The Empowerment of Environmentally Friendly Women
Achmad Hufad, Joni Rahmat Pramudia and Muhammad Irfan Hilmi
Department of Non Formal Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Empowerment, Women, Environment.
Abstract: The condition of rural women generally works as housewives with low education level. This study aims to
empower housewives who do not work by processing household waste and utilizing the yard of the house.
This article identifies how to empower women by utilizing organic waste to reduce environmental damage
and increase the productivity of housewives. The research method used qualitative method with number of
informant 10 housewife. This study designs a household waste processing activity that produces organic
fertilizer used to cultivate ornamental plants by utilizing the yard of the house. The result of this research is
able to increase the awareness of women to maintain the environment, synergize with the environment,
foster creativity and entrepreneurial spirit through the cultivation of ornamental plants so that the creation of
"environmentally friendly" house.
1 INTRODUCTION
Helplessness causes women to be less involved in
some activities in the community. Women are
considered less able to assume responsibility in
society. Women have an important role in
maintaining the continuity of sustainable
development programs. The reality shows that the
implementation of development is not with women,
even marginalizing women (Khotimah, 2009).
Therefore, the effort to increase women's
participation is a step that needs immediate attention
so that women can play role as opposed sex in some
activities in society.
The phenomenon that occurs in women
(housewives) today is not having bargaining power
in social life, whereas the burden of households,
especially in the management of the family
economy, mostly done by women. As a result, the
positions of women are increasingly trapped in both
social and economic (Ratnawati, 2010).
The development approach through women
empowerment is done to support and accelerate the
achievement of quality of life and partners of
equality of men and women. This can be done
through socialization and advocacy activities for
education and training for women in all fields.
Real conditions in the field show that resource
utilization and management is mostly done by men,
ranging from activities in agriculture, livestock,
small and medium industries, cooperatives, and
other activities of economic nature. Whereas,
women as members of the community also have the
right to participate in the utilization and management
of resources although the possible role will not be as
big as the role of men. Sriwahyuni (2012) provides
an illustration of the fact that women are less
involved in resource utilization and management,
whereas progress in various sectors due to the
advancement of science and technology is a big
challenge for women to always be able to utilize and
manage their environment.
In addition, there is an environmental
phenomenon, which occurs in this household life
and become a massive problem that is household
waste, both organic and non-organic waste. The
existence of this household waste is felt increasingly
become an environmental problem that must be
started to think about handling it independently in
the family environment level. (Zhilina et al 2017).
Because, it is not possible to always rely on other
parties such as the government, to handle waste.
Especially in rural areas, garbage management is
usually done independently, because it is not yet
covered by government waste disposal facilities.
Waste phenomenon can be an economic opportunity,
with various efforts to manage waste independently
which is becoming a trend of people's lives today
Hufad, A., Pramudia, J. and Hilmi, M.
The Empowerment of Environmentally Friendly Women.
In 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017), pages 693-696
ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8
Copyright © 2017 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
693

starting from sorting, recycling processing, so have
the selling power in the market (Ratnawati, 2010).
Through a life skill program, one of the out-of-
school education programs is present to help solve
the problems that occur in the community. The
problem of household waste becomes a potential in
empowering women, especially housewives so that
it can increase income for the family. The
empowerment of women through this
environmentally sound life sciences program is one
part of sustainable development (as a strategy)
requires the management of all-natural resources
(especially non-living and man-made), manpower,
financial and physical resources to be used for
special welfare in the long run. (Subekti, 2010);
(Aini and I Ketut, 2014); (Prasesty, 2011).
Kp. Nyingkir Sukabaru is one of the areas in
Cihideung Village. In this region, the number of
women is higher than the male population. Women's
work there is mostly as housewives as well as
agricultural laborers. The proximity of the region
with the "Flores of Interest" Cihideung has the
potential of agro-flowering plants. Local people
need to be equipped with skills in ornamental plant
cultivation. Aside from being an individual skill to
meet the personal needs of the local community, it is
expected to empower women to participate in the
role of improving the community economy and
socializing the diversity of local potentials.
This study has the advantage of other similar
studies, this study examines the empowerment of
women who up to the increase of entrepreneurial
operations. Efforts to empower women are deemed
necessary to expand the areas of study not only on
improving women's self-competence but need to
stimulate these competencies to foster
entrepreneurial attitudes.
There is a lot of research related to women's
empowerment for sustainable development. Bayeh
(2016) reveals the role of women's empowerment
and the achievement of gender equality in Ethiopia's
sustainable development is less reflected and it takes
a strong government commitment to empower
women and utilize all the country's potential to
realize sustainable development. Ocetkiewicz (2017)
asserts that sustainable development is not only at
the school level, but also in everyday life.
The opinions of some experts suggest that
women's empowerment through education enhances
women's decision-making authority within the
household, asset ownership, or community
participation (Samarakoon and Parinduri, 2015).
Later life skills programs provided to women in an
effort to strengthen the family economy contribute to
strengthening adaptive governance in households
because of increased awareness of environmental
issues and practices used to manage environmental
resources. (Mello, 2016); (Thuy and Xuan, 2017).
2 METHODS
This research uses a qualitative approach with
descriptive method. Descriptively this research
describes the process of implementation and
participation of women in environment based life
skills education program. The research informant
consisted of 10 housewives in RT 01 Kp. Nyingkir
Sukabaru Village Cihideung District Parongpong
Kab. West Bandung. Data were collected through
field notes, documentation, observation, and
interviews. (Moleong, 2007). Data analysis used
triangulation of research subjects.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The conceptual model of women's empowerment
with environmental insight prepared by the
researcher is the result of construction based on the
analysis of research activities held in Kp. Cihideung
Village Cihideung District Parongpong West
Bandung regency, more details in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The model of women's empowerment
process activities with environmental insight
(Sudjana, 2004).
The women empowerment model that was held
was analyzed based on the management of learning
outside of school (Sudjana, 2004) including input
ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences
694

