The number of cases of abuse towards woman are increasing year by year. According to Data provided by National Commission of Anti-abuse towards Woman (Komnas Perempuan) were 293,330 cases in 2014. That figure is higher than the previous year's cases, which was 279,330. Most common kind of abuse towards woman is domestic violence, which is 68% while violence in community is 30%.
The gender-related issue observer, Dr. Dewi Haryani Susilastuti, said even though Domestic Violence policy has been arranged on Law Number 23 Year 2004 about abolishment of domestic violence, it goes along with the other policies, such as Marital Law and Civil Code. The law supervision on the victim of domestic violence tended to be impacted by gender bias. This made victims of domestic violence double victims due to ineffective law against the culprit.
Meanwhile, on the implementation level, authority is not clear among institutions vertically and horizontally in handling these abuse cases. There is responsibility conflict among Ministry of Woman Empowerment and Child Protection on who is in charge as an official institution for Domestic Violence victims which will include socialization, monitoring and evaluation on standard implementation on local level. This condition affected the complexity of coordination on standard implementation services. It even affected the amount of fund and inefficiency of funding used on services against abuse towards woman.
“Some services units don’t have an adequate system on fulfilling the need of Domestic Violence victims because of lack of funds,” she explained.
According to Dewi, changes must be made to ensure integration of law, decision and government competence on national and local level in giving woman and child protection services. Besides, regulation and policies made to give protection for woman would explain clear limitation on position and responsibility between government institutions so that overlapping responsibility will not occur.
“Making sure that domestic violence and gender-related issue based on violence become a priority on the government agenda,” she added.
Tolerance on Domestic Violence
Social Psychologist, Prof. Dr. Koentjoro, said that domestic violence towards woman did not come up suddenly. The domestic violence is a peak of tolerance accumulations on how a husband treats his wife. This commonly happens in marriages under ten years period.
“The woman still loves her husband and is scared that she will be left by him so that she tolerated her husband act. Those support the thinking of a man and make them feel superior and do whatever he wants toward his partner,” he explained.
According to the expert, woman are the one with the most disadvantages in the case of domestic violence. But there are also many women who like to stand up for themselves and report the case to the police. Even though they want a divorce, at the end most of them are cancelling their will, caused by their unpreparedness to be a widow, becoming economically insecure with the negative image of widow among society.
The position of woman is dilemmatic, holding their marriage together means more violence end it means no income,” he said.
The professor of Faculty of Psychology UGM mentioned that the act of violence towards women also commonly took place in a relationship. It is not hard to find a girl in her relationship feeling unsafe because of extreme jealousy and possessiveness of her boyfriend, who even doing physical and sexual abuse.
“There has to be an agreement of the do's and don'ts, necessary and unnecessary,” he added.
Due to this condition, Kuntjoro emphasised the importance of sex education for teenager. It could be arranged in the school curriculum. Family also play an important role in early sex education. This is necessary because there are very many new cases on sexual abuse on children in the last couple of years. For example, for a child under five years old, they could be given a basic sex education like the difference between man and woman and which body part may and may not be touched.
With that knowledge, the children are expected to take care of themselves and fight against exploitation that might happen,” Kuntjoro said.