To prioritize one gender and leave the other gender would be a serious problem. It could cause death to the gender which is left behind. In most cultures, including Indonesia, the priority is more frequently for men than women, although in some cultures, women are more dominant than men.
The lag of Indonesian women is visible in the low level of education compared to men. They are described as not able to be a leader while their career is limited to, for example, becoming nurses, teachers, and entertaining others. The time to learn masculine activities is lost due to the omission of scout lessons. While the lag of boys is that they have repeat classes and drop out of school, missing the opportunity to learn feminine activity due to elimination of scout activities and rarely get a scholarship. "The impact was that an adult male became dependent on women in domestic affairs," said Arundati Shinta at Faculty of Psychology UGM on Friday (16/3).
She conveyed this during her open exam of UGM Psychology Doctoral program. Lecturer of the Faculty of Psychology, University of '45 Proclamation of Yogyakarta, was defending her dissertation, Psychosocial Variables Affecting Children's Gender Roles Choice.
Arundati said the lag of women and men showed different expectations from the environment, parents, mass media, peers and teachers on grounds of gender roles. Women are expected to be active in the feminine affairs and men in masculine affairs. This condition shows how parents make choices of toys, leisure activities and career aspirations for their children based on gender. "Parents’ choice drive child’s potential become limited to gender stereotypes, thus it tends to narrow alternative future," she said.
Arundati explained ideally children since their early days should be given the opportunity to play, do activities, and get introduced to various careers that are appropriate and the opposite of their gender role. Children should also be introduced to the masculine and feminine good nature all at once. Provision of such opportunities should be conducted in schools as has been done in Sweden so far. "All this is done so that the child is able to determine everything that will be done in the future by interest rather than for reasons of gender roles, and this would prevent children from premature rejection of a career for their future," she said.
Because today's society expects women and men to be able to show the masculine and feminine characteristics. People like this, according to experts, show open-mindedness, no longer concerned with gender roles. This means that a person chooses a behavior not under consideration of conformity with gender roles, but based on personal needs. "He feels free and unafraid of the options that may not be within their traditional gender norms," said the woman born in Bandung, March 20, 1960, who is the 1599th doctor graduated from UGM.