Titania Veda – Despite the institute of marriage being the norm in Indonesian society, an increasing number of households are headed by women, both in urban and rural settings.

Although divorcees, single mothers and widows face social stigma and discrimination, many women support their families independently, by choice or circumstance.

Pekka, a nongovernmental organization that runs an empowerment program for households run by women, says more than 6 million households with children in Indonesia are managed by women. More than half of that number live below the poverty line.

But facts and figures don't tell the full story of these women's daily struggle for survival. In honor of Kartini Day – the birthdate of national heroine and women's rights advocate Raden Adjeng Kartini – we talked with four women struggling to raise their children alone and provide a future for their families.

Suryani

On a dirt road dotted with chickens in the village of Kalibuaya, West Java, Suryani sits outside her ramshackle hut, watching her youngest daughter play. The plump mother of three girls married twice, and divorced her second husband last year.

"My first husband played around, never came home and didn't provide for the children," the 36-year-old says. After nine years of marriage, she told her husband and in-laws she was going to Saudi Arabia to work and requested a divorce.

"Of course, I had no plans of the sort," she says with a laugh. "But they granted me a divorce because devout Muslims say it is not good to leave your husband to be an immigrant worker."

Her second husband was unemployed and polygamous, and wed three more women after taking Suryani as his second wife. She left him without any qualms.

"To have a husband or not is the same for me because I am not dependent on them. If I help them financially, they take it for granted and don't provide me with anything," Suryani says.

Before her first marriage at the age of 16, Suryani worked at a shoe factory. But she stopped when she became pregnant with her first child. "My husband asked me to," she says.

After her first divorce, Suryani returned to work, selling coconut rice, which she continues to do. "I didn't want to burden my parents," she says. "And I had to take care of my kids."

Her day begins at 3 a.m. each morning when she cooks the rice to sell in her village.

Though the dilapidated door of her simply constructed bamboo shack is stamped with the words "Poor Household," which allows her a small government subsidy, and she earns about Rp 30,000 ($2.80) a day from her rice sales, Suryani is a proud woman.

"I am happier to be a divorcee because there is no burden of a husband. I am free. There is no need to service, prepare or care for him. Here I only take care of the children. "I'll give my girls a future. They don't have to get it from their fathers."

Oon

Sixty-year-old Oon, who resembles a sparrow with her slight figure and constantly fluttering hands, was a victim of domestic violence until her husband died 14 years ago. Fondly called Amih, meaning mother in Sundanese, by her peers, the sprightly mother-of-five stayed with her husband for her children's sake.

"My mother had died, so I didn't have anywhere to take my children," she says, at her house in Karawang, West Java. On occasions when her husband's brutality became unbearable, Amih returned with her children to her father's house, but he provided neither protection nor understanding.

"My father would tell me to go back to my husband and give me money thinking our household was a mess because we lacked funds," she says.

Amih began caring for two of her grandchildren when her son's wife left him earlier this year, leaving the young children behind. She earns a meager living from dressmaking and doing bridal make-up, among other odd jobs.

When her husband died of diabetes, she took the opportunity to keep her children in school until senior high.

"When their father was alive, he would only let them attend secondary school," Amih says. "He didn't want them to be educated further because he was afraid our farm would have to be sold off to put them through school." The land was sold anyway during her husband's long illness.

After his death, Amih started volunteering for Pekka, teaching literacy skills to women in her village and educating children on gender equality. "As a widow," Amih says, "I have freedom."

Linda

Although she has two young children to care for, urban mom Linda filed for divorce last week.

"I just got fed up and tired," says Linda, who lives in East Jakarta. Her marriage difficulties stemmed from her husband being unfaithful to her and financial difficulties. Though her husband works as a supervisor at an auto workshop, Linda was the main provider for her family for many years.

"Our wages did not differ greatly but all of mine goes into the household!" she says. "My husband would give me Rp 800,000 per month for living expenses."

