To understand gender relations in any society, it is necessary to appreciate how people organize themselves and what values and perceptions they hold with regard to the world around them. In this article, we argue that gender relations in contemporary East Timorese society are the result of complex and unique political and historical circumstances. The dominance of men in East Timorese history and politics, as well as the legacy of militarization and protracted conflict, are significant issues in contemporary society and pose enormous challenges for the capacity of the women's movement to effect widespread and sustainable social change. Persistent militarization serves, as Cynthia Enloe has written, to “re-entrench the privileging of masculinity—in both private and public life” (Enloe Reference Enloe2004, 217–218). Male elites from the resistance movement now head the national government, military, and police, and the postconflict society they have shaped is heavily influenced by the thinking and behaviors derived from their wartime experiences. The impact of the conflict and the establishment of a militarized male elite on the contemporary struggle to create a more equitable status for women in East Timorese society are explored throughout this article.
In the contested world of modern East Timorese politics, the crucial and unique role of women during the national struggle for independence from the Indonesian occupation (1975–1999) has not yet been fully acknowledged, and this deficiency affects women's full and active participation in public life today. Under the force of Indonesian repression, the movement for women's equality—as articulated in the East Timorese nationalist rhetoric of the 1970s—was subsumed within the broader struggle for national liberation. However, the nationalist struggle critically depended upon women's contributions and sacrifices, and at independence, a pool of highly skilled and motivated women who did not accept the status quo came together. These women, the Luta Nain or Liberators who largely forged the contemporary woman's movement, continue to face the challenge of articulating an autonomous agenda that serves the interests of women and gender equity rather than nationalist interests, which are primarily set by an elite male leadership. Due to Timor-Leste's unique history, it is important to trace the historical emergence of an East Timorese women's movement to appreciate the particular evolution and nature of the movement now fighting for women's equal rights in the postconflict era of securing the new nation.
Postconflict periods are significant for struggles for gender justice. Although women in contemporary Timor-Leste face cultural and political pressure to conform to patriarchal demands that are deeply rooted in customary practice and the colonial past and the nationalist struggle led by a militarized male elite, key women leaders and groups resist this pressure. These women have created a contemporary East Timorese women's movement, largely a coalition of key women leaders, parliamentarians, and local women's advocacy nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), with a shifting network of international feminist activists, academics, advisers, and practitioners. This movement fits the established definition of such movements, with an identifiable leadership centrally coordinating a membership and political program (Molyneux Reference Molyneux1998, 223–224), which are described in the following sections of this article. Although this contemporary movement has successfully driven the introduction of more egalitarian laws and government policies, the creation of deeper changes in social practices is more challenging.
In part due to a robust quota system, the new nation of Timor-Leste has a critical mass of women in parliament who are becoming increasingly more experienced and self-assured. In 2010, female parliamentarians, along with the wider women's movement, ensured the passage of the progressive Law Against Domestic Violence (Lei Contra Violencia Domestica) and, more recently, oversaw an updated National Action Plan (NAP) on Gender-Based Violence and associated budget, along with one plan addressing United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325. The reverberations throughout the East Timorese government to produce effective policies to support these changes are still being felt, as are responses among civil society and in local communities. The acceptance of formal gender equality as a general principle is apparent in Timor-Leste, yet the deeper social change required for men and women to have equal opportunities in their daily lives remains an ongoing struggle for the women's movement.
Gender inequity is well documented in Timor-Leste, as in many postconflict societies. According to findings from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), women's participation in the labor force in Timor-Leste is the lowest of Pacific Island countries at 21%. Women's share of waged employment (i.e., those jobs with regular wages or salaries) is also the lowest in the region at 31% (ADB 2016). In 2016, Timor-Leste received a rating of 125 of 144 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index produced by the World Economic Forum, at the bottom of the Asia Pacific region. Although this statistic reflected an improved rating in primary and secondary education for women, and the country performed comparatively well in terms of female parliamentarian representation, a significant gender gap remains in the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex (WEF 2016). Related to women's low economic status, a 2016 report by The Asia Foundation based on findings from the Nabilan Baseline Study revealed that 59% of women aged 15–49 had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime, suggesting that a widespread shift in attitudes to address gender inequality and tolerance of violence is required (The Asia Foundation 2016).
The discussion and findings in this article are the result of many years of archival research, fieldwork, and ongoing research projects in Timor-Leste by both authors. They also stem from discussions of the authors with key informants during academic fora undertaken at the National University of East Timor (Universidade Nacional de Timor-Lorosa'e, UNTL) (Niner Reference Niner2017b). These data and previous findings about gender relations and the women's movement in Timor-Leste have been reanalyzed according to current discourse regarding tackling intractable gender inequality around the world, which is discussed in the following section. We also report the largely unknown story of the women's movement in Timor-Leste.
WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Seeking renewed possibilities for social change on gender equality and associated issues, such as ending violence against women, international women's advocates are restrategizing more closely with national women's movements (Actionaid 2012; APWLD 2014; Batliwala Reference Batliwala2012; IWDA 2016; ODI 2015; Roche et al. Reference Roche, John, Helen, Sam and David2018). This renewed effort follows several decades of feminist principles being overlooked in favor of “gender and development” programs and the “NGO-ization of feminist movements,” which have failed to bring about the hoped-for changes and now face a climate of decreased funding and growing conservatism (Batliwala Reference Batliwala2012, 17–18). The Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development (APWLD 2014), for example, emphasizes that local women's movements, “grounded in local struggles and experience are the key to transforming approaches to development.” Pressure and action by local women's movements have the capacity to bring about improvements on substantive issues of concern to women within their own communities.
Many women's movements around the world have grown within nationalist coalitions to overcome colonial regimes, but ultimately they have deferred to those movements for national independence (Molyneux Reference Molyneux1998, 227–228; True, Niner, Parashar, and George Reference True, Sara Niner and George2013). Resistance to more egalitarian gender relations can be strong after periods of war or political crisis, when the familiarity of established patriarchal systems may be appealing. National women's movements also have the potential to replicate existing patterns of social hierarchy and gender roles; thus, they may be seen to represent the elite rather than the diverse groups of women in society (Molyneaux Reference Molyneux1998, 228), as has been the case in countries such as Cambodia and Indonesia (Blackburn Reference Blackburn, Roces and Edwards2010; Jacobsen Reference Jacobsen, Roces and Edwards2010). Some women's movements, however (e.g., in Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines, where “people power” has prevailed), have been more successful in forming coalitions of women across socioeconomic divisions and creating broader change (Roces Reference Roces, Roces and Edwards2010). These Southeast Asian local women's movements have achieved real and lasting social change and can provide both words of caution and sources of inspiration for the East Timorese women's movement.
THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN TIMOR-LESTE: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Customary Society
Diverse indigenous groups within Timor-Leste cross the spectrum of matriarchal and patriarchal forms of social and political organization. Anthropologists have described the roles of women and men in customary societies in Timor-Leste as complementary and interdependent. Women are accorded sacred status within East Timorese cosmology, and the divine female element is prominent in indigenous belief. David Hicks (Reference Hicks2004), for example, observed that feminine spirits are seen to dominate the sacred world, whereas masculine spirits are seen to dominate the secular world. Therefore, although women may be seen to hold sacred power, they usually do not have a strong public or political presence. In accordance with this logic, women and girls are often associated with the internal or domestic sphere, rather than the external or public sphere, which is seen as the domain of men. Consequently, domestic duties and care of children largely fall to women, which also explains women's significant, although inconsistent, household decision-making power and for some women, particularly elite women, formidable positions within households. Senior (feto ferik) or elite women remain powerful in Timor-Leste, and any gender analysis must be modified with an awareness of this strictly observed social hierarchy. However, even elite women must accept the full burden of domestic, reproductive, and care work, often precluding them from public and leadership roles and/or a place in the paid workforce and the economic power that comes with it.
Although many East Timorese do not believe that women occupy a lower status due to their sacred and domestic decision-making power, it cannot be inferred that women and men are equal or equitable from a political economy analysis or a feminist perspective. Although many East Timorese women see no imperative for change, unaware of other more equitable options, they do have a position from which to exert demands if they are able to identify common interests and act together (Graydon Reference Graydon2016, 52–53). As we demonstrate in the following sections, only local women's movements can formulate the grassroots organizing required for change.
Portuguese Colonialism
Colonized by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, Portuguese Timor remained a neglected outpost for the next 400 years. The sexual exploitation of local women by the colonizers and the gender-based roles articulated by colonial and Catholic doctrine was referred to as a “double exploitation” by one of the territory's first prominent female activists, Rosa ‘Muki’ Bonaparte Soares (Bonaparte Reference Bonaparte1975). East Timorese anthropologist Josh Trindade (Reference Trindade, Leach, Mendes, da Silva, Boughton and da Costa Ximenes2012) suggests that Portuguese colonial agents encouraged local liurai (rulers) to act more like European feudal kings and that this has had enduring effects upon local gender relations. The Portuguese colonial administration also introduced a system of recognizing male heads of households for tax collection purposes (Gunn Reference Gunn1999), thus affirming a patriarchal model of the family structure and associated systems of authority. Undoubtedly, colonial influences substantially shifted and altered gender relations in local East Timorese societies.
Both the colonial regime and the Catholic Church recruited local male elites to extend and consolidate colonial power in the territory (Gunn Reference Gunn1999; Joshi Reference Joshi2005, 58). The small number of developments introduced by the Portuguese in the early twentieth century included a Catholic education system that prioritized young men over women. East Timorese women thus had limited access to educational opportunities and its associated potential for social mobility. Only a few women from liurai families attended the small number of schools for girls, which notably included the small school in Ainaro that was established by Italian Canossian Sisters in 1902 (Cristalis and Scott Reference Cristalis and Scott2005, 24; Hill Reference Hill2002, 36). Although only open to a small number of elite girls, many trained as teachers and went on to work in schools in other parts of the territory. Several of these young women also went on to receive scholarships from the Portuguese government, a limited number of which were offered from the 1960s onward, to further their studies in Portugal (Loney Reference Loney2015). The revolutionary environment of university studies in Europe provided many young East Timorese with a new language for articulating their position in colonial society that emphasized notions of freedom and equality and transcended gender lines. Indeed, many of these women went on to play a prominent role in the emerging East Timorese nationalist movement upon their return to the territory in 1974–1975. Male leaders, too, were more amenable to accepting concepts of equality for women, which to an extent distinguished them from other movements for independence in the Portuguese colonies that had been militarized for a long time.
Decolonization
The Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974, which saw the overthrow of the authoritarian Salazar regime, brought about significant changes to the social and political landscape of Portuguese Timor. A number of political associations formed, distinguished by different visions for the future of the territory. By the early 1970s, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente, FRETILIN) had begun opposing Portuguese colonial rule, while also developing a distinct revolutionary social and economic program that included the emancipation of women (Hill Reference Hill2002). Despite FRETILIN's commitment to gender equality, only three of the party's 50-strong Central Committee members were women: ‘Muki’ Bonaparte, Maria ‘Bi-Lear’ do Céu Pereira, and Guilhermina Araújo (Loney Reference Loney2015). However, the first East Timorese women's organization, the Popular Organization of Timorese Women (Organização Popular da Mulher Timorense, OPMT), was founded alongside FRETILIN, according to a statement by Muki, the first OPMT Secretary, as a “mass organization” that would enable women to “participate in the revolution.” Muki described the broad objective of OPMT: “firstly, to participate directly in the struggle against colonialism, and second[ly], to fight in every way the violent discrimination that Timorese women had suffered in colonial society” (Bonaparte Reference Bonaparte1975, 7).
