Do We Still Need Women/Gender and Child Protection Research Centre in Universities? Notes and Critiques

This paper aims to answer one crucial question: do universities still need Women/Gender and Child Protection Research Centre? The main argument is why currently various policies, especially gender and child policies, often ignore research results. Whereas the numbers of violence against women and children continues to increase every year, in line with the increasing number of researches on violence itself. To answer this question, this paper is divided into two parts. The first part will track the role of women’s research centre in Indonesia. By focusing on the period from 1970 to 1998, this paper explains how women's research centre have played a role in policy makers in Indonesia. By focusing on research centre in eighteen universities, through ethnography, this research maps out some of the obstacles to why research has not driven substantial policy. There is a disconnect, that research centre has long abandoned their role as producers of knowledge, that research is no longer used as a policy reference. On the other hand, there is fragmentation in which various research centre do not collaborate, resulting in almost identical or research that is not applicable to policy. Finally, this paper provides a number of opportunities for gender research centre to play a more active role, using the results of research across universities for policy at the national level.