Soviet Woman, Februari 1954: Rantijem, 'Our Unity Is Growing Stronger'

=== [PDF page 1] === The number of homeless among the Indonesian working people has reached disastrous proportions. In Surabaya, for instance, people live in the streets under the open sky Thousands of families in Djakarta have only windowless, cardboardroofed reed hovels like this to live in RANTIJEM Member of the National Council, All-Indonesian Trade Union Centre l have had occasion to visit the People's Democracies and the Soviet Union. * During my tour of the U.S.S.R. I saw for myself how happy is the life of the So viet people. Indeed, everything I witnessed in this country build ing Communism strengthened my conviction that only the victory of the proletariat can Mme. Rantijem secure the rights of women and children. I became even more keenly aware of how grievous is the plight of women in my own country where oppression and poverty prevail. And ever since then I have wanted to tell our Soviet friends about fhe life and activity of the Indonesian wofnen. The women of Indonesia share the suffering of our entire people, whose living standard is steadily declining. This is the result of the rule of fhe Dutch and American imperialists, who made use of the so-called Round-Table Conference on Indonesia to reduce to nought all the gains of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1945. The decisions of fhe conference resulted in practice in the restoration of the power of foreign monopolies, which are piling up super-prof * Mme. Rantijem visited the Soviet Union in November 1953 as a member of an Indonesian trade union delegation which toured the country as guests of the Central Council of Trade Unions of the U.S.S.R. 28 its by plundering the wealth of Indonesia and oppressing its people. Indonesian women are discriminated against in labour. They may not work in state institutions or at foreign-owned enterprises. These brutal laws instituted by the capitalist monopolies are based on the false premise that women's labour is not sufficiently productive, and the consideration that social security provisions for women, in particular during pregnancy, would cost too much. At tobacco factories and textile mills belonging to the national bourgeoisie if is slightly easier for women to find work, but their wages are far below subsistence level. Women are paid less than men for fhe same work. A t textile mills, for example, men working as watchmen get three and a half rupees, and women holding the same job only two and a half rupees. According to official figures released by the Indonesian Central Statistical Board for 1951, the monthly subsistence minimum for one person in our country is 155.49 rupees. The same source places the monthly wages of a miner or transport worker at 117 rupees. Women workers at tobacco factories and textile mills earn still less— 4.30 rupees a day. This actually is the average wage of wom en workers in our country. But for a kilogram of rice, which is a staple food, we pay 2.50 rupees. Under the pressure of increasing v/anf, many women are forced to sell their bodies in order not to die of starvation. In.Djakarta alone there are 20,000 prosti tutes. There are no social insurance provisions for the working people in the event of sickness or injury, and no legislation protecting fhe rights of workers or the interests of mothers. At the textile mills women work from morning till night without a break; they get no time off even to feed their infants. At plants where a lunch interval