More women became involved in the nationalist movement, especially through the literacy programs that were a central part of FRETILIN's political platform (Cabral and Martin-Jones Reference Cabral, Martin-Jones, Leach, Mendes, da Silva, Boughton and da Costa Ximenes2012, 344). Adult literacy volunteers, many of whom were educated, elite OPMT women, used the FRETILIN literacy handbook as they travelled around the countryside promoting education and national liberation. These practices established OPMT as a relatively widely known and potentially effective agent for women's emancipation (Loney Reference Loney2015). Notably, however, OMPT was established as part of the broader nationalist movement rather than an independent response to a modern and “growing absorption of women into the public realm” (Molyneaux Reference Molyneux1998, 222). As part of FRETILIN, OPMT could be categorized as “directed mobilization” (Molyneaux 1985, 227, 229), subservient to a movement of modernizing nationalism. Limited and curtailed by men's overarching leadership and their nationalist political priorities, OPMT was the kernel of an East Timorese women's movement; it defined the challenge of separating women's interests from the nationalist ones with which the contemporary women's movement is confronted.
The changes that took place within Portuguese Timor in 1974–1975 had broad ramifications for East Timorese women. The nationalist elite sought to dismantle colonial and traditional social structures and build a new, more equitable society. FRETILIN's nationalist, revolutionary ideology enabled and required the participation of women, facilitating a significant shift in traditional and colonial gender roles (Loney Reference Loney2015). The year of the Indonesian invasion, 1975, was International Women's Year, a fact of which East Timorese students who had studied in Portuguese would have been aware, and gender equality had emerged within the rhetoric of the nationalist movement and was beginning to reshape the nature of East Timorese society. Before substantial change could occur, however, the Indonesian invasion radically changed the nature and aims of the nationalist movement. The movement was effectively militarized rapidly, and concerns about gender equality were subsequently overwhelmed, to a large extent, by the violence and oppression of the Indonesian occupation, replaced by a reliance upon traditional gender roles and social structures in formulating a politics of resistance to the subsequent occupation.
THE INDONESIAN OCCUPATION (1975–1999)
The First Phase of the Resistance (1976–1979)
On December 7, 1975, the Indonesian military launched a land, sea, and air invasion of Dili. FRETILIN leaders and their families, as well as many civilians, were executed within a few days of the invasion. Women suspected of having links with FRETILIN were singled out for particularly harsh treatment (CAVR 2013). Two high-profile East Timorese women were executed in the days following the invasion: Muki and Isabel Lobato, the wife of the prominent FRETILIN member, Nicolau Lobato. Their deaths illustrate how politically active women were targeted by the invading forces and the practices of gender-based violence that were prevalent throughout the occupation period (Loney Reference Loney2018).
Following the invasion, large numbers of East Timorese civilians fled to the mountains in the interior. FRETILIN's armed wing, the Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor (Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste, FALINTIL), put up substantial resistance, and for several years, they retained control over large amounts of territory. In these ‘liberated’ areas, FRETILIN was initially able to provide sufficient food, shelter, and basic health care to civilians. Drawing on their plans for the social and political transformation of the territory, FRETILIN also implemented mass literacy and political mobilization programs. Despite the massive displacement, FRETILIN established functioning societies in the mountains, relatively outside the reach of the Indonesian military and the conflict, until the late 1970s (Loney Reference Loney, Smith, da Silva, Mendes, Ximenes, Fernandes and Leach2016). The functioning of these FRETILIN-controlled societies varied across the territory, but OPMT women often took the lead in providing logistical support for the fighters on the front line, as well as managing programs and distributing tasks to civilians (Loney Reference Loney, Smith, da Silva, Mendes, Ximenes, Fernandes and Leach2016). OPMT was responsible for developing and administering a range of programs related to food, medicine, education, and child care (Alves et al. Reference Alves, Abrantes and Reis2001).
This period of life in the mountains shifted East Timorese women's economic, social, and political roles, as war has done repeatedly around the world (Sharoni and Welland Reference Sharoni, Welland, Sharoni, Welland, Steiner and Pedersen2016). Gender-based roles and responsibilities were necessarily reformulated in these exceptional circumstances. Some women were provided with military training and skills in assembling weapons and, although most did not engage in battle, a critical minority of women did. These women acted as assistants to their guerrilla fighter husbands or partners, and sometimes they took up arms if their husbands were injured or killed (Loney Reference Loney, Leach, Mendes, da Silva, Boughton and Ximenes2012; Niner Reference Niner, Blackburn and Ting2013). During FALINTIL assaults, women often comprised the ‘second wave’ of attacks and were responsible for recovering weapons and other valuable items (Niner Reference Niner, Blackburn and Ting2013). This shift in the immediate function and purpose of the women's movement demonstrated its capacity to adapt to rapidly and dramatically changing circumstances.
Reorganizing the Resistance (1981–1999)
The Indonesian military campaigns from 1977 to 1979 almost destroyed the East Timorese resistance. The following years were critical in reviving resistance networks and in reshaping and reformulating the nationalist movement. Most of the original FRETILIN leadership had been eliminated, and their revolutionary politics, including the ideal of women's emancipation, faded along with them (Niner Reference Niner2011). The broad-based resistance of the early 1980s had no such program of gender equality and, indeed, had little capacity to think beyond basic survival. Instead, it relied upon kinship networks and familial relations for its survival and endurance (Loney Reference Loney2018). The position of women within these networks remained largely subordinate to the male guerrilla fighters and was based primarily on traditional gender roles (Niner Reference Niner2009).
A number of changes in the structure and form of East Timorese society took place in the 1980s and 1990s. These developments were led by the resistance leader Xanana Gusmão, who established a series of national resistance platforms to unite various factions of the nationalist movement: the Revolutionary Council of National Resistance (Conselho Revolucinario de Resistencia Nacional, CNNR) in 1981; the National Council of Maubere Resistance (Conselho Nacional da Resistência Maubere, CNRM) in 1986; and the National Council of Timorese Resistance (Conselho Nacional da Resistência Timorense, CNRT) in 1998 (Niner Reference Niner2000, Reference Niner2009). No women held senior positions within these elite male hierarchies, yet the formation of CNRM coincided with the emergence of a new women's group: the Organization of Timorese Women (Organizacao Mulher Timor, OMT). OMT effectively became the women's wing of the broader resistance movement and attracted many women into its membership. In addition to OPMT members, other women joined who were not necessarily affiliated with a particular political party but who wished to support the resistance and to ensure that women's perspectives would remain prominent within the struggle.
Women's Roles in the Resistance
Throughout the occupation, OPMT and OMT provided women with vehicles through which they could participate in the struggle both rhetorically, as part of the revolutionary agenda of the nationalist movement, and practically, as combatants and as members of the clandestine movement. OPMT provided support and supplies for the resistance, as much as was possible considering the repressive and retributive nature of the occupying regime. Many women made huge contributions under extraordinary circumstances. They understood the dangers of their actions but persisted, and many were killed or were captured and tortured as a result (Loney Reference Loney2018). Like men, the women who were discovered by Indonesian forces faced imprisonment, torture, and death, along with the gendered threat of sexual violence and abuse (Loney Reference Loney2014). Upon the formation of OMT, the remaining OPMT branches became OMT branches, officially working for the resistance and for the emancipation of East Timorese women, regardless of their political affiliation. OPMT had already been organized for two decades down to the village level, and it was still the most effective organization at communicating with women throughout the territory, and the difference between OPMT and OMT became largely obscured.
In addition to their accepted social roles as mothers, carers, community workers, and educators, women performed a range of other roles during the struggle. Perhaps the most significant was their role in clandestine networks: they collected and couriered information and documents; supplied food, medicine, uniforms, and ammunition; and guided, fed, and hid guerrillas in their homes (Loney Reference Loney2018). A widely accepted estimate of women's participation in clandestine networks is 60% (Niner Reference Niner2009). The occupation also forced many women to take up roles outside the domestic sphere for the first time. Women lost husbands, fathers, brothers and sons to the war, making it necessary for them to provide for their families and to enter into formal and informal economic activities from which they had previously been restricted (Alves, Abrantes, and Reis Reference Alves, Abrantes and Reis2001).
Women Under Occupation
Although the Indonesian occupation was undoubtedly a time of great suffering for many East Timorese women, a number of developments were introduced to the territory that changed the position of women within society and, particularly in the late 1990s, opened up the possibilities for women's activism. The Indonesian government introduced several organizations to ‘develop’ and ‘modernize’ the territory, and in part, these organizations provided East Timorese women with new opportunities and channels to engage with the public sphere (Loney Reference Loney, Smith, da Silva, Mendes, Ximenes, Fernandes and Leach2016, Reference Loney2018). State-sanctioned women's organizations, such as the Association of Civil Servants’ Wives (Dharma Wanita) and the Family Welfare Movement (Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga, PKK) were introduced, and East Timorese women were urged to join. These organizations were a form of social engineering aimed toward implementing New Order social values and programs (Loney Reference Loney, Smith, da Silva, Mendes, Ximenes, Fernandes and Leach2016).
The introduction of a national education system also provided young women with educational opportunities that had not been available under Portuguese colonialism. Although many East Timorese opposed the imposition of the Indonesian language, culture, and ideology (Ferreira Reference Ferreira1987, 41), the modernizing agenda of the occupying regime did provide new spaces for social organization and inspiration for women. Scholarship programs were provided by the Indonesian government for young East Timorese to travel to Indonesia to study, work, and participate in other activities (Loney Reference Loney, Smith, da Silva, Mendes, Ximenes, Fernandes and Leach2016). Indeed, East Timorese student activism in Indonesia, and the increasing collaboration with the Indonesian pro-democracy movement, advanced the strategy of positioning East Timor's struggle for self-determination as an international human rights struggle against a repressive, dictatorial regime. Many East Timorese students continued their activism or became politically active via the Organization of East Timorese Students and Youth (Ikatan Mahasiswa, Pemuda, dan Pelajar Timor Timur, IMPETTU), and the National Resistance of East Timorese Students (Resistência Nacional dos Estudantes de Timor-Leste, RENETIL), which was established in 1988 (Loney Reference Loney2018).
New Forms of Political Activism
From the 1990s onward, when the national struggle took on an increasingly international focus, key figures in the women's movement established transnational connections with Indonesian women and international women's movements. Former Secretary of OPMT and later founding member of the East Timorese Women's Communication Forum (FOKUPERS), Domingas ‘Micato’ Fernandes Alves, for example, describes her activism and the associated dangers that she encountered:
I started sending articles abroad about the situation of women in Timor-Leste. I wrote to a Timorese woman in Sydney… I wrote to the French President, François Mitterand, and to the United Nations. In 1995, I compiled a report about the suffering of Timorese women in the resistance [and] under the control of Indonesian armed forces… The report was submitted to the Beijing women's conference. I was subjected to interrogation twice for sending documents abroad (Alves 2010, 84).
The nature of the resistance changed as a new generation of East Timorese, who had grown up under Indonesian rule, began to publicly express their opposition to the regime. Many of these new activists were young students from Dili, and many of them were women.
Within the diaspora, East Timorese women also began to engage with the international movement around women's human rights, particularly within the context of the UN Decade for Women (1976–1985). For example, three Australia-based East Timorese women attended the international NGO forum that ran parallel to the UN Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya, July 15–26, 1985: Inés de Almeida, Emilia Pires, and Mimi Ferreira. Six East Timorese women attended the NGO forum that ran parallel to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, September 4–15, 1995: Inés de Almeida, Ceu Brites, Benilda Brites, Maria Odette Gonçalves, Milena Pires, and Fernanda Varudo. Their attendance at the conference in Beijing, in particular, was central to the adoption of women's rights in the basic document of the CNRT—the Magna Carta on Freedoms, Rights, and Duties, and Guarantees for the People of East Timor—at the East Timorese National Convention in the Diaspora at Peniche, Portugal, on April 25, 1998 (Pires Reference Pires1998). The Magna Carta explicitly declared the people of East Timor's acceptance of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (UN CEDAW 2015), as well as promotion and respect for international norms concerning the rights of women.
Within the territory of East Timor, women's groups also organized a number of conferences to share their experiences of violence. For example, a conference was held November 9 and 10, 1998, with the support of the newly formed OMT, and more than 200 women attended (Conway Reference Conway2010; Loney Reference Loney, Smith, da Silva, Mendes, Ximenes, Fernandes and Leach2016). Although the capacity for women's organizations to develop independently of the state was limited, a small number of local organizations emerged in the late 1990s, including FOKUPERS and the East Timor Young Women's Group (Grupo Feto Foins'ae Timor Leste, GFFTL), the women's arm of the East Timor Student Solidarity Council (ETSSC). These organizations became important participants in the pro-independence campaign; indeed, in July 1998, GFFTL established itself as a separate organization (Cristalis and Scott 2005, 49–50; Joshi Reference Joshi2005, 100–102). Within a few years, donors were offering the organization money to administer projects—some of them in fields such as sewing, in which the members had no experience. But largely, GFFTL assumed the status of a small, office-based NGO.
After the collapse of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia in 1998, the new President Habibie announced a popular consultation in which the East Timorese people could decide their political future. In August 1999, nearly 80% of East Timorese people voted for independence. Extensive violence followed the announcement: an estimated 2,000 people were killed and more than 200,000 were forcibly displaced. Approximately 70% of the country's infrastructure was destroyed (CAVR 2013). Following the violence, many women struggled to find housing and food and to look after their families while recovering from the mayhem (Loney Reference Loney2018). As part of the agreement to hold the ballot, FALINTIL was assigned to temporary quarters in several camps around the territory. In the camps, few women were active in political work, but many worked in clinics or kitchens.
East Timorese women are proud of their role in the resistance, but for 24 years, the struggle for women's rights was subsumed by the broader struggle for independence. As one female combatant explained:
In Timor-Leste, based on our traditions and culture, men want to be the only ones to lead in the family and be in positions. A sense of responsibility and authority is given more to men than to women. However in the war we never looked at whether you were a man or woman, all of us struggled very hard to free our people and this land from the invaders hands. With the political evolution that we've had, it is important to me that rights should be universal and there should be no discrimination. But we need to fight for the right to equality and gender equity (Niner Reference Niner, Blackburn and Ting2013).
INDEPENDENCE AND THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN TIMOR-LESTE TODAY
On February 28, 2000, the United Nations Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET) was established to administer the territory until a functioning local government could be established. Local East Timorese were often overlooked by this new internationally staffed administration, including women's organizations and individual women seeking employment. Of the few East Timorese employed by UNTAET, for example, only 6% were women (Smith Reference Smith2017). An office dedicated to gender concerns was not initially opened due to budget constraints, but as a direct result of lobbying by East Timorese women and Mary Robinson, then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Gender Affairs Unit (GAU) was finally established in April 2000 (Charlesworth and Wood Reference Charlesworth and Wood2002, 340–341). The GAU, headed by a senior international gender specialist Sherrill Whittington, was mandated to “ensure gender mainstreaming” in all aspects of the peacekeeping mission and the new East Timorese government (Smith Reference Smith2018; Whittington Reference Whittington2003, 1285).
On August 30, 2001, elections were held for a constitutional assembly. FRETILIN won 57.4% of the vote, and they formed the Assembly and set about drafting a new constitution (RDTL 2002). A widespread civil society campaign and countrywide consultations led by women's organizations, the GAU and La'o Hamutuk, resulted in the writing of a Women's Charter of Rights in East Timor (Hill Reference Hill, Leach, Mendes, da Silva, Boughton and da Costa Ximenes2012). The Charter, which was supported by a huge petition containing 10,000 signatures from across the territory, was presented to the Members of the Constituent Assembly while they drafted the constitution. Almost all of the demands of the Women's Charter were met and incorporated into the new constitution, in what can be seen as an outstanding achievement for the East Timorese women's movement and its allies.
The resulting Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (2002) committed, for example, to promoting “equality of opportunities between men and women” (section 6.j); nondiscrimination on the basis of gender (section 16.2); equality between men and women “in all areas of family, political, economic, social and cultural life” (section 17); marriage based on “free consent” (section 39.3), “full equality” between spouses (section 39.3) and state protection and leave for pregnant women in the paid workforce (section 39.4); and the right to work and to choose one's profession, regardless of gender (section 50.1). The constitution also recognized the participation of women in political life as “a requirement of, and a fundamental instrument for consolidating, the democratic system” and nondiscrimination for access to political positions (sections 63.1 and 63.2). The Constituent Assembly was transformed into the first government of the newly independent nation and, although some FRETILIN women lobbied to become part of the government, few were chosen. Following independence, the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) was established to assist the devolving of operational responsibilities to local authorities. Under the newly independent government, the GAU was turned into the Office for the Promotion of Equality (OPE).
Following the vote for independence, as East Timorese women continued to provide the bulk of care for their families and communities under the most difficult of conditions, they also built a small but strong movement for women's rights that drew upon the networks and alliances that had been established during the occupation period. The independence movement had created a pool of highly skilled and motivated women who continue today to work toward the improved status of women. The first National Congress of the Women of Timor-Leste was held in June 2000 (Smith Reference Smith2018). Approximately 550 participants attended and developed recommendations for UNTAET in a Platform of Action for East Timorese Women (Ospina Reference Ospina2006). Held every four years since then, in 2004, 2008 and 2013, each meeting resulted in a new platform for action, providing a road map for the following year's activism (Smith Reference Smith2018). These documents incorporated issues and areas of concern raised by canvassing women across the nation in four district consultations, which took place prior to each congress (Smith Reference Smith2018).
The First Congress led to the formation of Rede Feto, an umbrella organization that represented some 15 women's organizations in Timor-Leste. The main program of the organization was advocacy for gender equality, women's rights, and strengthening member's organizational capacities, although its own internal organization subsequently suffered serious setbacks. Rede Feto can be described as an “associated linkage” (Molyneaux Reference Molyneux1998, 228) for women's organizations representing a discernible and autonomous women's movement undirected for the first time by the superior political power of the nationalist movement. Soon after its establishment, spokesperson Filomena dos Reis described the organization as “representative of a broad cross-section of society” (Cristalis and Scott 2005, 76). Since then, Rede Feto has become a fixture firmly located in the capital, Dili, with direct links to government, and it runs the risk of being overtly influenced by concerns of the educated middle-class women who staff it. In the lead-up to the 2004 Congress, some women began to question the legitimacy of Rede Feto as a ‘national’ women's network (Roynestad 2003). In 2013, one East Timorese woman commented that some rural women activists had come to see the Women's Congress as a meeting of “minister's wives” (Smith Reference Smith2017, 67).