He took almost half of that back to pay installments on his motorbike, and much of the rest was given to his family. "I usually end up with only Rp 35,000 a month," Linda says.

When her first child was three weeks old, Linda's husband left them. "He returned when the baby was more than a year old." The marriage continued for another seven years after her husband's return and the couple had a second son.

However, her firstborn did not speak until he was 4, something Linda blames herself for. "I hardly talked to him [after he was born] because every time I opened my mouth I would cry," she says.

When her husband left, her in-laws accused her of being money-hungry and said her husband's desertion was to be expected, while her pious friends accused her of being a disobedient wife.

Linda, having left a waitressing job when she had her child, found herself abandoned by her husband, unemployed, broke and with a baby to care for.

Jobs for single mothers, Linda discovered, were few and far between. "Prospective employers would say to me, 'How can you work with a child? Your husband wouldn't allow it!'?" she says.

When she did get a job at a magazine, Linda says her salary was not enough to live on. She resorted to taking money from a weekly cooking class budget she handled for the magazine. "I would increase the budget and add in a bit of transport money for me and my staff," Linda says.

To support her children after her divorce, Linda is considering leaving them with her mother and going abroad to work. "My wages aren't enough to support the children by myself," she says. "When the divorce comes through, I won't be able to survive."

Though according to state and Islamic law, a husband and father must provide child support and alimony following a divorce, Linda doubts she will receive any money from her husband.

"The government provides a letter stating husbands must give child support, but that's just a letter," Linda says. "They can't force the men to pay."

"What Indonesia lacks is rights for divorced women. I understand we are not a developed country that can provide a lot of financial assistance from the government," she says, "but there should at least be a support system that can help mothers bring up their children."

Liany

Single mom Liany considers herself lucky. "I don't have to take care of those babies called husbands, just a real baby," says Liany, who lives in East Jakarta.

The proud mother of a 9-year-old boy says she prefers to stay single for her son's sake, "to protect him from having a father that is not right for him."

A petite woman of Chinese descent, Liany became pregnant when she was 26. The baby's father wanted nothing to do with the child, but she decided to keep him anyway. "I wanted to be responsible," Liany says.

To do so without creating a scandal, Liany had to lie. "My gynecologist advised me to register as a married woman and to create a husband's name," Liany says. She also invented a fictional father of her child to talk about to her employers and peers.

"In the office people think I'm a widower," Liany says. Other tales she told included an boyfriend overseas and a secret marriage. Her son remains unaware of the identity of his father.

Liany isolated herself from family and friends throughout her pregnancy and only informed her own mother when the boy was more than a year old.

"I was in a mess and I wanted to clean it up myself," Liany explains. Her first few years as a single mother were rough. She was fired from her job at a law firm when her son was 30 days old and was unemployed for the next nine months.

When she applied for jobs, she was often rejected because of being a single mother. "Some employers frankly said they don't accept single mothers," Liany says.

At that time, Liany refused to lie about her status. "How could I? I had breast milk I needed to refrigerate every few hours and I couldn't stop talking about the baby!" she says.

She lived off her savings until they ran out, then sold her jewelry. There were times when she and her son had nothing to eat but cheap biscuits.

"My target was to survive for the day. It was alright if my baby and I died at night, but we just had to survive to the end of the day," Liany says.

Eight years ago, she found an office job, and her life has taken a turn for the better. "I wanted to be a teacher but I can't earn Rp 800,000 a month and still be able to feed my son," says Liany, who left a job teaching English at a local seminary after the birth of her son.

Single parents in Indonesia are often unable to obtain birth certificates for their children without a marriage certificate. According to Unicef, 60 percent of Indonesian children have no birth certificates.

Liany is grateful that her son has a certificate, but disagrees with the wording on it. "The certificate should not say 'born out of wedlock' because that is the biggest burden for a child to carry," Liany says.

"Indonesians don't have an understanding view of others," she says, adding that people call her son anak haram, which means forbidden child. "People say society is changing, but it depends on which class of society and which educational level," Liany says vehemently.