West Papuan ‘Housewives’ with HIV: Gender, Marriage, and Inequality in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Indonesia defies gendered HIV risk stereotypes, and most women with HIV do not fit any pre-defined risk groups. In Indonesia, HIV predominates in women who identify as ‘housewives’. In the dominant imaginary, housewives are married homemakers, dedicated to children and husband, faithful, and sexually modest. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with Indigenous Papuan women in Manokwari, West Papua province, I problematise the category of the housewife and show how gendered structural inequalities contribute to Papuan HIV experiences and risks. The West Papuan frontier economy is racialised, male-dominated, and sexualised. Papuan ‘housewives’ may be left behind while husbands are away working and studying. Rather than experience sympathy and support, Papuan ‘housewives’ with HIV expect stigma and are let down by healthcare services. By including interviews with ‘sex workers’, I show that there are common structural inequalities faced by women, regardless of which moral category they appear to represent. While not commensurate with the rest of Indonesia, structural inequalities in West Papua signal the need for deeper attention to gendered inequalities and structural violence to prevent HIV among women.

Di Indonesia sering terjadi, tidak adanya pengakuan bahwa terdapat kelompok-kelompok beresiko terutama berbasis jendernya dan kebanyakan perempuan dengan HIV tidak masuk dalam berbagai kategori kelompok beresiko tersebut. Di Indonesia juga, angka HIV didominasi oleh perempuan yang mengidentifikasikan diri mereka sebagai ‘ibu rumah tangga.’ Secara umum bayangan mengenai ibu rumah tangga adalah ibu-ibu yang mengurus rumah, anak dan suaminya, setia dan lebih banyak ‘nurut’ pada suami dalam urusan seks. Berangkat dari penelitian etnografik dan wawancara dengan perempuan asli Papua di Manokwari, Provinsi Papua Barat, dalam artikel ini saya mempertanyakan kategori ibu rumah tangga dalam statistik orang dengan HIV, dan hendak menunjukkan bagaimana ketidak adilan terstruktur secara jender berkontribusi pada pengalaman-pengalaman dan resiko-resiko terkait HIV yang dialami oleh masyarakat Papua. Situasi ekonomi yang dialami oleh masyarakat Papua adalah bias ras, lebih didominasi oleh kaum pria dan banyak berkaitan dengan urusan atau transaksi seks. ‘Ibu-ibu rumah tangga’ kadang ditinggalkan oleh suaminya mereka baik untuk bekerja atau menempuh pendidikan. Alih-alih mendapatkan simpati dan dukungan, ‘ibu-ibu rumah tangga’ Papua dengan HIV mengalami stigma dan tidak didukung oleh layanan kesehatan. Dengan memasukkan wawancara dengan para ‘pekerja seks,’ saya menunjukkan adanya ketidakadilan terstruktur yang secara umum dialami oleh perempuan, apapun status sosial dan kategori moral/pekerjaan mereka. Walaupun situasi ini tidak sama dengan situasi di Indonesia pada umumnya, ketidakadilan terstruktur di Papua Barat menunjukkan kebutuhan untuk memberikan perhatian lebih pada ketidakadilan jender dan kekerasan secara terstruktur untuk mengurangi resiko HIV pada perempuan.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV
• housewives
• gender inequality
• marriage
• women
• West Papua
• Indonesia

Acknowledgements

Most of all I would like to acknowledge the women who shared their experiences with me. Many were suffering the effects of their illness, and I assume that some did not ultimately survive their diagnosis. I hope that by sharing their stories they are not forgotten, and treatment and social support may improve for others.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Papua/West Papua was incorporated into Indonesia against Papuan wishes in the 1960s, and this authority was ratified in 1969 by the United Nations (Webb-Gannon, 2021). Indonesia has exerted control through military invasion as well as overwhelming population and infrastructure projects that have led to extreme inequalities between Indigenous Papuans and non-Papuan migrant-settlers (see Haluk, 2017; Lazarus, 2022; Munro, 2018; Munro et al., 2021; Yoman, 2007).

² Reformasi refers to the democratic and social reforms following the end of President Suharto’s regime in 1998. Special Autonomy refers to Law 21/1999 on Special Autonomy for Papua that provides increased revenue sharing and new cultural and administrative powers.

³ The research was approved by the University of Calgary Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board (No. 24276) and vetted locally with Papuan community leaders and scholars. Most data was collected as part of a collaborative evaluation of HIV services in Manokwari implemented by Pacific Peoples’ Partnership and funded by the Canadian International Development Agency. This initiative required me to speak with NGO workers, clients, and others in the HIV sector. I was advised by the Indonesian embassy in Ottawa that the correct visa for this activity was a social visit visa. This was granted to me by the Indonesian consulate in Vancouver in 2011 and extended after 60 days by immigration authorities in Manokwari.

⁴ In 2005, research by the PNG Institute of Medical Research (IMR) also indicated that housewives were the sector of the population most at risk for HIV (Aeno, 2005, 5, cited in Lepani, 2008).

⁵ Growing regional evidence suggests that a significant number of MSM do have female partners (see Hakim et al., 2019), and that high and rising prevalence of HIV in young Indonesian MSM (Johnston et al., 2021) relates to the growing homophobic and criminal policies related to gay sexualities in Indonesia (Wijaya, 2020).

⁶ There was one target group that included married, heterosexual-identifying Papuan men: those who worked as ojek (motorcycle taxi) drivers, but this work received much less than the other NGO/donor priorities of MSM and women (Munro, 2020a).

⁷ All names of participants are pseudonyms.

⁸ Interventions including uptake of antenatal services and HIV testing during pregnancy, providing antiretroviral therapy to pregnant women living with the virus, using safe childbirth practices, proper infant feeding, early infant diagnosis and prophylaxis, and other postnatal healthcare services can reduce risk of MTCT down to 5 per cent in resource limited settings (Hussen et al., 2022).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [grant number ZNF124228], Professor Emerita Lynn McIntyre’s Canadian Institutes of Health Research Chair in Gender and Health, and the Canadian International Development Agency (via Pacific Peoples’ Partnership).