Do Butonese Women Need to Break the Cultural Taboos? (A Dilemma Among Butonese Women)

This research aims to analyze one of Indonesian ethnicity’s perspectives towards women empowerment and cultural taboos. In this context, the investigation focused on Butonese ethnic. Thus, this research employs ethnography research method. In attempt to gain the data, triangulations data collection techniques are employed including observation, FGD, and interview. The results reflected perceptions of Butonese Women from two different walk of life. In this case, the participants include housewives and career women. Butonese women proposed two different perspectives towards women empowerment. The first perspective is women empowerment considered as a radical resistance. Moreover, the second perspective claimed that women empowerment is an act of breaking the cultural taboos.


INTRODUCTION
Empowering women is the worldwide attainment towards the upliftment of society in all aspects of life.Umasankar  After the data is collected, the data will be analyzed through narrative way.
This data analysis technique assists the researchers to gain a rich understanding of how individuals perceive and make sense of their circumstances in ways that are both personally meaningful and culturally situated (Phoenix: 2015).In this case, the researchers concept several steps namely; (1) listening to the recorded data both from FGD and interview.In this step, the researchers transcribe it into a text.(2) identifying key statements in order to categorize it into the focus of this research.
(3) describing the categorized data orderly regarding Butonese women's perspectives towards women empowerment.

History of Butonese Ethnics in Sikka Regency
Local history is the study that explores events occurring within a limited geographical area."Local" refers to a small area, usually defined by territorial boundaries or cultural similarities.In Indonesia, local history is often referred to as regional history.
In the Western world, other terms frequently used include community history, neighborhood history, or nearby history.Local pertains to the history of a specific location, with boundaries set by the historian writing it (Abdullah, 1985).
This aligns with the views of (Carrol, 2003), who highlights the importance of local history as a way to understand the past in a specific geographical context.
This approach emphasizes that history is shaped not only by major events at the Based on the data from observation, it was found that Butonese woman's life is mostly a housewife.Every morning they wake up to prepare meals for their husband before sailing, and for their kids before they go to school.After that they went to the field to fit the plants.Then they went home to prepare lunch.They were obliged to stay at home until their husband returned from the sea.Then after that, they prepared food for dinner.
Butonese woman's life is mostly at home.
They go out only for planting in the field.
Therefore, one of Butonese women said that it is better for my daughter to study to the higher level of education.So that her world goes wider, not only at home.
Hopefully my daughter study to the university level.So, she may become a teacher or a healthcare (D).
Based on the statement above, there is a hope from Butonese women to make a change in the future.The mindset and point of view about women's life is already developed.Indeed, education is the main aspect to concern in order to achieve a better future.In reality, there is still limited access for Butonese women to Therefore, women are subjected to lower household and social status.This was derived from the FGD session:

Women must listen and do. It is forbidden for us to speak and do what we want (SR).
We must obey all the rules stated by our husband because husband represents our god and parents (D).
Whether it is wrong or right, we have to obey our husband (H). The

Taboos
There are existing cultural taboos among Butonese women.As pointed out by Paul (2019), in every culture there happens to be an aspect which deals with the taboo.
The cultural taboos which still exist in this era for example, Butonese women are forbidden to leave the house when their husbands eat.One of Butonese women who works as a midwife claimed that this cultural taboo should be eliminated.It could be seen from below statement:

