Women and the State in Modern Indonesia (Susan Blackburn, 2004)

=== [PDF page 1] === Women and the State in Modern Indonesia In the first study of the kind, Susan Blackburn examines how Indonesian women have engaged with the state since they began to organise a century ago. Voices from the women’s movement resound in these pages, posing demands such as education for girls and reform of marriage laws. The state, for its part, is shown attempting to control women. The book investigates the outcomes of these mutual claims and the power of the state and the women’s movement in improving women’s lives. It also questions the effects on women of recent changes to the state, such as Indonesia’s transition to democracy and the election of its first female president. The wider context is important. On some issues, like reproductive health, international institutions have been influential, and as the largest Islamic society in the world, Indonesia offers special insights into the role of religion in shaping relations between women and the state.             is a senior lecturer in politics at Monash University, Australia. Her research has focussed on Indonesia and on international development. Her previous two books are Jakarta: A History (1991) and Practical Visionaries: A Study of Community Aid Abroad (1994). Her recent publications concern women in Indonesia. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 2] === Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 3] === Women and the State in Modern Indonesia Susan Blackburn Monash University, Australia Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 4] === cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521842259 © Susan Blackburn 2004 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2004 isbn-13 978-0-511-49219-8 OCeISBN isbn-13 978-0-521-84225-9 hardback isbn-10 0-521-84225-5 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 5] === Contents Note on spelling and terminology vii Glossary: abbreviations, acronyms and Indonesian terms viii Introduction 1 1 State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 8 2 Education 33 3 Early marriage 57 4 Citizenship 84 5 Polygamy 111 6 Motherhood 138 7 Economic exploitation 167 8 Violence 194 Conclusion 220 References 231 Index 250 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 6] === Acknowledgments This book has been many enjoyable years in the making. Over that time I have collected an enormous amount of information yet still feel, as a non-Indonesian, that it is presumptuous of me to write about what Indonesian women want. During the New Order period I could reassure myself that Indonesian women could not produce such a book because of the restrictions of censorship and the education system, and the lack of support for research. All this is rapidly changing, so it is high time to publish my own reflections before Indonesian women write their own books on the subject. Many people have helped me over the years. I have had excellent research assistants and wish to thank particularly Elizabeth Martyn and Helen Pausacker. Others who have helped and stimulated me include Sharon Bessell, Barbara Hatley, Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, Lynette Parker, Kathryn Robinson, Maila Stivens and Norma Sullivan, and numerous Indonesian activists including Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, Sri Kusyuniati and Damai Pakpahan. I learned a great deal too from the information and lively exchanges on the e-perempuan email discussion list. Jean Gelman Taylor provided helpful comments on the book manuscript. I am greatly in debt to librarians at Monash University, the Kalyanamitra resource centre and the Perpustakaan Nasional in Jakarta, and the KITLV in Leiden. I also wish to acknowledge the assistance of research grants from the Australian Research Council and Monash University. Finally, I thank my partner, Roger Spegele, for constant and loving encouragement. I dedicate this book to my mother, Jean Blackburn, who died in 2001 but whose example remains an inspiration to me. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 7] === Note on spelling and terminology The spelling of Indonesian words and the naming of places and groups changed in the course of the twentieth century. To facilitate reading, this book will use current spelling, place names and terminology. vii Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 8] === Glossary: abbreviations, acronyms and Indonesian terms Aisyiyah Women’s wing of Muhammadiyah, modernist Islamic organisation BTI Barisan Tani Indonesia (Indonesian Farmers Front) Dharma Wanita Women’s Service: organisation of wives of civil servants Gapi Gabungan Politik Indonesia (Indonesian Political Coalition) Gerwani Gerakan Wanita Indonesia (Indonesian Women’s Movement) Golkar Sekretariat Bersama Golongan Karya (Joint Secretariat of Functional Groups) hadis Reports of the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad IBI Ikatan Bidan Indonesia (Association of Indonesian Midwives) ILO International Labour Organisation Istri Sedar Aware Women kampung Lower-class urban residential area kawin gantung Suspended marriage kiai Islamic scholar kodrat Natural character/destiny Kowani Kongres Wanita Indonesia (Indonesian Women’s Congress) LBH-APIK Lembaga Bantuan Hukum – Asosiasi Perempuan Indonesia untuk Keadilan (Legal Aid Foundation – Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice) viii Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 9] === LSM Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat (literally ‘Self-Reliant Social Institutions’), a term used in the New Order period to refer to some kinds of non-government organisations MMR Maternal Mortality Rate Muslimat NU Muslimat-Nahdlatul Ulama (women’s wing of NU) Nahdlatul Ulama Traditionalist Islamic organisation P4A Perkumpulan Pemberantasan Perdagangan Perempuan dan Anak-Anak (Organisation for the Eradication of Trade in Women and Children) Pancasila Five principles of Indonesian state ideology PDI Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (Indonesian Democratic Party) PDI-P Partai Demokrasi Indonesia – Perjuangan (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) perempuan Indonesian word for woman, commonly used in the first four decades of the twentieth century and making a comeback since the fall of the New Order regime in 1998. Perwari Persatuan Wanita Republik Indonesian (Union of the Women of the Indonesian Republic) pesantren Islamic boarding school PKI Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party) PKK Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (Family Guidance Movement) PNI Partai Nasionalis Indonesia (Indonesian Nationalist Party) PPII Perikatan Perkumpulan Isteri Indonesia (Federation of Indonesian Women’s Associations) priyayi Traditional Javanese upper class PSII Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia selir secondary wife SOBSI Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia (All-Indonesian Labour Unions Federation) SPSI Serikat Pekerja Seluruh Indonesia (All-Indonesia Workers’ Union) syariah Islamic law TBA Traditional birth attendant VVV Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Women’s Suffrage Association) Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 10] === x Glossary wanita Indonesian word for woman, in common use from the Japanese occupation onwards as a more ‘respectable’ word than perempuan, with connotations similar to that of ‘lady’ in English WHO World Health Organisation Yasanti Yayasan Annisa Swasti – Annisa Swasti Foundation Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 11] === Introduction During the New Order regime in Indonesia (1967–98), political life was entirely oriented towards the state. Women were affected as much as men. Whether or not it was possible for women’s organisations to work on issues they considered important, and how successful they might be in such endeavours, depended heavily on whether the state looked upon them favourably. Then, in the space of only a few months, with the fall of President Suharto, the nature of political life changed dramatically, as the state grew weaker and civil society flourished in all kinds of admirable and repulsive ways – a mixture of mushrooms and toadstools bursting out of the debris of the authoritarian state. In 2001 the first Indonesian woman president took office, something unthinkable under the militarydominated New Order. Freedom of association was enjoyed by women and men, but women in particular soon began to feel the lack of state services and control of law and order. Sudden changes like these focus attention on the importance of the state for women. This book investigates how the state and Indonesian women have engaged with one another over the past century. Because the state is such an important institution in people’s lives, Indonesian women have had to come to terms with it. How have they done this, and with what results? How has the state responded and how has it sought to influence women? Analysing the state’s engagement with women is always a difficult task. Is the state autonomous in its treatment of men and women, or does it reflect the interests of certain groups in society? Although the state in Indonesia is dominated by men, it is not enough to say it reflects their interests rather than the interests of women. For a start, men, like women, are not a homogeneous group: the gender interests of men may vary with religion, ethnicity, class and age, to name just a few of the differences among men. States have to respond to many interests, both internal and external, which accounts for the complexity of decisionmaking. Nor is the state itself homogeneous, consisting as it does of a number of institutions with their own competing interests. Apart from the Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 12] === 2 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia executive arm – the government – with its own contending ministries, the state also consists of the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the military and the police, which cannot always be relied on to administer government policies as they were intended. In the Indonesian case, moreover, the state has changed its nature over the course of the last century: starting out as a Dutch colony, it is now a fragile democracy. Not surprisingly, then, state attitudes to women have differed considerably. They are best