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

. The purpose of this study is to address a critical question: Do universities still require a Women/Gender and Child Protection Research Centre? The core thesis is that various policies, particularly those affecting women and children, frequently disregard study findings. Whereas the number of incidents of violence against women and children continues to rise year after year, in lockstep with the growing body of research on violence. This study is divided into two sections to address this subject. The first section will examine the women's research center’s role in Indonesia. By examining the period from 1970 to 1998, this article demonstrates how women's research center’s influenced Indonesian policymakers. The second section of the study, which spans the reform era to the present, will demonstrate how Indonesia's separation and fragmentation of research and policy results in varied research findings ending up in libraries or scientific journals but having no impact on policy. By focusing on research center’s at eighteen universities and doing ethnographic research, this study elucidates some of the reasons why research has not resulted in significant policy change. There is a disconnect; research institutions have long since abandoned their duty as knowledge producers; research is no longer regarded as a policy reference. On the other hand, fragmentation occurs when diverse research institutions do not collaborate, resulting in nearly identical or irrelevant research. Finally, this article identifies several opportunities for gender research center’s to take a more active role in policy development at the national level by leveraging the outcomes of research conducted across universities.