Muslim woman gender oppression?

I read that article about the Muslim woman and gender oppresion and it makes me think. In my country, Indonesia, at least in the cities, I don’t think many muslim women think the way she does.

I wonder if this woman, Taslima, set foot in Jakarta, Indonesia what would she thinks of said religion? She said that she feels oppresed, that all she ever been taught to do is cook and stay at home. Over here the city girls are not taught that-I can’t speak for the country because I know that sometimes in smaller villages they still think that too, regardless whether they’re muslim, christian, or animist-the good old patriarch system!

Muslim women here-covered head or not, do further studies abroad, held variety of jobs such as corporate secretary, women magazine editor, novelist-whose work been translated into several lingo and has a tv deal, engineers at a multi-national company, female actors who are among the highest paid actors in the country… so I wonder what kind of enviroment she lives in because it is so different from the one I know and yet we’re still in the same continent. If anything, some women, after they got married and have children choose to get off work to spend more time with their kids-they gave up promising career on their own terms, not because their husbands ordered them. Some went back to work after the kids are in school, some takes off when the kids are teens, etc… there’s tons of variety over here. One of my cousin (married, 1 child) don’t even know how to cook because she’s too busy doing her masters! Contrary to her opinion, I’ve never felt oppressed as a muslim woman to do what I want to do. Sure there are pressure, but aren’t there pressure on girls everywhere in the world? The pressure to do good academically, find good job, good husband, have children, I think these are universal ‘pressures’ and not limited to muslim women. I know my non-muslim woman friends in Europe, Asia, US, Africa, all have felt this from their parents at one point. She also misses so many points in her ‘quotations’ of the religion. For example, men are not superior simply because they’re different. You also gotta look at the next bit that outlines the responsibilty of the men and see is it really all that superior compared to the women’s responsibility. They have to work and provide. There’s no qustion about that. They have to go out and find job to feed their family. And once they have kids, they have to provide for the kids as well, the clothing, education, etc. Women don’t. yes they do have to go through birth and taking care of the kids but they’re not further burdened with the responsibility of providing. Of course sometimes they need to work because the men just don’t bring in enough but that’s considered charity-she got brownie points. the men don’t get brownie points by bringing home the bacon-so to speak. and then, they still need to be dad. It’s not enough that they earn money but they also need to nurture their kids and wife.

Of course if you don’t believe in God and the afterlife, it’ll be a moot point I suppose. But if one do, and one believes that all our action is recorded and will later be presented then it bears some thinking. If you only think about the world then yes-economically it probably is still better to be a man. But if you factor the afterlife then no, I don’t believe that’s true.

Best regards, Sita Sidharta-Ichwan