appreciated by analysing particular issues, which is the approach taken in this book. If the state requires dissection, so does the category of Indonesian women. Given the great diversity among Indonesian women, it is unlikely that one can identify common interests among them in their dealings with the state. It is necessary to ask which women’s concerns are being advanced, by whom and why. A cognate question concerns women’s agency in influencing policy; how much influence do they have, on what issues? Indonesia is a large and extraordinarily diverse country. Its population of some 220 million people is spread over thousands of islands, the most important being the densely populated island of Java. There are about three hundred ethnic groups, none able to claim a majority. While about 90 per cent of Indonesians are nominally followers of Islam, significant minority religions exist and the extent to which religion dominates people’s lives varies considerably. In the twentieth century, most Indonesians were poor and lived in rural areas, yet there were also wealthier urban groups and even aristocrats. All these factors cause divisions among women, making it difficult to say what might be ‘women’s issues’ in relation to the state. For the purposes of this book, ‘women’s issues’ are those publicly defined as such by Indonesian women. Inevitably, in discussing the way in which women and the state have engaged with one another, the spotlight falls on a narrow group of women, the ones who are organised and articulate, capable of defining what women’s issues are. For this reason women’s organisations and their spokeswomen feature prominently in this book. I do not claim that these women are typical of all women, nor that they represent the interests of all women. Although it is possible to argue (as this book does) that when some women take up an issue, many women’s lives are touched, it is not contended here that the issues featured in this book represent what all Indonesian women want. In fact it is recognised that the issues have been selected by certain groups of women as of concern to themselves or to their preconceived view of Indonesian womanhood. We have no way of knowing what other women may have wanted because they were not organised and had no public voice. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 13] === Introduction 3 Unfortunate as that may be, it should not lead us to dismiss Indonesia’s women’s organisations as valueless because they are ‘unrepresentative’. To do so would be to commit the same mistake as the colonial government, which derided nationalist leaders as unrepresentative of the masses of the ‘Natives’. Rather, we should value the women’s organisations as giving some insight, however limited, into the perceptions and feelings of certain groups of Indonesian women. From the point of view of the state, these organisations were the only ones that they could consult or that gave voice to the concerns of Indonesian women. As such they could not be discounted on matters about which they felt strongly, particularly if the state required women’s cooperation. What this book tries to do is to validate these women and their organisations as political actors, while acknowledging their limitations – just as the Indonesian political party system must be recognised as deficient in its ability to channel people’s demands to governments. Despite the importance of the state, one should nevertheless be wary of attributing too much power to it. Women are embedded in gender relations that are only partly determined by the state. The power relations between men and women are produced and perpetuated by beliefs and practices about the appropriate behaviour and treatment of men and women in a particular society at a particular time. The bigger question is: What causes (and prevents) change in gender relations? Finding an answer depends on weighing up the respective influences of the actions of women, the state, or other forces such as socioeconomic and cultural change largely outside the control of state. Current literature about the value of reducing or restoring the role of the state can throw light on what the state should and can do about something as complex as the construction of gender relations. On occasion some efforts on the part of the state may be counterproductive. It may, then, be better for the state to leave the burden of effecting change to other forces in society and in the economy. From the point of view of the strategies pursued by women seeking to increase their power in gender relations, they need to consider how important it is to focus on influencing state policy and legislation as against changing social attitudes in other ways. Around the world women activists struggle with such dilemmas. Central questions A number of questions are addressed in this book. Whereas each chapter concerns a particular ‘women’s issue’, the book as a whole attempts to answer various broad questions. Some of these questions focus on the state. When and why has the state in Indonesia been interested in women’s Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 14] === 4 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia issues? Which elements within the state have pursued which agendas and why, and has there been inconsistency within the state on these issues? Useful in finding answers to these questions are others concerning state ideology. In what ways has state ideology affected the construction of gender in Indonesia, intentionally and unintentionally? What causes changes in state ideology on gender? Another group of questions relate to the women’s movement in Indonesia in its dealings with the state. What role can a women’s movement play in promoting the interests of women? What can it do by itself and what kinds of collaboration with the state are helpful? How can cooption by powerful states be avoided? How has the changing nature of the women’s movement in Indonesia affected the kinds of issues placed on the public agenda, the actions taken on those issues and their outcomes? Finally, questions are asked about the wider context of gender relations in Indonesia. What have been the outcomes of the state’s interventions on women’s issues? Who has benefited? What actions by the state can in fact advance women’s empowerment? What has international pressure achieved in the way of advancing the ‘women’s agenda’ in Indonesia? Resolving all these issues is not helped by the fact that little has been written about Indonesian women from a political perspective at all. Explanations include the long neglect of the study of women in political science generally. By the time women began to enter the field of vision of political scientists and historians, the New Order regime had settled upon Indonesian society, with a fixed agenda that discouraged the study of politics or of women except in very restricted ways that accorded with its version of Pancasila, the state ideology.1 This situation is rapidly changing, but in the past, conducting research on women from a political perspective was difficult. For instance, in the 1980s the Dutch researcher Saskia Wieringa found it quite dangerous to try to interview Indonesians about Gerwani, the banned pro-communist women’s organisation (Wieringa 2002). Another obstacle has been the nationalist hegemony in Indonesian historiography. Women are only recognised, grudgingly, for their role in the nationalist movement. While there are no studies of Indonesian women and the state that cover the duration of the twentieth century, this book builds on some very useful secondary sources. Anyone writing about the modern history of Indonesian women must pay homage to the pioneering work of Cora Vreede-de Stuers (1960), a Dutchwoman who studied the Indonesian 1 The five tenets of Pancasila are belief in God, nationalism, humanity, sovereignty of the people, and social justice. Although intrinsically quite vague, these principles were interpreted by the New Order regime in such a way as to exclude all alternatives. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 15] === Introduction 5 women’s movement during the period of parliamentary democracy in the 1950s. In the last few years there has also been a revival of interest in the colonial period, signalled by the publication of books by Elspeth Locher- Scholten (2000) and Ann Stoler (1996). Recently, too, Saskia Wieringa has produced a landmark book on the remarkable women’s organisation Gerwani, which was prominent in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her book also offers many valuable insights into earlier and later relations between women and the state (Wieringa 2002). While studies of women in the New Order abound, they focus on particular regions and particular issues, like birth control. But there are still many gaps in the secondary literature, even on important topics like gender and education in independent Indonesia. Readers may be puzzled by the paucity of secondary sources by Indonesians used in this book. Occasional works, such as Sukanti Suryocondro’s study of the women’s movement (Suryochondro 1984), and Nani Suwondo’s book on the legal position of Indonesian women (Suwondo 1981), stand out because of their rarity. Little has been written or published in Indonesia on women and the state. A litany of reasons could be cited: the education system under the New Order, which discouraged independent thinking and controlled the areas of research and publication; the decline of history as a subject and lack of funding for its research in the New Order, especially for topics relating to women which have low prestige; the loss of command of the Dutch language by Indonesians, leading to problems of accessing material from the colonial period; and the state of the publishing industry in Indonesia, with its small market for scholarly works, particularly on women. This all helps to account for why I, as an Australian woman, am writing this book rather than an Indonesian scholar. The situation is likely to change in the near future, as more Indonesians gain the opportunity to research and publish on the history and activities of their women’s movement. Primary sources have been used here where possible, especially the publications of Indonesian women and their organisations. I hope that the strong and varied voices emanating from these sources will encourage more writers to mine their full depths. These writings constantly