Potrait of Women’s Morality in Short Stories Published in Indonesian Newspapers

Abstract

This study is encouraged by the concept of morality towards men and women which proposed by Gilligan and Kohlberg. According to Gilligan, women’s orientation includes caring, such as affection, attention, and responsibility towards others. The issue of women in the critique of feminism is dominated by equality and justice in the social strata that men and women should have equal rights. This study focus on the concept of morality proposed by Gilligan which believes that women’s attitudes are categorized in three aspects, namely preconvention (individualist), conventional (willing to sacrifice), post conventional (decision making). A number of female figures were analyzed in Indonesian newspapers, Kompasis a popular newspapers in Indonesia that issues short story weekly. The method employed in this study is content analysis. There were 23 out of 130 short stories which analyzed based on 2010-2015 collection of selected short storiesin Kompas. The results of the study show that the individualistic (pre-conventional) attitude of women is caused by her self-interest, security, and worry. Women’s sacrifice (conventional) is caused by compassion and affection. Meanwhile, the decision (post-conventional) of women is caused by reciprocal relationships with feelings of regret, happiness, hesitation, confidence, despair, and resignation.