Ati Nurbaiti, Jakarta – Black T-shirts with feminist slogans were selling fast on Thursday to women wanting to express blunt objection to the pornography bill.

One read: "I don't want to be detained for coming home late; for wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt..." The transactions took place at the launch of the latest edition of monthly women's magazine Jurnal Perempuan (www.jurnalperempuan.com). Organizers were also accepting donations to a movement trying to prevent the bill from being passed.

Speakers at the launch said 25 years after signing the International Convention Against the Discrimination of Women, Indonesia's commitment to equality for women was still lacking.

Adriana Venny, the journal's editor-in-chief, said the progress made with new laws had been undermined by other regulations that discriminated against women.

"Indeed, we now have the domestic violence law, but instead of prioritizing other bills like the one on trafficking, the legislators are busy with the pornography bill," she said.

This edition of Jurnal Perpuan discusses the state's commitment to ending gender discrimination. It refers to the local regulations and bills considered unfavorable to women. Indonesia in 1984 ratified the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

One of the speakers at the launch, scholar and Religious Affairs Ministry research Siti Musdah Mulia, cited the tendency to focus on women's conduct in both the pornography bill and in regional regulations. In Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, she said adoption of sharia "should focus... on free education and health services" for the poor if the province wanted to try to promote Islamic values, rather than on symbolic issues like women's clothing.

Morality, said Siti should be interpreted on a broad level and include issues like honesty and good governance "which are also Islamic values".

As part of efforts to ensure equality, she said the ministry aimed to introduce by next year a new compilation of Islamic law to replace the current edition referred to in Islamic courts. The current draft is being reviewed by educational institutes, although it was scrapped by the ministry following an uproar over controversial issues such as polygamy.

Coming from a recent discussion in Malaysia on the reform of Islamic family law, Musdah said Indonesia was lagging behind other countries on the issue.

"I am so embarrassed that when people refer to the Prophet's sayings it is mostly about allowing polygamy," she said. A study of history and the Koran would show a rarely cited condition of polygamy – the requirement to be just to all wives, she said.

The new reference for Islamic courts would also allow women to be witnesses at their children's marriages. "The psychological impact of not allowing women to be witnesses is that they do not feel that they are considered equally human," Musdah said.