Gender Bias in The Communication Within The Pesantren Atmosphere

By Sumadi/sumadi007@gmail.com

Boarding school (Pesantren) is the oldest Islamic institution in Indonesia giving the various colors of religion understanding. The role of boarding school in its history has given the significant social change. However, the paradigm and the teaching system which tend to be dogmatic and ideological make the boarding school resistant towards the modernization ideas and innovative Islamic thinking. One of the modernization ideas rejected in Miftahul Huda Manonjaya Boarding School is gender. Gender is consideredunsuitable with the religion teaching. Gender is considered as the Western culture which is not in accordance with Islamic values.

There are four main problems connected to gender bias in the communication within the boarding school atmosphere of Miftahul Huda Manonjaya, those are : (a) ideology source of gender bias, (b) ideology agent of gender bias, (c) gender bias communication, (d) gender gap. To explain those problems, it will be used the critical ethnography approach, that is the combination of ethnography and critical theory based on the ideology theory (deep unconsciousness), communication performance theory, and feminist theory (gender theory and muted group theory).

The research findings show that there is the gender bias in the communication within the Miftahul Huda boarding school atmosphere in the ritual performance, social performance, desire, and political performance. The impact of gender bias in the boarding school communication creates a gender gap causing the disadvantages for women, such as : women subordination, stereotype for the women, violence to the women, and the lack of access for the women toward technology. Therefore, to gain a communication free from gender bias, it needs critical awareness. The critical awareness model can be built throughthree communication steps : dialogue, intervention, and resistence.