VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Minister Bintang Puspayoga, through a press statement on Thursday, has encouraged to improve women's equality in the military.

"Gender perspective in security has shown that the role of military women is not only aimed at the nation but also at the people," she remarked.

Structural reformation toward gender equality can be realized by increasing women's role, including their opportunity to become leaders, according to the minister.

Indonesian women have made advancements in terms of gender mainstreaming in the military, she noted.

This is proven by the presence of women soldiers in Army Women Corps (KOWAD), Navy Women Corps (KOWAL), and Air Force Women (WARA).

According to the 2022 National Defense Force (TNI) soldiers' recapitulation result, it was recorded that Indonesia has 444,133 TNI soldiers.

However, there are only 8,850 women personnel in the TNI Women Corps (WanTNI), or two percent of the total number of TNI soldiers.

To this end, the minister expects all parties to encourage the role of women to be able to make changes and provide innovation, inspiration, and motivation in the military.

The minister acknowledged that gender construction still caused difficulties for women while emphasizing that they should still be given equal opportunities as men, so there will no longer be any discrimination, exclusion, and restriction on women.

Gender construction affects women since the military members' recruitment stage involves a virginity test, she added.

This had created a controversy, as it was deemed to be a violation of women's privacy as well as physical and mental integrity.

"I laud TNI's policy to remove the virginity test for future Women Corps because this was not only gender discriminative but could also hurt and traumatize women," she noted.

The removal of virginity test was an effort to eradicate discrimination and violence against women in addition to respecting human rights, according to Puspayoga.

"I expect that the removal of this virginity test can truly be implemented well in all recruitment tests in the TNI," she remarked.

Puspayoga's ministry welcomes synergy and collaboration with the TNI women to collectively realize empowered women, protected children, and an advanced Indonesia.

Puspayoga also sought support of TNI officials in disseminating information to the people and assisting in the implementation of the Sexual Violence Prevention Law (UU TPKS). (Antaranews)