Merdeka, 19 March 1951: 'Gerakan Wanita' (S.K. Trimurti)
Merdeka, 19 Mar 1951, p. 2: S.K. Trimurti of the Gerwis central board says Gerwis will focus on village councils over parliamentary seats, on doctors, midwives and marriage issues, and denies Gerwis is a PKI onderbouw.
Harian Rakjat, 7 July 1952: Mrs Mudigdio on attorney-general's secret circular; Wanita Demokrat rejects PP 19
Harian Rakjat, Jakarta, 7 July 1952 (full issue; pp. 2, 4 relevant). Ny. Mudigdo (Mudigdio), MP, questions the government about a secret Attorney-General circular of 1 February 1952 ordering tough action against 'press crimes'. P. 4 prints a resolution of Wanita Demokrat Indonesia opposing Government Regulation 19/1952
Harian Rakjat, 17 July 1952: Mrs Salawati Daud awarded a bicycle (South Sulawesi guerrilla)
Harian Rakjat, Jakarta, 17 July 1952 (full issue; p. 3 relevant). Reports that Ny. Salawati Daud received a motorised bicycle (bromfiets) as a token of honour for her role as an active woman guerrilla in South Sulawesi since the Japanese occupation. Elsewhere, Perwari and other women's groups reject Government Regulati
Umi Sardjono: 'Regulation no. 19 is still unjust' (Harian Rakjat, 23 July 1952)
Harian Rakjat, Jakarta, 23 July 1952 (full issue; p. 3 relevant). Article by Umi Sardjono on Government Regulation 19/1952 (widows' pensions): nearly all women's organisations object, some demanding repeal, others accepting pensions but opposing polygamy. She says the rules in effect encourage polygamy, and recalls tha
Harian Rakjat, 30 April 1953, p. 8
Harian Rakjat, 30 April 1953, hlm. 8. Last page of the May Day issue: protest at bans on parts of the May Day programme, army budget, and reports of violence against women framed as moral decay and polygamy.
Maisuri, symbol of resistance to forced marriage (Harian Rakjat, 26 January 1955)
Harian Rakjat, 26 Jan 1955, p. 3: women's-page feature 'Maisuri, symbol of resistance to forced marriage', signed Ny. Suwarti (DPP Gerwani). Maisuri refused a marriage imposed by her family to an older man (Kyai Ahmad) who already had wives; the piece uses the case to argue against forced marriage and for a marriage la
Widening Actions for Women's, Children's and Peace Demands (Umi Sardjono, 1956)
Brochure of Umi Sardjono's general report to the Third DPP Plenum of Gerwani, 16–19 June 1956. Reviews election work, marriage-law cases, peasant women's wage struggles, kindergartens, peace and WIDF work, membership and cadre education, in the setting of Bandung and the 1955 elections.
Mrs Salawati Daud elected to the new DPR; inauguration of parliament and Ali cabinet (Bintang Timur, 26 March 1956)
Front page (with pp. 2-4) of Bintang Timur, Jakarta, 26 Mar 1956, on the swearing-in of 217 members of the new DPR and Ali Sastroamidjojo's cabinet. Captioned photos show Sukarno with PKI member Mudigdo and Masyumi's Mangunpuspito, and welcoming Salawati Daud, a non-party PKI candidate from Makassar. Women MPs (13 in a
Salawati Daud speaks in the DPR on DI/TII terror and security (Bintang Timur, 13 April 1956)
Front page (with pp. 2-4) of Bintang Timur, Jakarta, 13 Apr 1956, reporting the DPR's first-round debate on the Ali cabinet programme. Ch. Salawati Daud (PKI, non-party) speaks on security: she says Masyumi and DI/TII share an ideology differing only in method, urges amnesty and caution toward rebels, calls for housing
Umi Sardjono in the DPR on the Maisuri case (Bintang Timur, 17 April 1956)
Bintang Timur (Jakarta daily), 17 April 1956, full issue. The Gerwani-relevant item is a report on the DPR debate on the Ali Sastroamidjojo cabinet programme, in which Umi Sardjono (Fraksi Pembangunan) objects to a verdict punishing Maisuri for refusing a forced customary marriage and demands abolition of feudal remnan
Api Kartini No. 3, Year 1, August 1959
Third issue of Api Kartini (Aug 1959), tied to the 17 August anniversary and return to UUD 45. Features women in the 1945–49 revolution, a poem against polygamy and cheap female labour, and international women's solidarity for Indonesian independence and West Irian.
A Brief Look Back
Article by Kukilowarsi (1959) for 17 August, recalling women's roles in the Indonesian revolution: 1926 rebels and Digul exiles, anti-Japanese resistance, women's guerrilla brigades, Red Cross and kitchens, and stories of Suparmi and a mother fighter. It cites the first women's congress of 1928, the 1955 vote, and dema
Chronological Survey of Women's Position in Marriage, 1959 (Kowani Legal Commission)
Pamphlet by the Legal Commission of the Kongres Wanita Indonesia (22 Dec 1959): numbered chronology of the struggle over women's position in marriage from 1928, the 1937 draft ordinance, to post-independence marriage law debates.
Suara Tani, January 1959 (10th anniversary issue): Gerwani greeting and cooperation with BTI
Suara Tani (BTI organ), special 10th-anniversary issue, January 1959, OCR noisy. Contains greetings from ministers, army chief Nasution and Gerwani; BTI New Year message; agrarian seminar results; BTI membership table (3.39 million); exposés of landlord exploitation in Java. On p. 5 Gerwani's national leadership (claim
Api Kartini No. 7, Year 2, July 1960
July 1960 issue centred on the new DPR-GR, with interviews with women members on economic hardship, marriage law reform and land reform; Kartini's letters, fiction, children's education and international solidarity statements.