STRATEGIC SUCCESSES: LAWS, QUOTAS, AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
After its formation, Rede Feto oversaw the establishment of the Gender and Constitution Working Group. In addition to the advocating for women's rights to be included in the new constitution (Ospina Reference Ospina2006), as previously discussed, the group also worked with the newly established national government Office of the Secretary of State for the Promotion of Equality (SEPI), which was led by a new secretary of state, Micato Alves (Smith Reference Smith2018). The position of gender advisor to successive UN missions, which was held by women such as Sherrill Whittington and Fernanda Tavares (UNMISET), became the prototype for the advisor on women's equality to the prime minister in the first constitutional government, such as Micato Alves, and later SEPI leaders, such as Idelta Rodrigues. These women were often recruited from the women's movement, and their actions often had complex effects on the local women's movement. Since that time, the office has gone through several organizational and name changes under successive governments. However today, its focus has been narrowed to the economic empowerment of women.
East Timorese women activists strategically seized the opportunity of independence to leverage further advantages for women both domestically and internationally. In the leadup to independence in 2000, the East Timorese Women's Congress set a goal of women holding 30% of seats in all major decision-making bodies. Rede Feto, the national women's network, made the campaign for gender quotas a priority for the 2001 Constitutional Assembly elections. The UN Electoral Affairs Division refused to use quotas, however, despite the advocacy of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), on the grounds that they were not ‘democratic.’ But they did establish a proportional electoral system. To compensate for having no official gender quota, local women advocated for affirmative action and successfully lobbied for international funds to support and train women candidates. As a result of these efforts, women won 25% of seats in the new Assembly. This 30% quota was mandated in the 2007 National Election Law, which established that one in every four candidates should be a woman. In 2011, this was amended to one woman in every three candidates (Law no. 7/2011) (Pires Reference Pires2004; Smith Reference Smith2018).
Such programs have led to the strong representation of women in parliament, and women are well represented among the ranks of government ministers. In the 2012 elections, women won 25 of 65 seats (38%), the highest percentage of women representatives across the Asia Pacific, ranked 16th among 140 countries surveyed in 2013. In 2017, the numbers dipped a little but remain high, with one new political party being led by a woman. Acknowledging the quota system as a huge win for women, women's activist Dulce de Jesus Soares noted that many women parliamentarians are viewed as token representatives, possibly resulting from the foreign imposition of a quota system (Soares Reference Soares2006). Even Xanana Gusmão, the most powerful of East Timorese male political leaders, admitted in 2014 that much more needed to be done to ensure that women can take on a ‘full role’ in parliament. The women's cross-party caucus (Grupo de Mulheres Parlamentares de Timor-Leste, GMPTL), attached to the Parliament and funded by UN Women, is working on these issues.
In Timor-Leste's proportional representation system, voters choose a political party rather than a local candidate. Each party submits a list of 65 candidates in preferential order, and every third candidate on each list is a woman. This system gives political party leaders substantial power not only to place themselves high on lists but also as political patrons to place their trusted followers high on the lists, too. Women candidates are selected by male leaders and, in this way, they are caught in the sway of male-dominated politics (Niner Reference Niner2017a). Some women's groups in wider society are aligned to political parties, illustrating how the women's movement is still significantly dominated by elite male politics. Divisions among women along factional lines is illustrated by the oldest and largest women's group, OPMT, aligned to FRETILIN, and the separate women's organization, OMT, now largely defunct, aligned to CNRT. The highly competitive politics emerging from the postconflict environment is a subtle form of militarism, and men's familiarity with it simply renews “old forms of masculinized privilege” (cf. Enloe 2004, 230).
In the rural districts at the village or suco level, women's representation has not developed as far as this. A new law requires that elections for chefe suco (village chief) must include a minimum of two candidates and that at least one must be a woman. The 2016 “100% Hau Prontu” campaign, carried out by an alliance of government partners, civil society organizations (including the Alola Foundation and international agencies such as UN Women), identified women leaders and prepared 319 of them. In 2004, only 1.6% of local leaders elected were women; in 2009, 2.4% were women; and in 2016, 4.7% or 21 were women.
Yet in 2010, female parliamentarians, along with the wider women's movement, ensured the introduction of the Law Against Domestic Violence (LADV), which criminalizes domestic violence (Law no. 7/2010), including sexual violence, “even within a marriage,” after many years of national consultations and revisions (Hall Reference Hall and Niner2017). In the same year, SEPI drew on political commitments to make the budget more gender responsive to urge ministries to allocate resources for the implementation of the LADV. GMPTL pressured the government to provide adequate funding for the implementation of the LADV, including establishing mechanisms that ensure the safety of survivors throughout the system and raising awareness of the law (Timor-Leste Committee on Public Finances 2013). Women's organizations have also been active in drawing attention to the quality of services available to survivors and the reporting of domestic violence. In 2013, FOKUPERS pressured the government to adopt a range of policy recommendations to improve reporting on domestic violence (FOKUPERS 2013). More recently, the National Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence and its budget were updated. The reverberations throughout government of policies to support this law are still being felt, as are responses to it among civil society, although more needs to be done to reach the broader population.
The Working Women's Centre Timor-Leste was established to support women to access and stay in work, and it aims to reduce women's vulnerability to exploitation and violence in the workplace (Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House 2012, 7–9). Discrimination against women workers has also been addressed by the labor code (Law no. 4/2012), which guarantees equality of opportunity and treatment in employment and prohibits verbal, nonverbal, and physical sexual harassment. In March 2013, Rede Feto, the Alola Foundation (Fundacao Alola) and the Timor-Leste Trade Union Federation (Konfederasaun Sindikatu Timor Leste, KSTL) held a national seminar to raise awareness of the law (Alola Foundation 2013). These developments illustrate the range of national efforts to improve institutional and policy frameworks to eliminate discrimination against women (Niner 2016).