remind us that the issues being discussed here are not the substance of dry political analysis but the deeply felt concerns of Indonesian women. Struggles for education and against polygamy have aroused particularly strong passions. Current high levels of violence in Indonesia cause deep anguish. The lack of studies on Indonesian women and the state is surprising on at least two counts. Although there is considerable interest now in comparative essays on women and the state in Islamic countries Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 16] === 6 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia (e.g. Kandiyoti 1991; Moghadam 1994), Indonesia is almost always omitted from such collections. Yet it is the largest Islamic society in the world. Those observers who do register this fact often comment on how little the Indonesian state reflects the interests of Islam, in its relations with women as in many other matters. On certain issues, however, religion is critical in restricting the autonomy of the state, as this book will show. Secondly, it is worth studying Indonesian women in their interactions with the state because of the strong social position that has frequently been claimed for Southeast Asian women compared with elsewhere in Asia. From early times visitors to Indonesia, as to other parts of the region, have been impressed by the apparently high status of female inhabitants, as evident in their frequent control of family finances and their high degree of public visibility, particularly in commerce (Reid 1988). Nevertheless it is striking that this celebrated high status has not translated into a commensurate recognition by the state in Indonesia. Women have not found it easy to enter the public political arena and articulate their needs and concerns to the state. The structure of this book Chapter 1 provides historical background information about the evolution of state gender ideology in Indonesia and of the women’s movement, indicating the relationship between the two. Subsequent chapters focus on issues on which Indonesian women and the state have engaged publicly and usually controversially over the course of the twentieth century. Each of them is a weighty matter from the point of view of both parties, involving differences of opinion about goals and means. Each chapter will concentrate mainly on the period in which the issue entered the public agenda and was taken up by the state, but it will also discuss the lack of state (or women’s) interest in the issue at other periods, and whether or not the issue disappeared from the public agenda after state action was taken. It will consider, too, what effects that action has had for the construction of gender in Indonesia and for the lives of Indonesian women generally. This will assist in evaluating the efforts of the state (and of the women’s movement) on behalf of women. Each of Chapters 2 to 8 investigates who raised a particular topic as a matter of interest to both the state and women, and why. From the point of view of Indonesian women, two of these issues, education (Chapter 2) and suffrage (Chapter 4), were considered by women’s organisations to be the keys to combating the perceived evils of early marriage (Chapter 3), polygamy (Chapter 5) and economic exploitation (Chapter 7). Indonesian women themselves can be seen to have initiated Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 17] === Introduction 7 pressure on the state to engage with these issues. In some cases little pressure needed to be applied because the state itself took an interest in the matter: this could be said most accurately about the education of girls. On other issues the state was generally most reluctant to admit that the topic was one of public importance or that it was appropriate for the state to act: this applied to suffrage, polygamy, economic exploitation and violence against women. In some cases the Indonesian women’s movement did not take a prominent initiating role: suffrage (Chapter 4), birth control and reproductive health (Chapter 6). It was the New Order state that pushed strongly for birth control, with support from foreign aid; in the case of suffrage and reproductive health, the initiative came from outside. External pressure was brought to bear, drawing attention to the need for action in areas that had otherwise been neglected by both the women’s movement and the state. In the case of violence against women (Chapter 8), while women’s organisations in the late twentieth century had been trying to put domestic violence issues on the public agenda, it was the breakdown of law and order from 1998 onwards that forced the state to confront the issue more generally. Finally, the Conclusion draws together the threads of the individual chapters, reflects on their lessons and considers what the twenty-first century may hold in store for Indonesian women and the state. Completed in January 2004, this book is able to cover events only up to that date. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 18] === 1 State gender ideologies and the women’s movement As a prelude to later thematically based chapters, this chapter examines the changing nature of the gender ideology of the Indonesian state during the twentieth century, and how it relates to the development of the women’s movement. Some basic questions are raised about the influence of the state on that movement and about the extent to which the state reflects or seeks to change society’s views of gender. Subsequent chapters will explore the ability of the movement itself to influence state gender ideology. Gender ideology Gender ideology spells out expectations of how men and women should behave according to their ascribed sex. In this book I use the term to refer to ideas about the construction of gender in Indonesia. Such ideas are being constantly contested from various quarters, because of the diversity of views about gender within and outside Indonesia. In Indonesia, different ethnic groups have their own gender traditions. Some of the best known include the matrilineal system of West Sumatra (Minangkabau), where inheritance of property follows the female line: husbands are ‘guests’ in their wives’ houses. Nevertheless, Minangkabau men still have their own power bases, since family and community decisions are formally made by male representatives of lineages – the brothers of female property-holders. By contrast, nearby Batak society in northern Sumatra is strongly patrilineal: women are unable to inherit and are economically dependent on men as well as excluded from public decision-making. And in Java, society is organised bilaterally: there is a greater degree of equality between the sexes, and women play a prominent role in commerce and agriculture, although tradition has excluded them from public political life. In addition to these variations on the role and power of men and women, some ethnic groups do not clearly differentiate between male and female: instead of a dichotomy there are held to be more than two sexes and a more fluid notion of sexuality. Bugis society Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 19] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 9 in south Sulawesi, for instance, accepts transvestite male priests (bissu) as constituting a third sex with its own gender expectations.1 On top of and often conflicting with these ancient gender practices, various world religions, notably Islam, have imposed their own rules relating to how men and women should behave. Religious expectations have often been more rigid than the older notions of gender, but in some places compromises have been reached. Thus the matrilineal Minangkabau have been regarded as devout Muslims although their inheritance practices conflict with Islamic notions that inherited property should be divided among all children, with larger shares going to sons. More recently, Indonesia experienced the influx of Western views of gender via the colonial system as Dutch rule spread across the archipelago from the seventeenth century onwards. This proved to be just the first instalment of ‘modern’ ideas that continue to be influential, as Indonesia has remained open to world trade and communications, foreign investment and foreign development assistance, and participation in international forums. Ideas about gender in Indonesia in the twentieth century have thus made up a heady brew. There have been frequent inconsistencies and contradictions, the most obvious being amongst Muslims concerning acceptable behaviour for men and women according to religious teachings. What is striking about both the state and the women’s movement is how much more limited their range of thinking has been about gender than that found in society at large. The New Order state in particular endorsed a restrictive and fairly consistent gender ideology. Within the women’s movement also, the alternatives espoused have not been very numerous except at times when greater freedom of expression has been possible. Here the prevailing nature of the state has clearly been important for the development of gender ideology amongst women. State gender ideology refers to the assumptions about gender on which the state acts and the way it attempts to influence the construction of gender in society. Sometimes these assumptions on the part of the state are overt, contained in official statements about policies relating to women. More often assumptions have to be deduced indirectly from actions and policies, for example by examining policies on the education of girls and boys. These reveal what the state believes is appropriate for men and women in that society, or what aspirations the state has for gender relations. Most commonly gender ideology is incoherent and inconsistent, reflecting the preoccupations of the different segments of the state and 1 Examples of regional studies of gender in Indonesia can be found in Atkinson and Errington (1990). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 20] === 10 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia pragmatic responses to pressure applied from different quarters. Indonesia has experienced many kinds of state – colonial, democratic and authoritarian, some of them more monolithic in their ideological stance than others. Unpacking the state in Indonesia reveals a number of puzzles. The degree of homogeneity and autonomy of the state, already mentioned in the Introduction, is a question to which this book will return at various points. Different segments of the state apparatus will often have conflicting interests and objectives as far as gender (and many other matters) is concerned. During the New Order, for instance, the army influenced state gender ideology, but its vision of domesticated women diverged from that of the Department of Labour which increasingly sought to exploit women as a cheap workforce in the manufacturing sector. From the point of view of women, the more heterogeneous the state, the more points it offers for them to apply pressure. The disadvantage is that with a fragmented state, while it may be easier to stall unwelcome measures, it is harder to push through new policy initiatives. As we shall see, although the women’s movement was able to get extensive discussion of marriage reform in parliament in the democratic 1950s, it had to await an authoritarian state that had its own reasons for backing marriage law reform before a Marriage Law was manoeuvred through the state system by the New Order Government. The degree of autonomy of the state in pursuing gender policies is a central concern of this book. Did the colonial state reflect the interests of the Dutch, or more narrowly of Dutch men or Dutch capitalism, in the gender ideology it practised in the Indies? Certainly those interests were influential, but the colonial state also felt obliged, for pragmatic reasons, to consider other interests that might otherwise cause it trouble. On issues related to women, for instance, the concerns of Islamic groups had to be balanced against others. Nor, once independence was achieved, could the state be said to reflect views about gender within Indonesian society at large, for the simple reason that those views vary considerably between different sexes, classes and religious and ethnic groups, not to mention other sources of diversity. Even to say, as a crude approach might have it, that the state reflects the views of men about gender is far from illuminating, considering the diversity among men. On a few matters it may be possible to talk about ‘men’s interests’ in so far as male prerogatives may be challenged. The case of polygamy is one such instance, where Indonesian men proved most reluctant to allow restrictions to be placed on their right according to Islam to have more than one wife at a time. Nevertheless, the state did finally move to impose such restrictions. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 21] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 11 Although the Indonesian state does not reflect the full diversity of masculine interests on gender, it can be said to reflect the gender ideology of a certain group of men. During the colonial period, middle-class Dutchmen dominated state thinking on gender, while since independence the fact that the state has been in the hands of wealthier men from predominantly moderate Muslim and Western-educated backgrounds is discernible in state gender ideology. That does not, however, exclude differences of opinion among that group and their need to consider the views of powerful elements like the Islamic movement or international organisations. To what extent the state has been in a position to impose its gender ideology on others has varied with the issue and the times, as later chapters will show. The fact that the state reflects only certain interests is indicated by the gap between state rhetoric and the practice of many Indonesians as far as gender is concerned. For instance, throughout the twentieth century the Indonesian state upheld the notion of kodrat, or natural destiny, for men and women, projecting men as primary income-earners and women as child-rearers and housewives. Policies have been predicated on this assumption. Not only has this failed to serve the interests of most women or men, but it does not reflect their practices either. Most poor Indonesian women are income-earners along with their menfolk. On any issue one can ask the question: To which groups within or outside Indonesian society has the state felt accountable, and why? At different times the state has been under pressure from external sources such as foreign-aid donors, and from a variety of internal social and economic groupings such as investors, Islamic groups and women’s organisations. At other times the main dynamic has been struggles within the state itself. Understanding these dynamics will often be necessary in order to fathom state gender ideology and practice. The Indonesian women’s movement The term ‘women’s movement’ is used here to refer to the collective articulation of the desires of Indonesian women. Those who make up the movement are women’s organisations concerned to advance the cause of women (in whatever ways they see fit), articulate individuals claiming to speak on behalf of women more generally, and the more indistinct body of supporters and sympathisers who may not formally be members of women’s organisations. Organisations are at the heart of the movement because they express its concerns in the most sustained and organised way, speak directly to parties and governments on behalf of women, and are available for consultation on issues concerning them. States find it Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 22] === 12 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia convenient to deal with organisations acting as pressure groups that channel demands; hence the emphasis given to them in this book. Use of the term ‘women’s movement’ should not be taken to imply that there is agreement among women, let alone among members of the movement, about detail or methods of emancipating women. The Indonesian women’s movement is very diverse and has varied in composition over the last century. In it are to be found, for instance, religious organisations like Muslimat NU, the women’s wing of the large Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama (Revival of Religious Scholars), secular organisations of the wives of civil servants, and small but very dynamic urban groups of limited size but great expertise like Kalyanamitra, the women’s resource centre in Jakarta. There have been very substantial areas of conflict within the Indonesian women’s movement, particularly between religious and non-religious elements, but it is still possible to speak of ‘a movement’ implying a common effort to improve the situation of Indonesian women. Identifying which women receive priority at any one time, and how the movement discerns ‘Indonesian womanhood’, will constitute one of the main tasks of subsequent chapters. Compared to the population of Indonesian women as a whole, the women’s movement, despite its diversity, cannot be regarded as representing the full range of women. Some sections of Indonesian womanhood are poorly represented, like farm workers, women in remote areas, women of Chinese ethnicity and disabled or elderly women. The skewed nature of the Indonesian women’s movement is a consequence of the way it has developed over the years and the constraints upon it and upon the women outside its ranks. This book makes no claim that any particular women’s organisations nor their combined total can be regarded as speaking on behalf of all Indonesian women. It merely asserts that organised women are the voices the state hears and the women it has to contend with. The state has to make choices, to decide whether or not organised women represent forces important enough to be consulted, and whose voices to heed in cases where women’s voices conflict. The issues presented by the women’s movement to the state have been those of most burning interest to the organisations active within it, and they in turn have been dominated by Javanese middle-class women. How relevant these issues may also be to other women varies with the subject under discussion, something to be examined in this book. As the women’s movement changes this century, one can expect other interests to be advanced, with the proviso that organisations tend to be dominated by urban, better-educated people: such are the strengths and weaknesses of organisations. The Indonesian women’s movement has received little attention from scholars. Apart from Cora Vreede-de Stuers (1960), whose work focussed Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 23] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 13 on the colonial period and the 1950s, and Sukanti Suryocondro who gave a largely sociological account of the movement up to the 1980s (Suryochondro 1984) and a briefer analysis in the 1990s (Suryochondro 2000), there are only a few scattered studies which address the subject in a general way: Mangoensarkoro (1946), Kartowijono (1977), Lombard (1977), Suwondo (1981), and Abdullah (1993). Studies have been made of the women’s movement at particular periods. Thus a short official publication was issued during the 1930s (De Inheemsche Vrouwenbeweging 1932); there are two studies of the Japanese Occupation (Mangunpuspito 1984; Rachmat-Ishaya 1990); books were commissioned by Indonesian authorities on the role of women in the Revolution (Nurliana, Manus, Ohorella et al. 1986); and Elizabeth Martyn has contributed an excellent thesis on the1950s (Martyn 2001). The women’s movement during the New Order has received the most attention, although it is significant that more tends to be written about the impact of state gender ideology than about what women were actually doing (Douglas 1980; Suryakusuma 1987; Andriyani 1994; Lev 1996; Niehof 1998; Robinson 1997; Saptari and Utrecht 1997). Yanti Muchtar (1999) has contributed an insider’s analysis of new women’s organisations at the end of the New Order, and a short essay has been written about changes since then (Budianta 2001). Rather than being a study of the women’s movement per se, this book deals only with its relations with the state. As a result, sections of the movement that have attempted to stay aloof from the state receive less attention. This includes Islamic women’s organisations, most of which have chosen not to engage with the state: they have claimed to be non-political. Obviously it is impossible to be truly non-political and Islamic groups have been influential in many ways, but they have rarely been outspoken on the issues under consideration in this book. That in itself is an interesting political phenomenon contributing to the tendency of devout Muslims to consider they are treated as a minority