I break this taboo because I have to leave my husband when dinner due to my night shift at hospital (NM).
This indicated that Butonese women should break the cultural taboo in attempt to be a professional career woman.
Empowering women in economic aspect is crucial.When women are more fully active in the economy, countries' economic growth increases more than at any other point in human history (Pluess, Mohapatra, Oger, Gallo, Meiers, and Fritz: 2016).In addition to this, Butonese women who works as a teacher stated that breaking cultural taboos is a way to empower their selves in educational aspect.For example, Butonese women is forbidden to be smarter than men.It is 's confidence and eligible for respectable positions.On the other words, women should take an advantage of this occasion to develop their self-quality.In fact, empowering women is still access to resources such as financing, market access, and skill development.World Bank Do Butonese Women Need to Break the Cultural Taboos…, Velmi Mayaputri & Rikardus Nasa, 313-322 DOI: 10.24127/hj.v12i1.9465(2017) identified only 65% of women have a bank account while 72% of men do.In developing economies, the gap is wider at 9 percentage points.Another problem on women's economic empowerment is the impact of childcare on women's labour.Motherhood can disrupt the labour market, reduce women's working hours, or bring in family-friendly jobs, which typically pay less.Women spend significantly more time than men doing unpaid work such as housework and caring for others (ILO: 2019).In educational context, there are some professions within the society which only women can perform, such as teaching nursery school.However, women in India are not provided with opportunities to educational access.As a result, only 65.46% of adult women are educated while 82.14% of adult men are (Shetter: 2015).In the same vein, Girls in East part of Asia have undergone educational barrier.The educational disadvantage in rural area of China is significantly higher for girls than for boys.All rural girls in high school face the greatest barriers to school enrolment (Zeng, Pang, Zhang, Medina, and Rozelle: 2013).To sum up, the involvement of socioeconomic aspect, access to study, limited time devoted to formal learning activities, and social perspectives towards girls' education are the major contributors to education gaps (White, Ruther, and Kahn: 2016).
Islamic empire (sultanate) in Nusantara, was established in the 14th century, grew and developed until the formation of the United States of the Republic of Indonesia.The strategic Buton in the business network on the Nusantara spice line raises two simultaneously opposing opportunities.On the one hand, the abundance of business activity in Buton sea area gives surplus opportunities to grow.But, on the other hand, Buton is trapped in the intriguing interests of several powers, namely Gowa, Ternate, and the VOC, which are racing to control the shipping routes in the area.The VOC as one of the forces that plays a role in the constellation intensely establishes cooperative economic and defense relations with Buton.As an inheritance that exists over a long period of history, Buton inherits cultural treasures manuscripts, law, art, ceremonies, crafts, and other forms of local wisdom as a result of his community's creativity in building lives while adapting to the demands of change (Munafi & Tenri: 2022).The Butonese ethnic group is one of four with a significant maritime culture.Butonese maritime culture differs slightly from that of most other ethnic groups because they are not only fishermen and sailors, but also farmers and traders (Arifin: 2015).Butonese livelihood methods are carried out simultaneously by the same individual.This condition allows the Butonese people to thrive and travel using their ancient boats.Therefore, Butonese can be found in several parts of Indonesia, areas of Sulawesi is still limited, yet the number of Butonese in migrant area is considered large.The Butonese are thought to have been in East Nusa Tenggara, specifically in Sikka Regency, since the 1926.Buton ethnicity in Sikka Regency is diversified, including Wangi-wangi, Binongko, Tomia, Kaledupa, and Wolio.They migrate more due to their maritime culture, which enjoys fishing, commerce, and gardening.They sailed to Sikka Regency without any purpose.According to Butonese traditional chief, the Butonese people traveled to Sikka Regency in the 1926 to trade.In this era, most of Butonese ethnics in Sikka Regency are traditional fishermen, with a small percentage of farmers.Fishermen only hunt for eight months per year and typically spend 13 days at sea.Traditional fishing methods include trawling nets and tiny boats powered by a machine.While in farming, they plant rice, corn, cassava, green beans, and various vegetables.Some individuals work as civil servants, including teachers in elementary, junior, and senior high schools and administrative workers in local government offices.Do Butonese Women Need to Break the Cultural Taboos…, Velmi Mayaputri & Rikardus Nasa, 313-322 DOI: 10.24127/hj.v12i1.9465 diversity and rich perspectives of this analysis, the results reflected perceptions of Butonese Women from two different walk of life.In this case, the participants include housewives and career women.Based on the findings, Butonese women defined empowerment in two different ways.The detail descriptions of each are presented below.1.Women Empowerment Indicates aRadical ResistanceAccording to Butonese women, become weak and silent is a must.Women do not have ability to generate choices in their life.In this context, women do not have power to think, speak, and act freely.Gender inequality is normal because women do not have the same chance and power as men.For example, when their husbands ask them to become housewives, Butonese women must obey.This case may hinder Butonese women to develop their selves in economic aspect.It is in line withSivakumar (2017), It revealed that Women in Indian societies often do not have economic independence.
above statements indicate that the position of women among Butonese society is the weaker sex.For Butonese women, conveying ideas considered as a rude thing.This case obviously hinder Butonese women to make their own decision.In order to live their life, Butonese women just rely on the man due to the position of man is the most powerful.The critical thing in this case is the equalization role of a husband and God.It represents how sinful Butonese women to think, speak, and act freely.Therefore, empowering themselves becomes a radical resistance for Butonese women.This result indicated as a unique perception of women empowerment.It can be claimed that new literature is identified.
forbidden for Butonese women to argue men's decision.This cultural taboo obviously hinder Butonese women to continue their study in higher educational level.Therefore, in order to have an equal chance to develop their knowledge, Butonese women should be able to breaking the taboos.It was departing from the result of interview:Yes, I cannot obey this taboo because I have to enhance my knowledge and I must be the smart mom for my kids.In this era, knowledge is developing faster.I must learn everything continuously (MP).This is asserted that the more educated women, the better regeneration of society.Tran, Pham, and Nguyen (2021) Higher levels of education have Do Butonese Women Need to Break the Cultural Taboos…, Velmi Mayaputri & Rikardus Nasa, 313-322 DOI: 10.24127/hj.v12i1.9465 Do Butonese Women Need to Break the Cultural Taboos…, Velmi Mayaputri & Rikardus Nasa, 313-322 group of society namely Butonese women.
women were in a dilemma to maintain or break the cultural taboos.There was a statement that cultural taboo is important to maintain.At the same time, it was claimed that breaking cultural taboos are needed to compete in this era.Accordingly, this research formulates research problem namely; (1) what are Butonese women's perspectives towards women empowerment?METHOD This is a cultural study.The researchers employ ethnography research in order to explore an in-depth understanding on Butonese women's perspectives towards women empowerment.Various types of ethnography research according to Sharma and Sarkar (2019) are; life history (2) Critical Ethnography Research.Critical ethnography research focuses on marginalized groups or persons in society.critical ethnography study exposes the researchers to a variety of crucial situations when interacting with tribes and tribal communities in order to collect meaningful information.To construct an inductive hypothesis, the researchers must be versatile in their intellectual abilities.