender equality should be encouraged,” she said.
Andi Gunawan from OBR Indonesia said he appreciated the teenagers’ participation and hoped that there would be more to come on the performance day that would likely be held at Taman Ismail Marzuki, Cikini, central Jakarta on February 14.
More than 300 people joined the cause last year, he said. “Unlike last year, this year’s Valentine’s Day will fall on the weekend so we expect more people to show up,” Andi said.
He said that though the rehearsal was open to anybody interested, would-be participants can also rehearse their moves by watching the rehearsal video, which will be uploaded on their website and on YouTube.