in the largest Islamic country in the world (Wertheim 1986). Muslim organisations have long been suspicious of the state in Indonesia, regarding the colonial state as heathen, and the Republican state as likely to coopt or damage them. Autonomy has its advantages for women’s groups: it fosters an independent spirit and creates a sphere where women are more free to develop their own ideas. At least that is the theory: as far as Muslim groups are concerned women are often subject to control from male-led Islamic organisations. One consequence has been that for much of the time Islamic women have taken a back seat in the women’s movement to the more publicly articulate and demanding secular women’s organisations. In characterising women’s organisations, one inevitably encounters the vexed question of feminism. Whether or not the term should be attributed Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 24] === 14 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia to particular groups or individuals is complicated by distinctions between self-definition and external labelling. Most Indonesians (like many other Asians) avoid the term feminism because of its Western connotations and history. The heavy influences of nationalism, Islam and New Order ideology have all worked to create difficulties for people who use or accept the feminist label. It was common during colonial times for members of the women’s movement to deny that they espoused feminism, which they considered a Western phenomenon advocating competition with men, whereas Indonesian women’s organisations were described as working with men for national independence. Within the Islamic movement, too, feminism has generally been regarded as a misconceived Western notion. The New Order dismissed feminism along with liberalism and other ‘isms’ as subversive and irrelevant to Indonesian culture, making it difficult for people to embrace the term. In recent times Indonesian women activists, particularly those with connections to the international women’s movement, have been less reluctant to identify as feminists. Avoiding too much identification with Western variants, I apply the term feminism to ideas or people demonstrating a commitment to the elimination or alleviation of discrimination against women. If the women’s movement in Indonesia is so diverse, how is it possible to say that its followers are united in upholding ‘the women’s cause’ of eliminating discrimination? Can an organisation of midwives, or of women studying the Koran, or a women’s sporting group be said to be feminist or in any way part of a movement for a ‘cause’? In this book I take a wide view of ‘the women’s cause’, as wide as is taken in Indonesia where there has been little hesitation in regarding women’s organisations as united under the banner of improving the lot of Indonesian women. Improvement may occur in many ways. Thus the three women’s groups mentioned above, whatever their complete range of activities, may well wish to lower maternal mortality rates, to promote women’s education and to improve women’s access to sporting facilities. Nevertheless, there are clearly differences between these organisations and those more overtly aiming to fight discrimination against women. It is necessary to classify women’s organisations in various ways to understand what unites and divides them. One such classification is Maxine Molyneux’ (2001) distinction between organisations that pursue women’s ‘practical’ as opposed to ‘strategic’ gender interests. ‘Practical’ gender interests include the requirements of women to fulfil their gender roles as determined in any particular place or time, without challenging the gender status quo. Thus, in order to be good wives and mothers according to prevailing gender ideology, women may consider they need better health facilities for infants, Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 25] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 15 or better domestic science education in schools. Some women’s organisations may pursue these needs. Other groups may wish to challenge the dominant gender ideology in various ways, such as by demanding women’s right to vote or to abortion, all in the name of eliminating the subordination of women. It is the latter group, those pursuing women’s ‘strategic’ gender interests, that is commonly labelled as feminist because of its analysis of discrimination against women and of women’s rights. However, as Saskia Wieringa (2002) and others have noted, it is difficult to divide women’s organisations according to whether they pursue either practical or strategic gender interests. Most organisations are concerned with both kinds of needs, and the mix will vary from time to time. Thus, as Wieringa argues, one of Indonesia’s most radical women’s organisations, the socialist Gerakan Wanita Indonesia (Indonesian Women’s Movement – Gerwani), won much of its enormous support through activities to improve the daily lives of women, such as setting up child-care facilities. Although the distinction proposed by Molyneux may not precisely fit Indonesian organisations, it is a useful one to bear in mind when considering the kinds of ‘women’s issues’ that will be discussed in the following chapters. In her analysis of Indonesian women’s organisations, Sukanti Suryocondro (Suryochondro 1984) distinguishes between them according to their membership: general, religious, wives of state officials, aristocrats, youth, professionals, students, regional and so on. She also considers it relevant to mention whether the organisation is affiliated or connected to a party, government department or other organisation (e.g. a women’s wing of an Islamic association). These distinctions are significant when comparing the membership of the women’s movement in different periods, and I will employ them in my historical section below. For the purposes of this book I find the following categories useful. The distinction between religious (particularly Islamic) and non-religious is significant in understanding the activities and platforms of organisations, as alluded to above. As far as claims to representation are concerned, it is relevant to distinguish organisations that are membership based from those which are not. Membership-based organisations seek members from amongst the group they claim to represent, for example midwives or Christian women. Other organisations formed by a small group of people accountable only to themselves always have more difficulty in being accepted as representing anyone, and may well have problems even in relating to those whom they aim to assist, such as poor women. In political terms they are more easily dismissed by unsympathetic power-holders. The class basis of organisations is obviously a related issue here. Labelling organisations according to class helps in understanding their activities and Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 26] === 16 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia achievements and serves to remind us of possible limitations placed on an organisation in claiming to speak for all women. Another and connected distinction is the geographic one of observing differences between urban and rural organisations and between organisations based on particular regions in Indonesia. Most women’s organisations in the twentieth century were urban-based and Javanese, yet it is often forgotten what a difference this made to their ability to speak for all Indonesian women. These are some of the distinctions among organisations which will be referred to in this book and which are also relevant in understanding the interaction between the women’s movement and the state. As an aside, it is worth mentioning that there are few good studies of individual Indonesian women’s organisations. The best and most comprehensive is Saskia Wieringa’s book on Gerwani (Wieringa 2002). She has also made some illuminating comparisons between Gerwani and the New Order Government’s creation, the Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (Family Guidance Movement – PKK) (Wieringa 1992). Because of their mass membership aimed at mobilising ordinary women for change (political change in the case of Gerwani, ‘development’ in the case of the PKK), there are some interesting similarities between these two otherwise very different organisations. In many ways they had more in common with one another than with other women’s organisations that have had more restricted membership and goals. PKK itself, and another large women’s organisation created by the New Order, Dharma Wanita (Women’s Service, for wives of civil servants), have been the subject of a number of studies, but none has attempted to review these organisations in their entirety (Bianpoen 2000; Buchori and Soenarto, 2000). Unfortunately, too, there are only fragments of studies of religious women’s organisations, which have always been among the largest and oldest in the women’s movement. A few brief histories of Christian women’s organisations have been written (Manoppo-Watupongoh 1991; Poerwandari 2000). Some Islamic groups have published their own histories (’Aisjijah 1939; Madjelis Departement Pergerakan Isteri PSII 1940; Ma’shum and Sawawi 1996; Sejarah Muslimat 1979), and some essays have been written about them (Baidlowi 1993; Istiadah 1995; Marcoes-Natsir 2000; Marcoes 2002; Rahman 2000). Studies of women’s organisations that ceased to exist after independence are even scarcer (Liem 1936; Schultz- Metzer 1936; Hamdani 1984). Much work remains to be done on regionally based women’s organisations. Very few Indonesian women have attempted to give an inside view of organisational life; an exception is Andriyani (1996). One of the central concerns of this book is to understand what have been considered ‘women’s issues’ by both the state and the women’s Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 27] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 17 movement in the course of the twentieth century. The term is used here to refer to the issues that women’s organisations and the state have considered important in relation to Indonesian women. Not all issues relating to gender are covered by this category, and a large part of the interest of this study is in analysing why some issues are regarded as ‘women’s issues’ and others are not. Thus some actions of the state may be highly significant in affecting the construction of gender in