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Wax And Wane Of The Indonesian Women

Wax and Wane of the Indonesian Women
The Power of Discourse and The Discourse for Power
Khristianto
Faculty of Letters
Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto
Muhamadiyah University of Purwokerto

Introduction
    The woman stand in public is not only questioned by religion institution. History has shown in real evidences that female is really the marginal and seen just to be the male’s subordinates.   The fight against the male domination has long encountered the barriers of social rules. As stated in Udasmoro and Nurwidyohening (2007:148), the woman, since the beginning, has been put in the domestic areas (being a nature), while the man is regarded as the agents of the culture, who works to think, create and apply the properties of the public domain. This can be seen from the evidences of negative views about the woman. The woman is valued lower than man. Quoting Jean Delameau, the writers point out that in some period of time, the western culture had viewed the woman as the source of the problem, the trouble makers, or the common cause of social problems.
    As we turn to the history of human creation, genesis, we will find the similar ideas. The fall of Adam from Heaven is of the woman factor. Eve, his spouse,   persuaded him to follow what devil (or snake) asked. Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit and God finally ordered both to get out from the place. It is the original sin, which was then followed by first murder. This was also done by man because of the woman reason. The stimatization of the different sex by the male continues to the eras of philosphers positioning the woman in the negative stand.   In this postmodern period, the female is still the questionable human being—their capability is frequently put in doubt just because the fact that they have a different sex. This case occurred in Indonesia. Megawati had to take a curving road to reach her presidency, in spite of the victory her party won. The reality of her sex forced her to face the...