Increasingly, married couples go off on merantau; in such situations, the woman's role tends to change. When married couples reside in urban areas or outside the Minangkabau region and they marry non-Minang man, the women will rely on the protection provided by the husband more than that of her council of uncles. Because in Minang culture marriage is mere a 'commitment of two people' and not at all a 'union', there is no stigma attached to divorce. The Minangkabau were prominent among the intellectual figures in the Indonesian independence movement. Not only were they strongly embedded themselves surrounding Islamic traditions – which counteracted the influence of the Protestant Dutch – they also had a sense of cultural pride just as like every other Sumatran especially with their traditional belief of egalitarianism of "Standing as tall, sitting as low" (that no body stand or sit on an increased stage). They also speak a language closely related to the Malay variant spoken in newly formed Indonesia, which was considerably freer of hierarchical connotations than Javanese. The tradition of merantau also meant that the Minangkabau developed a cosmopolitan bourgeoisie that readily adopted and promoted the ideas of an emerging nation-state. Due to their culture that stresses the importance of learning, Minang people are over-represented in the educated professions in Indonesia, with many ministers from Minang.