Part II of Nadia's essay (südostasien 3/2020): how the army and paramilitaries used sexualised violence to destroy Gerwani after Oct 1965, the Lubang Buaya slander and film, 1966 tattoo 'searches', and New Order redefinition of women's roles. In German.
John Roosa's 2020 book, from nearly 400 interviews, arguing the typical 1965-66 killing was army execution of detainees (hence mass disappearance); dissects army propaganda including how Gen. Sugandhi sexualised Lubang Buaya from 9 Oct 1965. Key scholarship.
Wieringa's five-page review (Archipel 99, 2020) of Maj Wechselmann's documentary The Women and the Generals, which shows the army fabricated the story that Gerwani seduced and castrated the generals at Lubang Buaya as the core of the propaganda campaign. Film review.
Journal article by Gilang Desti Parahita and Vissia Ita Yulianto (Archipel 99, 2020, pp. 47-73) on how YouTube reproduces the New Order's 'Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI' as monumental memory while alternative 1965 films circulate far less. Gerwani appears on p. 63: filmmaker Lexy Rambadetta, after meeting former Gerwani membe
Charles P. Sullivan's PhD dissertation (History, University of Michigan, 2020) reads Indonesian women's magazines (Wanita, Puspa Wanita, Varia) from 1945-66 to argue that the Lubang Buaya narrative about Gerwani worked as a 'post-text' of long-running anxieties over modernity, moral crisis and the 'Mother of the Nation
Deden Rahmanudin, 'Gerwani Mazhab Politik Islam Era Soekarno' (Jurnal Kewarganegaraan 6:2, 2022), a literature-based article presenting Gerwani as a feminist movement and discussing it from an Islamic viewpoint (Sukarno's Sarinah, Hamka). Drawing on Wieringa and Lestariningsih, it recounts Gerwani's 1950 founding, MPs
Historia.id article (preview only, 2022) on the song Genjer-genjer and its composer Mohammad Arief, countering the film's claim that Gerwani and Pemuda Rakyat sang it by saying it reflects Japanese-occupation suffering and that Arief was a santri's son. Partial text.
PhD dissertation (Northwestern, June 2023) by Sabina Satriyani Puspita in political science on how the 'reformist' women's movement wins policy change through 'stealth politics', using the 2021 Regulation 30 on campus sexual violence. Gerwani appears in historical chapters: the 1965 stigmatisation and the sexual-dance/
Rania Dhiyaulhaq Aisyah, 'Transformasi Gerwani' (Jurnal Sejarah Indonesia 8:2, 2025), a literature-based article on Gerwani's pre-1965 gender activism (education, health, anti-polygamy, 1955 elections, PKI ties, congresses) and its post-1965 stigmatisation. It repeats Wieringa's finding that the Lubang Buaya sexual-vio
Soe Tjen Marching's collection (Amsterdam UP 2017; Routledge 2025) of twenty survivor and descendant testimonies organised by generation, including 'Steel Women', and introducing the 'mutation of fear'. Summarises the 1965 slander of Gerwani; key testimony source.
MA thesis (University of Georgia, 2026) by Alyx L. Bontrager on how Indonesian artists Rangga Purbaya, Dadang Christanto and Leyla Stevens use testimony, embodiment and place as memory activism against the silencing of the 1965-66 genocide, theorised as 'counter-monuments'. Gerwani appears only in passing: ch. 2 (p. 7)