Gender inequality divides the world into high versus low, strong versus weak, and is found in all aspects of life. It is not just a "women's issue". It is a shared problem for women and men.

In May this year, the department of partnership of women and men held the sixth of its gender awareness and leadership development workshops in Tomohon, Minahasa, in North Sulawesi. The aim of the workshop was to enable the 28 participants to explore gender relations within their own cultural contexts and to work towards a common vision of gender justice within their churches and communities.

During the three decades of Indonesia's New Order, power was accumulated and abused by the authoritarian General Suharto, his family and his cronies. The people were treated as objects. This oppressive "power-over" pattern of leadership led to major conflict and widespread violence before Suharto was finally ousted in 1998.

Participants in the workshop discussed possibilities for a new paradigm of power-sharing. To take part in decision-making, people must be empowered, and there must be recognition of all the gifts they bring, across the fault-lines of ethnicity, gender, and religion.

They also reflected on violence against women. In the closing days of Suharto's reign, thousands rampaged through the capital, Jakarta, burning and looting as they went. An independent enquiry concluded that during these riots hundreds of Sino-Indonesian women were raped, in what many Indonesians believe were orchestrated attempts by pro-Suharto forces to stir up ethnic and religious hatred and to terrorize people into supporting the status quo information, are examples of physical violence. But violence against women is not merely physical. The convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women understands violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty whether occurring in public or private life".

Indonesia ratified the convention in 1984, but is reluctant to include marital rape in its marital law, or to address violence in the home. The ministry of justice sees domestic violence as a matter to be dealt with by the couple concerned, not to be exposed in public.

Religion can also be a source of violence against women. The Bible is often used to legitimate treating women as of inferior status. A gender approach to scripture, such as the Christian Conference of Asia's programme, "Reading the Bible with New Eyes", is crucial in the struggle for justice and equality between women and men.

Worship in the workshop

So far, new thinking on partnership between women and men has only reached the elite in Indonesia's churches. There is a need to "train trainers" in gender awareness and leadership development, to popularize and spread new ways of reading scripture, and to hold many workshops, preferably in cooperation with people of other faiths.

The Tomohon workshop was hosted by the Christian Evangelical Church in Minahasa (GMIM), together with the Communion of Churches in Indonesia (CCI). Margretha Hendricks Ririmasse of the Protestant Church in the Moluccas (GPM) served as facilitator. Lily Danes and Rainy Hubabarat of the CCI, Sietntje Marentek-Abrams of Tomohon Theological Seminary, and Ratna Murti, from a legal aid foundation in Jakarta, also led sessions. The 28 participants came from Alliance member churches, the CCI and the Indonesian Association of Theological Schools (PERSETIA).

In a country like Indonesia - an archipelago of over 13,000 islands covering more than 700,000 square miles - it is expensive for people from different Alliance churches to come together. But Indonesians place a high value on face-to-face meeting.

"The workshop was a great opportunity to share and to encourage one another," says participant Nancy Souisa. "It worked because we all opened ourselves to each other. Friendship and networking will make our dream of partnership come true."

Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth