Celebrating International Women's Day, Women Must Be Able To Face Challenges During Pandemic

Illustration (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Today, Monday, March 8 is International Women's Day.

In this annual commemoration, the Deputy Chairperson of the Indonesian People's Consultative Assembly Lestari Moerdijat stated that women must be able to face various challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic which is increasingly complex.

"So that women must be able to improve their abilities and capacities to face the various challenges at this time", said Lestari in her statement, Monday, March 8.

As part of citizenship, continued Lestari, women also have the rights and obligations to play a role in developing the nation and state, as mandated by the 1945 Constitution.

According to the NasDem politician, so far Indonesian women still face external challenges such as gender bias from a number of parties due to the cultured patriarchal perspective.

"And challenges from within women, who generally are still reluctant to rise up to improve the conditions of inequality they are experiencing", she explained.

Even though during this pandemic, said Lestari, domestic problems arose again as a result of the policy to control the spread of the coronavirus. Among them, physical violence, economic pressure to psychological pressure due to various problems faced in his household.

Therefore, Lestari hopes that the struggle to answer the challenges in realizing women's equality must not be extinguished. Efforts to encourage gender bias in various fields must be pursued.

These efforts, he continued, must be followed by continuous capacity building and knowledge by every woman, in order to be able to answer every challenge and opportunity that exists.

"With equal capacity and knowledge, even above average, women can build self-confidence to jointly tackle various challenges that exist today and in the future", said Lestari.