(raw input and environmental input), process,
output.
Input or input in women empowerment activities
is a housewife with low education level. The low
educational background of the study population
makes them less productive so they are weak in
investment for their own life needs.
Viewed from the type of person or group to be
empowered, empowerment objectives and
empowerment strategies (Ife, 2008) state that
empowerment aims to improve the power of
disadvantaged groups. There are three groups: the
first group consists of three types: the class (the
poor, the unemployed, the low-paid workers, the
recipients of social security); gender (women); and
race / ethnicity (indigenous minorities). The second
group consists of elderly, children and youth, the
disabled, gay / lesbian and isolated societies, and the
third group are experiencing problems as a result of
personal environments such as those who lose love,
those with family problems, identity crises,
problems sexual, loneliness and so forth that lead to
helplessness.
The social and environmental potentials
surrounding these women's learning lives are very
diverse and this will greatly support the women's
empowerment program if this potential is exploited
and utilized thoroughly. (Larrauri et al, 2016). Some
of the potential that is inventoried condition of
natural resources are diverse in the environment one
of them household waste, ornamental plants and
tourism market potential.
In the aspect of the process of organizing the
activities focused on aspects of how to utilize the
potential of the environment as an effort to build
sustainable development (Astane and Hajilo, 2017),
the topic of women empowerment that is built is
"Eco Friendly House". Empowerment activities held
include activities that is, first, make compost-based
from household waste (household organic waste).
Household waste is sorted and processed one of
them into organic compost fertilizer used to cultivate
ornamental plants, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The process of cultivating ornamental
plants with a mixture of organic compost household
waste.
Second, the cultivation of ornamental plants,
managers choose to provide material about the
cultivation of ornamental plants. It is in the
background by the identification that has been done
before this activity will be implemented, among
them and the priority to choose the type of
ornamental plant is the area Kp. This leaves no one
to cultivate this type of ornamental plant. This area
cultivates many types of flowers and ornamental
trees. Therefore, by choosing the type of
ornamental plants to be cultivated into a huge
opportunity seen from various aspects of both the
economy or the environment (easy to care for).
Ornamental plants selected a kind of
"chrysanthemum" flowers that have an interesting
shape but easy to cultivate.
Outputs or outcomes of the implementation of
women empowerment are: 1) the growing awareness
of the learning community (women) to keep the
environment, synergize with the environment so as
to create an environmentally friendly home; 2)
increase knowledge of knowledge (cognitive),
attitude (affective) and skill (psychomotor)
(Sudjana, 2004). Aspects of knowledge that is
achieved is the knowledge of the processing of
household waste and cultivate plant species of
cactus. Aspects of attitudes achieved are the attitude
of care about the environment and foster creativity
and entrepreneurial spirit for the learning
community. Aspects of the skills that are built are
learning (female) residents able to cultivate
ornamental plants and processing household waste
into organic compost as fertilizer for the ornamental
plants.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Empowerment of environmentally friendly women
is felt to be very important as an effort to build
awareness of protecting the environment by utilizing
household waste so that women (housewives) are
wiser and care about the environment yet still
productive.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank the LPPM Rumah
Belajar Institution which has given opportunity to
the researcher to conduct life skill education for
environmentally friendly women. In addition, the
The Empowerment of Environmentally Friendly Women
695

authors also thanked LPPM UPI institutions that
have funded this research.
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