Amid all the advancements achieved by women, commemorating the birthday of Kartini on every April 21 is getting more relevant.
It is more relevant because the daughter of the Jepara regent promoted critical thinking about the situation of the nation and of women, especially Javanese women.
Kartini mostly opposed injustice in her surroundings: injustice resulting from colonization and injustice resulting from a culture that required women to stay at home and marry young while men could continue their studies at university.
One of Kartini’s struggles that had not been realized was putting an end to child marriage. Child marriage among girls during Kartini\'s times was a norm because the culture required girls to be kept at home as soon as they reached maturity. Kartini herself married when 24 years old and died a year later in 1904 after giving birth.
The impact from child marriage has often been pointed out. Early marriage could impact on the reproductive organs of the girls and affect the infants, including by causing maternal death and underweight infants. Girls who got married and pregnant generally did not continue education as the school rarely accepted pregnant students. In addition, the young age affects the readiness for girls to take care of babies and this eventually affects the nation’s human resources.
The Sustainable Development Goals that have become a global commitment, including in Indonesia, include alleviating poverty, saving the environment of the planet Earth and ensuring each person lives in peace and prosperity. One of the social and economic challenges in Indonesia today is to lower the number of poor people and the prosperity gap.
Solving the poverty problem and closing the economic gap could only be carried out by taking into account the role of women and getting rid of hurdles that discriminate against women and prevent them from empowering themselves. The International Monetary Fund, for example, acknowledged that women spent 90 percent of their earnings on health and education, while men contributed only 30 to 40 percent.
In this regard, Kartini’s efforts to develop the education of young girls and to teach women to be economically empowered was, in the words of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, empowering humans to benefit others in their surroundings.
The spirit of Kartini Day was something that we want to expand in the young generation so that they understand the importance of this figure of Indonesia’s women movement, not just about the kebaya.