WOMEN'S REPRESENTATION IN HISTORY
Women hold little place in public efforts to remember and commemorate the struggle for independence, and this paucity has a significant impact upon their capacity play a strong, public role in contemporary society and politics. For example, women are startlingly absent from the displays in the Timorese Resistance Archive and Museum (Arquivo ho Museu da Resistência Timorense, AMRT), which focuses upon the senior male leadership of the resistance, particularly those currently in power. Women important to the early stages of the struggle, including Muki, appear occasionally in photos and documents, but they are largely invisible in the national narratives of East Timorese history (Niner Reference Niner2011). Only one public monument in Timor-Leste is dedicated specifically to women's roles in the struggle: a small and little-known public park dedicated to Muki in Mandarin, Dili.
A small but growing number of publications, many by East Timorese women activists themselves, have documented and commemorated women's roles during the struggle, including Maria Domingas Fernandes Alves, Laura Soares Abrantes and Filomena Reis’ Written with Blood (2001); Rede Feto's Hau Fo Midar, Hau Simu Moruk [I Give Sweetness, I Receive Bitterness] (2007); and Laura Soares Abrantes and Beba Sequeira's Secrecy: The Key to Independence (Reference Abrantes and Sequeira2010). These publications represent important efforts by East Timorese women to document and commemorate women's contributions to the struggle and are complimented by the work of Australians such as Jude Conway (Reference Conway2010) and Hannah Loney (Reference Loney2018). A recent project by the East Timorese Secretariat for the Commission for Research and Development of the History of the Timorese Women's Struggle (Secretarido da Comissão de Pesquisa e Elaboração da História da Luta da Mulher Timor), a long-awaited multivolume history of women in the resistance titled Buibere Hamrik Tebe Rai Metin Ukun Rasik An [Women Stand for Independence] also documents women's contributions. Hopefully, this text can stimulate a change in this regard, although the project is experiencing delays in publication and dissemination due to a lack of government support.
These successes are continually set back by varying levels of national violence. The height of an ongoing continuum of national postconflict violence was the ‘crisis’ of 2006. Violent expressions of masculinity dominated national-level armed conflict between the male-dominated leadership of the institutions of government, army, and police. A recent reprise was the 2013–2015 insurrection of the ex-guerrilla fighter Mauk Moruk and his eventual ex-judicial slaying amid human rights violations by security forces (Amnesty International 2016), again creating civic insecurity and development costs. These episodes of conflict between this militarized male elite are the outcomes flagged by Cynthia Enloe (2004) of the normalization of the dominance and privileging of men and the near total absence of women's public or political participation.
STRATEGIC INTERESTS AND PRACTICAL NEEDS
In contemporary Timor-Leste, there remains a gap between the formal and strategic policies programs that advocate for gender equality, primarily located in the urban centre of Dili, and the needs of the majority of women, who live rurally as subsistence farmers. Manuela Pereira, the director of FOKUPERS, explains how the organization, which was originally concerned with ‘women's rights’, changed its work to consider this discrepancy:
… [W]e did an evaluation with our constituents and what came out was that talking about women's rights was not very effective. Women would often respond: ‘We can't listen to all this talk about rights because my husband does not know about rights.’ So now we are changing our approach. We are talking instead about improving women's economic prospects and reaching out to the communities – that is the process that we used. We talk about people's rights through their work (Cristalis and Scott 2005, 163).
This can also be described as a difference between practical gender needs and more formal, strategic interests of women (related to a structural analysis of women's inequality) identified by Carolyn Moser (Reference Moser1993). Practical needs arise from women's daily lives, often concerned with inadequacies in living conditions, such as water, health, and food security. Some grassroots East Timorese women's activists, such as Mana Lu and Maria Diaz, have had success with their nutrition, housing, health, and livelihoods projects. In contrast, strategic interests arise from women's subordinate status in society, which must be addressed if gender equity is to be achieved. Actions include legal reform ending discrimination or gender-based violence and supporting women in nontraditional roles. Collective organizing by women's movements and processes of consciousness raising and empowerment are also significant ways to achieve this. Tensions often arise within women's movements between practical and strategic interests, apparent in Timor-Leste in a divide between less-educated rural women and middle-class urban women with a more internationally recognizable ‘feminist’ agenda. These different currents within the movement can be broadly divided into rural women's groupings, with needs-based particularistic demands that are tolerant of the different roles ascribed in customary practice to women and men, and the more feminist urban groups with a commitment to a broader set of rights-based political principles. These different impulses may have resulted in a lack of a coherent consensus on the fundamental strategies of the women's movement.
In 2004, the Second National Women's Congress emphasized ‘culture’ as central to its plan. A gender analysis of cultural practices was stressed again at the Third Congress in 2008 (Ospina Reference Ospina2009, 13). Such analysis is necessary to comply with the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (UN CEDAW 2015), which the East Timorese government ratified in 2002, recognizing that equal rights and opportunities between women and men are required for national development. A 2015 UN CEDAW compliance report identified the major obstacles to the implementation of the Convention and gender equality as gender stereotypes, adverse cultural norms, harmful practices, gender-based violence, and access to justice mechanisms. Although the ratification of UN CEDAW and other macro changes is significant, creating the sustained change at all levels of society required for compliance is the real challenge the nation faces.
International agency reports like the UN CEDAW's are full of suggestions for the state to eliminate discrimination against women, but the language has proven problematic for the local women's movement to incorporate. As Sarah Smith argues, “Despite the rhetoric of supporting existing indigenous and local organizations and initiatives, there is clearly an ideological tilt to the choices of who the UN supports” (Reference Smith2015, 164–165). In local women's organizations’ appeals for international support and funding, they must employ the language of international gender norms, and subsequently, they are expected to promote these norms, which has provoked local resistance to their work. As an East Timorese women's representative explained in an interview with Smith, “We are the ones who explain that gender means this and that, so we use our own languages to tell them what these things are. But some people think that gender is a thing from abroad, from outside, not ours, not from our culture, but when we explain it yeah even before [1999] we know gender” (Smith Reference Smith2015, 182).
