TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
#IDECIDE4MYSELF study unpacks empowerment
A recent study has found that more than half of young people in Indonesia say they are not happy with who makes decisions in their lives – most of these unhappy respondents were girls.
Change Size
Empowered: Actress Asmara Abigail (left), who is also the face of youth initiative Dance4Life Indonesia, listens to the group's facilitator Alan Khoirul Mutti as program officer, Naura Nabila, looks on during the launch of the #IDECIDE4MYSELF study in Yogyakarta on Tuesday. (Courtesy of Rutgers WPF Indonesia/-)
W
hen Fajar and his girlfriend were expecting a baby – one that was unplanned – many people condemned him and told him that he had no future. He disagreed, promising to work hard to prove them wrong.
The two had sex before marriage and she got pregnant. “It was an accident, but actually it was inevitable. We didn’t know how to go about having sex as an unmarried couple, or about the risks. I find it hard how this has turned out, because I feel like I’ve lost my youth. We’ve gotten married in the meantime,” the 21-year-old said.
He said he never talked about sex at school or with his parents. “I joke about sex with my friends, about porn for example, but I don’t tell them anything about sex with my girlfriend. Sex is taboo in our culture. I don’t know what my rights are, or where I can find information about sex.”
Fajar was sharing his story as part of an explorative and quantitative study commissioned by Dance4Life – an international youth initiative that works on sexual reproductive health through empowerment – and conducted by Avance Impact. Dance4Life works with young people in 14 countries, including Indonesia.
The study, #IDECIDE4MYSELF, was released at the first International Conference on Indonesia’s Family Planning and Reproductive Health in Yogyakarta on Tuesday. It explored the connection between empowerment, relationships and sexuality among nearly 2,500 young people in four countries: Indonesia, Kenya, the Netherlands and Russia.
For the study, researchers surveyed 2,434 young people aged between 15 and 21 years old about the concept of empowerment between October and November of last year. A total of 591 respondents were from Indonesia, 602 from Kenya, 667 from Russia and 574 from the Netherlands.
The results offered a unique first insight into how young people think about empowerment and what they find important in making sexual choices, which is crucial as unprotected sex is the greatest health risk facing young people worldwide. Many of them live in a society where sex and sexuality continue to be surrounded by taboos and stigmas.
During the launch, Dance4Life Indonesia program officer Naura Nabila said in the study, the participants were asked three questions: What does empowerment mean to young Indonesians? To what extent do young people in Indonesia feel empowered? Which aspects of empowerment do young Indonesians find important in making (sexual and relational) decisions?
The findings showed that key aspects of empowerment for Indonesian people were: a good relationship with parents, having goals and plans, being able to cooperate with others, having respect for others and being confident about one’s self.
Concepts they found least needed for empowerment were: being able to control impulses, having empathy for others and understanding one’s own feelings.
Seventy-seven percent of respondents were Muslim (77 percent), while 13 percent were Hindu and 9 percent Christian. The vast majority of them said empowerment (94 percent) and religion (98 percent) were very important.
“It’s interesting that the study also finds that more than half of the young people say they are not happy with who is making the decisions now [57 percent],” Naura said.
Of this “unhappy” group, only a small number of them answered the question about who they would want to be in control, which, according to the study’s report, could be because of a misunderstanding of the question, or a conscious decision to skip it as the question is sensitive in Indonesia.
“Eighty-five people answered this question, and out of these, 44 people want to be in control themselves, and 33 want their family to be in control,” the report stated.
In this anonymous survey, of the people who were not happy with who was in control, almost 70 percent were girls.
Of the Indonesians surveyed, the boy-girl ratio was 28-72, which may explain why the level of discontentment over who makes decisions was high, as girls in Indonesia face greater pressure over family issues and the decisions they make regarding them.
Nevertheless, half of the boys indicated they were not happy with who makes decisions in their lives. One boy, anonymous, said: “In my opinion, what made it difficult for me to make my own decisions was my parents.”
For Fajar, he was aware that he disappointed his family and that of his wife, and so he wanted to repair his relationship with them.
“I want to prove to them that we have a future and that I will fight to keep my partner and our baby healthy. I want to finish studying so that I can have a successful career.”
