LRA Study Room: Understanding the Concept of Gender in Society and Its Impact on Women

By:
Ferlansius Pangalila (Chairman of the Labda Foundation Radmila Agrapana)

Gender has always been interesting to discuss and at the same time a source of gossip in the history of mankind. Perhaps it is interesting because it becomes a source of discussion and debate in various contexts, especially the political context of gender itself. Meanwhile, gender becomes the subject of gossip because there are always those who want to dominate between these gender differences. Just conversations and gossip are important for the existence of a proper "UNDERSTANDING" about gender itself and more than that to get answers that are solutions to various problems of women who are currently facing.

Gender must be understood as more than just differences in male or female sexuality. Gender is not and is not talking about gender, but our perceptions of roles, behavior, expression, and the identity of a person whether male or female. So often appear masculine and feminine terms, which looks more at certain properties that are considered (perception) masculine or feminine. There is a term gender bias, gender identity, transsexual, and other related terms. To put it simply, understanding gender will understand our perceptions of women or men, more than just looking at gender and sexual orientation.

Gender problems that are frequent and seem to be only in one group, namely women. The fundamental question that has been answered by various specific studies on gender is whether women are indeed vulnerable to gender problems when faced with a more patriarchal socio-cultural structure of society., where women are not fit and proper to do jobs that in the context of a particular society can only be done by men. Meanwhile, women who oppose the socio-cultural structure in the society tend to become victims, whether victims in the household or victims in the socio-cultural society where the woman is.

Gender issues are not only limited and limited to people's perceptions of masculine or feminine roles and characters. In the era of freedom and the development of information technology today, It is important to note the increasing trend of “gender biased” virtual technology-based crimes, like sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and others whose victims are mostly women, although it does not rule out the possibility that the perpetrators and pimps are not a few women as well, and transgender women (gender identity issues).

These things will be very interesting to discuss with the intention of being discussed without the need to gossip about them. Has been present with us, experts who have long struggled with this question, and from them, hopefully we will gain knowledge that is very useful because the aim of this YLRA study series is to get the right "UNDERSTANDING" about gender itself and get answers that are solutions to various actual problems of women today..