A central strategy of the women's movement has been to reframe ‘gender’ programs through local cultural understandings and to remind society that these ideas were introduced back in the 1970s by East Timorese women, many of whom were killed undertaking their roles in the resistance and whose names carry weight in contemporary society. Valorizing women's significant contributions to the resistance to gain acceptance and political legitimacy and the women's movement today is a profound strategy to counter gender inequality.
FINDINGS: LIMITED EMPOWERMENT, FACTIONALISM, BACKLASH, AND BASIC NEEDS
Four key interrelated findings can be derived from the preceding discussion. First, the swift installation of the UN administration in 1999 and the abrupt introduction of international gender equality measures were carried out with a lack of sufficient synchronization with local women's representatives and organizations. Subsequently, a mounting perception of gender equality as foreign imposition grew, triggering a local backlash against those ideals and measures. Such a reaction to rapid social change, and the assertion of this agenda in the politics of international development agencies, should have been predicted and responded to by those experts. A more careful and longer-term strategy, developed in equal partnership with the East Timorese women's movement, would have led to better longer-term outcomes. This strategy should have included the representation and conceptualization of gender issues in a local framework, building on the early work and grassroots activism of OPMT, which was largely ignored.
Second, the limited political agency of women leaders or ‘limited empowerment’ resulting from being granted or assigned political positions by male leaders has limited the effectiveness of the women's movement. This tendency has historical precedent in Timor-Leste. The political status and positions awarded to women can be withdrawn and modified at the whim of the male political patrons or as an effect of collateral damage of internal conflict between male leaders. This instability was demonstrated in 2012 when Micato Alves accepted the Defence Minister's position, which was subsequently withdrawn due to disputes between male political and military leaders, leaving the most senior female leader in Timor-Leste without a position in the new government. ‘Limited empowerment’ is an essential first step for women's political leadership in male-dominated political environments. While women leaders remain beholden to male patrons and women's political positions are susceptible to conflict between male leaders, their leadership will remain weak.
Third, and closely related, are the challenges to women's solidarity caused by political party affiliations. Men's primacy and dominance of broader national politics and political conflict means they also determine the status and trajectory of gender programs and the women's movement. Women's shared political goals can be derailed by the power struggles and conflicts between senior male leaders in their tactics to control of the parliament, government ministries, budgets, and institutions, in which issues significant to women are deemed subordinate to ‘national’ interests.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is that the East Timorese women's movement has been highly successful at achieving broad strategic aims, such as constitutional recognition, parliamentary quotas, and the law against domestic violence. However, translating these achievements into strategies that meet the basic needs of most women has been less effective, perhaps reflecting competing currents within the movement. Extending strategies and programs such as the Bolsa da Mae to alleviate the poverty and malnutrition that most women in Timor-Leste face, and increasing educational and economic opportunities require the full attention and force of the women's movement. Such actions are needed to precede deeper societal change. How the varied aims, skills, strategies and interests of women can be built into a cohesive movement maybe the key to solving these significant issues.
CONCLUSIONS
The contemporary East Timorese women's movement continues to face significant challenges and social, religious, and political opposition to its programs in the postconflict period. Their high-profile campaign to legislate against and end violence against women was undertaken in an environment with a high tolerance for violence, including domestic violence, causing confusion and attracting a degree of backlash. The contemporary environment is affected by a persistent militarization born from the conditions of war, which has survived and become embedded in an aggressive and competitive national politics. Although the work of the women's movement, a critical mass of women in parliament, women's advocacy NGOs, and government programs and policies have created the space for changes in practices, the deeper shift is yet to come. Deep-seated cultural change and transformation of gender roles and hierarchies must also be part of this shift. In particular, a reversal of the more destructive gender dynamics playing out in both national- and domestic-level violence is required.
Now that independence has been won, East Timorese women have the space and opportunity to articulate an autonomous expression of women's interests and agenda, one distinct from the remnants of the nationalist struggle and the new nation state, and in solidarity with other international women's movements. However, enduring nationalist sentiment, an abiding reverence for the leaders of the struggle for independence, and the strong culture of male political domination, persists and hampers a more equitable and democratic future. The women's movement faces challenges in combating this domination and identifying women's interests as distinct from the political movement that it was founded within. Demands that male elites appropriately honor women's contributions to the nationalist struggle, along with pre-independence guarantees for gender equality, have had some leverage but require ongoing advocacy to be successful. Although their cases are quite different, the experiences of female political leaders, such as Lucia Lobato, Emilia Pires, and Micato Alves, provide examples of what can happen to high-profile women operating in an aggressively competitive, patriarchal political system. Greater solidarity among women leaders engaged in politics will be needed for women to combat this environment. However, although most resources are scarce and social welfare are woefully inadequate, East Timorese women are understandably loyal to their most fundamental support network, their family and kinship affiliations, which are often political and prioritized over broader strategic gender interests.
Those who work in and with the East Timorese women's movement have embarked on a long and demanding journey not only in a modern political sense but also in a deeply cultural one. Formal legal and political gains for women are only the beginning of the solution for women. Gender issues for women in contemporary society cannot be reduced to a modern political struggle for women's rights, such as the political debate about how many women sit in parliament, the task of administrative ‘gender mainstreaming,’ or of legal reform. The women's movement must also engage, chart, and monitor the deeper currents of gender dynamics within contemporary culture in the difficult and contested postconflict environment. Strategic gains must be balanced alongside the social and community context, where the deeply entrenched and dominant social status of men overshadows the enforcement of law and policies in everyday practice. Much has been achieved legally and materially by the women's movement and its allies, but much remains to be done. Only local movements for social change can be fully effective at the local level is key, and the East Timorese's women's movement and its collaborators must be at the forefront of this struggle for sustainable and far-reaching social change.
