Prime Highlights:

• April 21 every year is Hari Kartini remembrance work conducted by Raden Ajeng Kartini to ensure the women’s education and rights movement.
• Reminds one of the fact that gender equality had been established and a call for continuous action to empower the women.

Key Facts:

• Raden Ajeng Kartini, who was born in 1879, was an Indonesian struggle initiator of the cause of education and women’s rights.
• Her memory brings in gender equality and movements of women across the globe.

Key Background:

Hari Kartini, on 21 April every year, is a national public holiday across Indonesia to commemorate and remember Raden Ajeng Kartini. Kartini was born to a noble family in Java in the year 1879. Kartini never conformed to social convention restricting the freedom and education of women. While girls were not typically given the opportunity to continue on to higher education, the work and writing of Kartini promoted women’s education as a way of giving women more power in the hope of making it possible to build a better society and give them greater ability. Her own work, for instance her novel “Habis Gelap Terbitlah Terang” (“Out of Darkness Comes Light”), bear witness that she was a pioneer of something new concerning the place of women in society. Her own work was dedicated to shattering the strait-jacket surrounding women at home, to struggle to educate and liberate them.

She kept pursuing her vision in a pragmatic manner by establishing girls’ schools in her own nation, achieving very good progress in an era when there was no fashion for women’s education. Although Kartini passed away in her childhood age, at age 25 just, life went on, and Indonesia’s first president, President Sukarno, declared April 21st to be a national day in remembrance of her in 1964. Hari Kartini today commemorates the day Indonesia took giant strides towards giving more rights and education to women. The day is being remembered in all the events, cultural events, education level workshops, and internet campaigns all placing in the forefront of awareness the struggle for common gender equality.

So much has been achieved thus far but still so much to achieve, particularly by women business leaders and women businesswomen. Indonesian women also have to fight against the obstacles to the development and leadership chances of access in all industries. Keeping the memory of Hari Kartini will see to it that we always appreciate how Kartini struggled and sacrificed in opening Indonesian women to free them, which must continue to be a ongoing task in order to generate gender equality into existence as part of the scheme in Indonesian society.