This Mother's Day is a momentum for us to make significant progress. In this regard, women's position affects the collective endeavor to achieve the targetJakarta (ANTARA) - Indonesian First Lady Iriana Joko Widodo joined a family fun walk, held at the Gelora Bung Karno sports complex in Jakarta to celebrate the 91st Mother's Day on Sunday.
Among those joining the family fun walk were the spouses of cabinet members and top government officials.
Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Minister I Gusti Ayu Bintang Darmawati who also participated in the event opined that all Indonesian women play an important role in the country's national development.
"This Mother's Day is a momentum for us to make significant progress. In this regard, women's position affects the collective endeavor to achieve the target," she said.
The Mother's Day is expected to inspire all women across Indonesia to keep improving their quality, capability, and creativity to enable them to contribute to the birth of best children of the nation, she added.
Former Vice President Jusuf Kalla drew attention to the significance of human resource development for Indonesia's national development amid fierce competition among nations while receiving an honorary doctoral degree in quality assurance in education from UNP on Dec 5.
Kalla believes good-quality education would become a key driving force to transform Indonesia into a well-developed nation if it were to be offered fairly and equally to Indonesians across the archipelago.
In the absence of good-quality education, Indonesia will be unable to produce well-trained, educated, and brilliant human resources that are, in fact, the driving force to make Indonesia a developed and highly competitive nation in the world, he expounded.
However, Indonesia, as the world's fourth most populous country, has yet to rank on the list of the world's most literate nations.
John W. Miller's study (CCSU, 2016) indicated that the top 10 most literate nations are Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, Latvia, and the Netherlands.
The study of Miller, a noted researcher at the Central Connecticut State University, further revealed that Indonesia had ranked 60th out of the 61 countries, performing slightly better than Botswana though lagging far behind Singapore that stood 36th and Malaysia on the 53rd position.
His study synthesized "literacy achievement tests (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and Programme for International Student Assessment) and literate behavior characteristics (population, newspapers, libraries, years of schooling)" (2016).
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Translator: M. Zulfikar, Rahmad Nasution
Editor: Sri Haryati
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