Indonesia, but not seen in that light by Indonesian women (or indeed by the state). For instance, economic policies may bring about the rise of manufacturing employment for women, with important but unintended consequences for gender relations in some areas. I will explore the relationship between the way in which state policies affect gender relations and the ways in which the women’s movement responds (or fails to respond) to such changes, as well as the way in which women have deliberately tried to influence state policies on gender. The rest of this chapter sets out a brief historical overview of the relationship between state gender ideology and the Indonesian women’s movement. The intention is to provide background for the thematic chapters that follow. State gender discourse and its relationship to the growth of the women’s movement The colonial period, 1900–42 The adoption by the Dutch colonial government of the Ethical Policy in 1901 had important gender consequences in the Netherlands Indies. The Dutch took measures in the early twentieth century to promote girls’ schooling and to protect women, measures that were, however, always limited by the lack of resources devoted to implementing them and conflicting interests faced by the authorities. Scrutiny of colonial policy by the Dutch parliament, especially after Dutch women gained the vote in 1919, meant that colonial policy had to take account of Dutch sensibilities about women’s issues, but at the same time the colonial authorities naturally had to consider financial implications and the need to promote Dutch economic interests in the colony. Anne Stoler (1995) has drawn attention to the colonial bourgeois preoccupation with sexual morality, especially as the size of the European population in the Indies grew from the late nineteenth century onwards. International influences had also to be considered: the prestige of the Dutch as colonial rulers was at stake, and after the First World War scrutiny began to be applied by international institutions connected to the League of Nations. Special concerns Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 28] === 18 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia for the Dutch authorities in relation to gender were the education of girls, intermarriage between Europeans and ‘natives’ and the upbringing of their offspring, and prostitution associated with the army. As Elsbeth Locher-Scholten (2000) has shown, most policies were compromised by the need to take economic interests into account. The influence of colonial gender ideology on the rise of the Indonesian women’s movement is palpable. Western education assisted women to speak out publicly, expressing their perceptions of women’s needs. At first their views were very much in line with those spread by the Ethical Policy. The best-known exponent of early aspirations of ‘modern’ educated Indonesian women was Raden Ajeng Kartini (1879–1904), the daughter of a high-ranking Javanese priyayi (aristocrat). Kartini chafed against the restrictions facing upper-class girls and wanted to pursue her schooling beyond the elementary level her parents deemed suitable, since girls were destined to be married off in their teenage years. Although Kartini herself died young, the posthumous publication in 1911 of her letters to sympathetic Dutch friends (Kartini 1911) marked an important step in the recognition of Javanese women’s feelings and needs. Kartini admired what she saw as emancipated European women and hoped that the Dutch education would spread ideas of women’s emancipation. As a young woman inspired by a Western education, Kartini was not unique. In the 1910s many such educated young women emerged in different parts of Indonesia to form and join modern women’s organisations, mostly of a social nature but also engaged in welfare work and religious activities. Because their founders and members were educated young women, the organisations were limited to regions where modern education had taken strongest hold, notably in northern Sulawesi, and parts of Java and Sumatra. The first known women’s organisation was Putri Mardika (Free Women), founded in Java in 1912 with the help of a male-led organisation, Budi Utomo (Noble Endeavour). Like most such groups, it was quite short-lived, but it did publish its own magazine of the same name for a few years. These early women’s publications are a valuable source of insight into the thinking of Indonesian women (Salmon 1977). An organisation that has lasted since its creation in 1917 is Aisyiyah, named after one of the Prophet’s wives and created in Yogyakarta as the women’s wing of the large modernist Islamic movement, Muhammadiyah. Not until the 1920s did some of these organisations come together in a coordinated way. What united them was as much nationalism as common identification as women. In 1928 a number of women’s organisations cooperated to stage a national congress in Yogyakarta that led to the formation of a national women’s federation. Lasting until the Japanese Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 29] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 19 Occupation in 1942, its members comprised religious and secular women’s organisations that, although not overtly political, were sympathetic to the nationalist cause and saw themselves as part of the Indonesian nation. The federation’s main expressed concerns were to promote the education of girls and improve women’s legal position, including in marriage. At regular conferences, convenors struggled to maintain unity between organisations that differed, for instance, in their attitude towards polygamy, which Islamic associations refused to condemn. The more radical Istri Sedar (Aware Women) left the federation over this issue. It was a time, too, when political parties and major male-led religious organisations began to form women’s wings that often engaged with other women’s groups either in cooperation or controversy. The nationalist orientation of the Indonesian women’s movement excluded women deemed to be ‘alien’. These included organisations of Eurasian and Chinese women, most of whom were born in the colony (Liem 1936; Schultz-Metzer 1936). Such women could only hope to be part of the nation if they abandoned their ‘foreign’ identities and identified as Indonesian. As a result, organisations specifically for such ‘foreign’ women played no role in the women’s movement, before or after independence. Although increasingly the women’s movement identified with nationalism, a closer look at member organisations reveals quite strongly entrenched Western bourgeois notions of femininity, sometimes complementing pre-existing notions of gender (such as those of the Javanese priyayi) and sometimes coexisting uneasily with Islamic views or those derived from custom. Their publications project an idealised version of Indonesian womanhood, influenced by modernist Islam and Western middle-class modernity, that had little basis in the lives of most Indonesian women (Hatley and Blackburn 2000). If the concern of most women’s organisations to appear ‘modern’ could be attributed to colonialism, colonial policy could also be held partly responsible for the difficulty of women’s organisations in reaching out to rural and poor women. By the late 1920s the colonial rulers had become very wary of any such trends on the part of nationalist-inclined groups, and police harassment deterred many women from trying to engage in anything that the Dutch might consider radical. The women’s movement in the colonial period was limited to a very thin layer of largely urban, Western-educated, more prosperous women. Prominent leaders to emerge in these years included Suwarni Pringgodigdo and Maria Ullfah Santoso. To give some notion of the composition and size of the organised women’s movement at this time, it is useful to refer to a survey of Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 30] === 20 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia the Indonesian women’s movement by the Sundanese women’s leader, Emma Puradireja, in early 1939 (Poeradiredja 1939). She divided the movement into two groups of organisations, those based on religion and those based on religiously neutral, nationalist principles. The former, drawing on well-established beliefs, reached a larger number of women, down to the village level, whereas the latter appealed mainly to urban, better-educated women. The largest of the religious type, she stated, were Aisyiyah (estimated to have 12,000 members), Pergerakan Perempuan Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia (Women’s Movement of the Party of Indonesian Islamic Union) (6,500) and Puteri Islam Makassar (Islamic Women of Makassar) (7,500). The first two were women’s auxiliaries of male organisations. Of the non-religious organisations, the largest were Pasundan Istri (Pasundan Women) (1,250), Istri Sedar (600) and Istri Indonesia (Indonesian Women) (500 members). In addition there were hundreds of small organisations with up to about five hundred members each. Emma Puradireja’s estimates reveal the small size of the women’s movement and the fact that the largest organisations were those best able to reach a wide base through the infrastructure of religion. The Japanese Occupation, 1942–1945 The Japanese, who defeated the Dutch and occupied Indonesia during the Pacific War, had definite views about gender that were exaggerated by the military character of the regime. Men had to join the defence forces and work for the war effort by providing labour and producing goods, while women were obliged to support their menfolk and, in the case of some younger women, serve the military as prostitutes. During the Occupation, the Indonesian women’s movement was totally dominated by the Japanese armed forces, which divided up the archipelago into three separate military administrations. Independent organisations were suppressed and women were drafted into movements intended to harness women to support the war effort. In Java and Bali the women’s organisation was called Fujinkai and its president was a wellknown women’s movement leader, Sukaptinah Sunarjo Mangunpuspito. In Sumatra it was named Hahanokai and was led by Rasuna Said and Ratna Sari, former leaders of an Islamic organisation, Permi (Kahin 1999: 102). A number of writers have pointed to the way in which the Fujinkai was a forerunner of the ‘wives’ organisations’ that formed the backbone