THE EDITOR – The Coordinating Ministry for Human Development and Cultural Affairs stated that women’s empowerment plays a role in developing villages in Indonesia.
This is because, based on a study conducted in 11 villages in 8 regencies, it was found that women’s empowerment in rural areas is an important part of building an inclusive Indonesia.
“Women’s empowerment in the context of village development is an important part of building inclusive Indonesian humans,” said Assistant Deputy for Regional Empowerment and Spatial Mobility Monalisa Herawati Rumayar in a statement in Jakarta, Saturday.
Using a qualitative approach, she said, field data collection for the ‘Study on Strengthening Women’s Empowerment and Village Development’ was conducted in 8 districts and 11 villages from 17-24 November. The data was collected by a team from the Deputy for Coordination of Regional Development Equity and Disaster Management and the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K).
The eight districts are Central Bangka, Tanggamus, Indramayu, Bantul, Banyuwangi, Banjar, Maros, and North Minahasa. The criteria for site selection were the intervention locus of the Strengthening Village Governance and Development Programme (P3PD), the Inclusive Village component, government and/or non-government programme interventions, gender equality and empowerment status, IDM status, and empowerment issues.
“From this study, it is hoped that we can solve certain problems and find solutions with experts and can explore the concepts and practices of women’s empowerment in the village, so that it can be used as a reference for village governments in preparing more participatory development planning and can be used as recommendations for better policies or programs,” Monalisa added.
She also said that the result of this study can be used used as a reference for village governments in preparing more participatory development planning and as recommendations for better policies or programs.
The informants in this data collection were village governments, women’s groups, farmer groups, religious leaders, community leaders, individual women programme beneficiaries, individual women non-programme beneficiaries, CSOs/NGOs, and the private sector.
The initial finding from the data collection is that women’s empowerment programmes conducted by regency and village governments are usually economic empowerment programmes, skills training, or how to run a business.
The approach used is top down from the central government, as well as from the regency government to the village. However, there were also programmes that were initiated by the village government through the village budget, such as training for women’s business groups.
The target recipients of the empowerment programme are women heads of households, women who are MSME actors, women survivors of violence, former migrant women, and families/individuals other than women.
From the data collection, it was also found that collaboration related to women’s empowerment programmes between the regency government, village government, and CSOs has also been going well.