The Marriage Law, 1960 (PKI Women's Department)
PKI Women's Department brochure (March 1960) comparing the PKI fraction's 1957 marriage-law draft with the PNI initiative bill of Soemari clause by clause (monogamy, consent, age, registration), with Suharti's article.
Suara Tani, February 1960: Welcoming the WIDF Bureau session in Jakarta
Suara Tani (BTI organ), Feb 1960 (vol. XI no. 2), OCR noisy. Covers BTI protest over price rises, sugar-cane land rents, Khrushchev's coming visit and the Bandung peace conference. On p. 3 an article welcomes the WIDF Bureau session in Jakarta (late Jan 1960), stressing peasant women's backwardness, citing Sri Darnings
Gerwani Programme (Fourth Congress), 1961
DPP Gerwani booklet with the 33-point Program Perdjuangan ratified at the Fourth Congress (Jakarta, December 1961), revising the 1957 Solo program. Keeps demands for women village heads, a democratic marriage law and price control; claims over one million members and sets three slogans.
Women's Footsteps in 1961 (Hurustiati Subandrio)
Article by Hurustiati Subandrio (1961) reviewing women's activity at the start of 1961. She lists the Gerwani-organised National Seminar of Peasant Women (17-20 January, Gedung Wanita, Jakarta), the Asian-African Women's Conference in Cairo, and preparations for the Indonesian Women's Congress (6-8 February). She links
Conclusions of the Housewives' Seminar (1964)
Api Kartini (1964) publication of the conclusions of the Gerwani National Seminar on Housewives. Four commissions set out positions on solidarity (Vietnam, China's nuclear test), Dwikora and 'crushing Malaysia', landreform and the UUPA/UUPBH, rat-eradication campaign under Aidit and Asmu, anti-corruption demands, a dem
Lecture on women (Maria Ulfah; S.K. Trimurti mentioned), Tempo, 26 Feb 1977
Tempo item (26 February 1977) profiling Maria Ulfah, who advises working women on labour rights and the marriage law and speaks against polygamy. It says she works with 'dra. SK Trimurti' in the Yayasan Tenaga Kerja Indonesia (YTKI) on women workers' workshops, seminars and legal information. Trimurti, a Gerwis founder
Kuntilanak Wangi: women's organisations in Indonesia after 1950 (Wieringa, transl. Hersri Setiawan, 1999)
Hersri Setiawan's Indonesian translation (Kalyanamitra, Dec 1999) of Wieringa's 1988 working paper 'The Perfumed Nightmare' on Indonesian women's organisations after 1950, with a compact history of Gerwani and the Lubang Buaya slander. Accessible Indonesian-language Wieringa.
Truth about Gerwani: The Gender Aspect of the Suharto Regime (Seri Kartini 03/2002)
2002 Seri Kartini booklet bundling W.F. Wertheim's review of Saskia Wieringa's Gerwani dissertation (Gerwani's puritan sexual politics, army fabrication of Lubang Buaya), a DPP Gerwani statement of 4 June 1962, Sulami's preface and poem, and a memoir of 1945. Survivors' reissue of key Gerwani texts.
Women's Movements in Indonesia through the Ages (Muhadjir Darwin, 2004)
Muhadjir Darwin's survey (March 2004) of Indonesian women's movements from precolonial heroines through the 1928 Women's Congress, Fujinkai, Kowani and the Sukarno-era polygamy campaign against Hartini, to the New Order. Short historical overview.
Gerwani's dilemma over Sukarno's polygamy (Merdeka.com, 2012)
Merdeka.com feature (24 Sep 2012) on Gerwani's dilemma over Sukarno's polygamy: it fought for a marriage law banning polygamy from 1950 but set the issue aside when Sukarno married Hartini, Dewi and Yurike Sanger, following the PKI line. Concise account of the polygamy contradiction.
Batam Pos, 2 February 2015: 'World Dictionary: Gerwani'
Batam Pos, 2 Feb 2015, p. 2: reference box 'Gerwani' (from Kamus Sejarah Lengkap) defining Gerwani as a PKI-affiliated women's organisation, recounting Gerwis's founding at Semarang on 4 June 1950 from six groups, with an archival photo of a marriage-law rally.
The Story of Suti, 96-Year-Old Gerwani Activist and 1965 Survivor (Rappler, 2016)
Rappler first-person account (2 Feb 2016) of Suti (Arjo Sutiyem), 96: born 1920 in Musuk, third wife in an arranged marriage, joined Gerwis in 1951, chaired Musuk and Boyolali Gerwani, then persecuted in 1965. Fullest of three texts on her.
Gerwani, pioneer of the socialist-feminist women's movement in Indonesia (Sundari, 2016)
Akhiriyati Sundari's second 2016 Jurnal Perempuan essay placing Gerwani in a typology of feminist theory as the most progressive socialist-feminist movement, strongest between its first and second congresses; marks 1965 and the IPT. Interpretive essay.
Tempo, 18 April 2016: Onward the women's movement
Tempo editorial note (18 Apr 2016), recalling a 1978 Kartini Day feature on the women's movement from Aceh 1614 to the 1970s. It describes Kowani's formation (1946), Perwari's protest over Sukarno's 1954 marriage to Hartini, Perwari being squeezed as Gerwani, 'affiliated with the PKI', gained influence, and Gerwani ste
Twelfth Kowani Congress and its influence on the women's movement (Wijayanti, 2017)
Undergraduate article (2017) on the twelfth Kowani congress, Jakarta, 6-9 Feb 1961, arguing it tied the women's movement to government policy under Guided Democracy and sidelined polygamy and literacy issues; notes a Perwari-Gerwani split. Mostly general survey.