Gender, power, and court‐annexed mediation in Indonesia

• Author: Fatahillah Abdul Syukur,Dale Bagshaw
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21277

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Gender, power, and court-annexed mediation in

Indonesia

Fatahillah Abdul Syukur

1

| Dale Bagshaw

2

1

Faculty of Law, Universitas Pancasila,

South Jakarta, Indonesia

2

School of Psychology, Social Work &

Social Policy, University of South

Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Correspondence

Fatahillah Abdul Syukur, Faculty of Law,

Universitas Pancasila, South Jakarta,

Indonesia.

Email: fatahillah@univpancasila.ac.id

Abstract

Certification trainings for court-annexed mediators

have been conducted in Indonesia since 2003; however,

the curriculum fails to include domestic and family vio-

lence and the impacts of gender and the abuse of power

on women and children, which are crucial in a patriar-

chal country such as Indonesia. The authors contend

that it is imperative to include these topics in the cur-

riculum to raise mediators' awareness of the influence

of patriarchy, on themselves and the disputants and on

the process and outcomes for women and children. The

authors assess the development and training of court

annexed mediators in Indonesia and recommend

changes to the current certification training curricu-

lum, the development of national competency stan-

dards and a code of ethics and funding for research.

Women in Indonesia have long been thought to have higher status in the community than

women in other countries in Southeast Asia (Atkinson & Errington, 1990; Blackburn, 2001).

Women have been involved in the community in a variety of fields, such as trade, ambassado-

rial affairs and as rulers (Saptari, 2000). The constitution of Indonesia recognizes that men and

women have equal rights, including the right to vote and to become elected public officials.

However, in practice most women are still under the domination of men in almost every aspect

of life (Koning, Nolten, Rodenburg, & Saptari, 2013), in particular in the private, domestic

sphere.

In this paper we analyze the training curriculum for court-annexed mediators in Indonesia

in relation to content on family violence and the impact of dominant gendered discourses and

the abuse of power and argue that there is a need to raise mediators' and trainers' awareness of

the influence of patriarchy and dominant social and cultural constructions of gender (masculin-

ity and femininity) on themselves and the disputants and on the fairness of the process and out-

comes for women and children.

Received: 30 July 2019 Revised: 24 December 2019 Accepted: 25 January 2020

DOI: 10.1002/crq.21277

Conflict Resolution Quarterly. 2020;37:277–288. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crq © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 277