of the official women’s movement under the New Order. Based on an organisation in Japan, the Fujinkai saw women primarily as wives and mothers who should offer loyal support to their husbands, and the structure of the organisation paralleled that of the civil administration, with officials’ wives Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 31] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 21 taking leadership positions. The activities of the women’s organisations created by the Japanese centred around nationalism and contributing to the economy. Younger women were expected to contribute to defence by joining the Barisan Srikandi (Srikandi Brigade) where they learnt about first-aid, self-defence and food preparation for the volunteer army.2 During the Japanese Occupation women were unable to make any demands on the state or to organise independently. In retrospect, however, it is clear that this was an important period for mobilising women into the nationalist movement and the formal workforce, and for providing a model for the state-dominated women’s movement that re-emerged in the 1960s. The ‘Revolution’: the struggle for independence, 1945–1949 On 17 August 1945, in the dying days of Japanese rule, nationalists led by Sukarno declared the independent Republic of Indonesia. In the subsequent period, labelled in Indonesian history the Revolution, the new Republican government struggled to impose control over the archipelago but had to confront the Dutch, who quickly returned to reclaim their colony. For many Indonesians, this was an era of contending governments, as the Republican and colonial states vied for control of territory and population. Although the Republic was weak, it had a clear, democratic and egalitarian stance on gender, as was manifested by a number of decrees and in the 1945 Constitution, which proclaimed all citizens were equal before the law. The nationalists who gained control of the Republican state apparatus in October 1945 were largely democrats and socialists strongly influenced by the West. The shaky coalition governments of these years contained the country’s first female ministers, Maria Ullfah Santoso, Minister of Social Affairs, and S. K. Trimurti, Minister of Labour. As soon as the heavy hand of Japanese control was lifted, independent women’s organisations sprang up again, most of them dedicated to supporting the new Republic. One of the most important and enduring of these early new organisations was the non-religious Persatuan Wanita Republik Indonesia (Union of the Women of the Indonesian Republic – Perwari). Another lasting creation of the Revolution period was Muslimat NU, the women’s wing of the large traditional Javanese Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama. In 1946 some women’s organisations 2 Little has been written about the women’s movement during the Japanese Occupation. Sources include Mangunpuspito (1984); Nurliana, Manus, Ohorella et al. (1986); Rachmat-Ishaya (1990); Ohorella, Sutjiatiningsih, Ibrahim et al. (1992). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 32] === 22 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia formed a new nationalist-oriented federation, Kongres Wanita Indonesia (Indonesian Women’s Congress – Kowani). In personnel and membership it was a successor to the women’s federations of the colonial period. Although it has undergone some changes of membership and minor name revisions, Kowani has survived to the present day as the largest alliance of women’s organisations, and as such it has regularly been consulted by governments on issues relating to women. During the struggle for independence, the efforts of women’s organisations focussed on survival of families in very difficult times and on support for the nationalist cause. Some women’s fighting units were formed, but the more common activity was providing first-aid and food for soldiers and the Republic’s civil service – in many ways a continuation of the activities of the Fujinkai and Hahanokai created during the Japanese Occupation. Although during the Revolution the state was able to do little on behalf of women, this was a critical period for subsequent relations between the women’s movement and the state after the transfer of sovereignty from the Dutch to the Republic was finally made in 1949. The women’s movement earned credibility with the state on which it was subsequently able to draw. Principles of equality were laid down, and the fact that the Constitution of 1945 established Indonesia as basically a secular state (albeit with recognition of the importance of religion) was decisive in ruling out the possibility that Islamic syariah law would be applied, with all the implications that might have for women. The democratic state, 1949–1958 After the transfer of sovereignty in 1949, a new constitution was adopted in 1950, giving Indonesia a parliamentary regime, with a figurehead president (Sukarno). The democratic orientation of the early governments of Indonesia meant they had to take account of women, who voted in the first general elections of 1955. The intentions of governments to promote equality were borne out in legislation that included equal pay for civil servants, and the promotion of mass education and adult literacy. Lack of resources, Cabinet instability and pressing national concerns such as regional rebellions meant that the implementation of many wellintentioned policies took a back seat, and on other matters, such as the marriage law, it is clear that the state did not have the will to proceed in the face of Islamic opposition. Probably the greatest contribution of the state in this period was the freedom it gave to women’s organisations to establish themselves and participate in activities right down to the village level. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 33] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 23 Apart from a general commitment to equality, no particular ideology of gender was imposed or inculcated by the regime, with the consequence that organisations were free to advance their own agendas. Women’s organisations flourished during this period, although their growth was restricted in large areas of the archipelago where education and communications were poor. The most active large organisations in the federation, Kowani, and the most vocal in representing women to the state were Perwari and Gerwani, a more radical organisation founded in 1950 that became closely aligned to the Communist Party, the Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party – PKI). Islamic organisations continued to have the largest memberships, but they tended to take a low profile on anything regarded as ‘political’. Within Kowani there continued to be friction between religious and secular organisations over matters relating to marriage law. In the 1955 elections women proved keen to vote but few were elected: 19 out of 271 members of the parliament, about 7 per cent of the total (Martyn 2001: 160). After such a promising start during the Revolution period, there were no more female ministers in the many Cabinets of the 1950s. The women’s movement campaigned hard for a marriage law but was largely ignored by the unstable Cabinets of the period of liberal democracy in Indonesia in the 1950s. Because the state had few resources to offer and exerted little power over them, most women’s organisations during this period were not particularly state-oriented. They had their own activities and were very selfreliant, in an era when foreign aid was not available to Indonesian nongovernment organisations. Their leaders were nationally and sometimes internationally well known as forthright and experienced women. They included Suyatin Kartowiyono, Yetty Rizali Noor and Nani Suwondo of Perwari; Umi Sarjono and S. K. Trimurti of Gerwani; Maria Ullfah Santoso (later Subadio) in Kowani; Mahmudah Mawardi of Muslimat NU; and, outside the main women’s organisations, individuals like the journalist Herawati Diah and Supeni of the Partai Nasionalis Indonesia (Indonesian Nationalist Party – PNI). Since the return of democracy to Indonesia in 1998, this earlier period of freedom holds particular interest for students of the women’s movement (Martyn 2001). Guided Democracy (1958–1965) The balance between the state and the women’s movement changed significantly with the introduction of Guided Democracy in 1958, when Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 34] === 24 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia President Sukarno restored the 1945 Constitution that bestowed great power on the President. Up to then merely a figurehead (albeit a very influential one), Sukarno was now in a position to impose his ‘revolutionary’ ideology on his people. Highly rhetorical, his views were strongly infused with nationalism and anti-imperialism, influenced by Marxism but rejecting the divisive connotations of domestic class warfare. More important were the authoritarian aspects of his rule, which increasingly outlawed opposition, removed critics from official posts, censored newspapers and jailed dissidents. As far as women were concerned, Sukarno set out his views in the polemical work Sarinah (Sukarno 1963). Women were to devote themselves to the nation, and concerns like national unity took precedence over women’s issues. During Guided Democracy, there were plenty of occasions for shows of nationalist solidarity as Sukarno led campaigns against the Dutch over their refusal to hand over Papua to the Republic after 1949, and then against Britain and Malaysia in his ‘Crush Malaysia’ campaign. The President drew women into militant activities, such as drilling for national defence. During Guided Democracy the women’s movement fell into line with his agenda, subordinating previous priorities to those of the President. In line with government moves against certain political parties, Kowani banned two Islamic women’s organisations associated with those parties, and in its 1964 congress bestowed on the President the title ‘Great Leader of the Revolutionary Women’s Movement of Indonesia’ (Suwondo 1981: 201–2). The president of Kowani during the Guided Democracy years was the forceful Hurustiati Subandrio, the wife of Sukarno’s Foreign Minister. Even before the New Order, the movement had lost its independence. The dominant women’s organisation of the Guided Democracy era was Gerwani, which benefited from the favour bestowed by Sukarno on the PKI. During these years its leader was Umi Sarjono, and in 1963 it claimed 1.5 million members (Hindley 1964: 208). However, as Wieringa has shown in her detailed study of Gerwani, that favour came at the price of Gerwani’s agenda on women’s issues, which it had to subordinate to the President’s (and the PKI’s) nationalist and anti-imperialist agenda (Wieringa 2002). As in the following period, during Guided Democracy organised women had little opportunity to voice their concerns to the state, which, in turn, showed little interest in considering their needs. Unlike the New Order period, however, during Guided Democracy the impact of the state on the lives of ordinary women was generally negative, due to the complete neglect of the economy in these years. By the end of the period, the country was deep in crisis. