Film gives insight into taboo issues affecting Indonesian women

Yesterday morning I was on the committee that was in charge of inviting the public to PKBI’s showing of a documentary about politics and issues affecting women’s bodies in Indonesia. The film, At Stake, is an interesting documentary anthology of women’s stories that provides a sometime disturbing insight into issues, such as female circumcision, prostitution, young women being denied pap smears for not being married, the position of lesbians, and the role of Islam in all of this. It was quite an eye opener to see the film and then go back to the office and discuss it. I was particularly blown away when my female coworkers asked me if I was circumcised, admitting that they all were! Another issue that came up was pap smears and it is evident that women (and many doctors) do not understand the real purpose of pap smears due to severe misinformation, thinking if you are not sexually active (i.e. not married yet) you do not need one, even if you are 35! I was asked to create some sort of informational pamphlet in Indonesian for PKBI because it seems that no one realizes this as an important way to catch the development of cervical cancer early on. Anyways, with this film showing all week the office did not work on much else and Friday afternoon everyone took off around 1pm to go to a salon...