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 35] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 25 The New Order, 1965–1998 Much has been written about the gender ideology of the New Order, including by the authorities themselves.3 The New Order saw women as a significant structural group in society which needed to be brought into line with its search for harmony and development (Douglas 1980).Women should play their part in ensuring social stability, implementing development plans and reducing the birth-rate. In the early years of the regime women were seen solely as housewives and mothers. The term kodrat, meaning inherent nature, was frequently on the lips of government spokesmen in relation to women: their kodrat destined them to be carers and educators of the younger generation. Expectations by the state of motherly duty reached a new height. Social and political relations centred around images of ibu (mother) and bapak (father). While both figures were responsible for the welfare of the members of their groups (families, businesses, organisations, etc.), the bapaks enjoyed access to power and privilege that were denied to the ibus who performed endless practical and necessary tasks without any prospect of reward except through their husbands, in keeping with what Djajadiningrat-Nieuwenhuis (1987) refers to as ‘ibuism’. Julia Suryakusuma (1987) has enlarged the notion of ibuism into ‘state ibuism’, which she considers the defining characteristic of the New Order gender ideology: it involved the propagation by the state of the nuclear family norm in which women conformed to the Western middle-class housewife role and selflessly served their husbands, family and the state. The concepts developed by Djajadiningrat-Nieuwenhuis and Suryakusuma have been widely accepted by commentators on gender in New Order Indonesia. The tensions within the New Order gender ideology, between its traditional and modern elements, and between its bourgeois ideals and the reality of Indonesian women’s lives, will feature in the following chapters of this book. The pinnacle of ‘state ibuism’ was the phenomenon known as the wives’ organisations. As the number and size of such organisations grew, they came to dominate the women’s federation, Kowani. The best-known and largest of these wives’ organisations was Dharma Wanita (Women’s Service), for the wives of civil servants. The activities of Dharma Wanita were linked to the development in the early 1970s of the state-sponsored Family Guidance Movement (Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga – PKK) which, under the central control of the Minister of Internal Affairs, had branches at every level of society led by the wives of state officials. PKK 3 Although General Suharto did not officially become president until 1967, his regime had de facto control in Indonesia shortly after the so-called ‘coup’ of 1 October 1965. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 36] === 26 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia was the means by which the state mobilised ordinary women behind its development efforts, obliging them to carry out tasks in a voluntary capacity. In seeking the rationale for the New Order gender ideology, Dan Lev locates it primarily in the regime’s desire for stability: after a period of great upheaval, the definition of women as wives and mothers served to consolidate family life and maintain the traditions that the New Order valued (Lev 1996). Because the family unit was regarded as a foundation stone of the larger ‘state family’, motherhood conceived in New Order terms was important to the regime. Suzanne Brenner goes further than Lev to argue that it was important for the New Order state not only to maintain stability but also to ‘continually reestablish a climate of national crisis, raising fear of unseen danger, impending chaos, that threatens to descend on the nation if stability is not maintained’ (Brenner 1999: 35). It was, after all, a state that had come into being in a time of crisis and justified a continuing military presence as necessary for national resilience. Hence the emphasis on the need for mothers to maintain vigilance over family morality and for the state to monitor family life. Official speeches and state-controlled media continually stressed the ideal wife and mother, aware of her kodrat, maintaining approved Indonesian traditions, carrying out her assigned development tasks and raising her children as good citizens. While in many ways a culturally introverted regime, the New Order was nevertheless subject to outside influence on a number of issues, including the position of women. An important innovation of the New Order state, as far as gender is concerned, was its creation of the Ministry for Women’s Role, which was first introduced as a junior ministry in 1978 during the International Decade for Women (1975–85). Up until that time there had been no female ministers. Clearly the Ministry represented the regime’s answer to international pressure to be seen to take women seriously. Ministers for Women’s Role presented the government line in international gatherings like conferences on women as well as in United Nations bodies like UNICEF. The Ministers themselves tended to have a background in Kowani. Although the Ministry was elevated to Cabinet status in 1983, it still lacked a line Department, which meant it had to depend on other departments like Health and Education for the implementation of its policies. A weak ministry, it was heavily criticised by more radical elements in the women’s movement who identified it with what they called the wanita as opposed to the perempuan approach to women. The choice of Indonesian term for woman became an ideological marker, as the New Order consistently used the more ‘ladylike’ word wanita while its critics increasingly favoured the more ‘down-to-earth’ Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 37] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 27 (and now resurgent) word perempuan (Muchtar 1999). The Ministry for Women’s Role was, however, a good example of the institutionalisation of international norms. Over time some of its staff became attuned to international rhetoric on women’s rights and acted as a ‘Trojan horse’ within the New Order bureaucracy, introducing new ideas that often conflicted with the rest of state gender ideology (Robinson 1997). For the Indonesian women’s movement, the fall of the Sukarnoist regime had immense consequences. In the anti-communist purge that followed the ‘coup’ of 1 October 1965, Gerwani was banned and its members arrested. The regime then moved to purge the women’s federation and put it under close control. As mentioned above, the so-called wives’ organisations took the lead in Kowani. Older organisations like Perwari were greatly weakened because they had depended for their membership on many of the women who were now forced to devote their organisational time exclusively to Dharma Wanita. The official women’s movement obediently echoed the prevailing government line, presenting women’s role as predominantly that of contributing to national development. Only those of its aims congruent with government policy were allowed to remain in its platform. Thus, for instance, it still campaigned for a marriage law, because that goal was acceptable to Suharto, who granted this wish in 1974 (see Chapter 5). State gender ideology could not, however, govern the minds of all Indonesian women. The rapid economic growth that occurred during the New Order years gave rise to a cohort of better-educated young women. Some of them took a more independent view of their role in society and wished to raise a number of issues outside the list sanctioned by the government-dominated official women’s movement represented by Kowani. Some of these women formed new independent organisations from the 1980s onwards and championed more radical issues such as the rights of women factory workers. They were joined by organisations with a strong human-rights bent (Eldridge 1995). Unlike most member organisations of Kowani, these groups were not ‘membership’ organisations but rather what the Indonesians called LSMs (Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat – Self-reliant Social Institutions). These were ‘cause’ groups with self-appointed governing bodies consisting of a small group of like-minded individuals. Many of these new groups had human-rights agendas, some of them offering legal assistance to victims of state policies like people evicted from slum sites. For such organisations, seeking a membership base was not the appropriate structure. For others working on behalf of poor people, it was not possible to enlist members among their clients, because the New Order policy referred to as ‘floating mass’ had depoliticised (‘floated’) the rural population in order to ‘allow Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 38] === 28 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia them to devote themselves to development’, and any groups that tried to organise the people for obviously political goals risked being branded as communist and suppressed. Unlike ‘membership’ organisations that depended primarily on financial support from their subscribers, LSMs were often recipients of foreign funding, either from international organisations like UNICEF, from Middle-Eastern Islamic sources or from nongovernment aid organisations (NGOs) like NOVIB or Oxfam. This made them susceptible to government accusations of being foreign-influenced, and indeed the agendas of such LSMs were often oriented to the prevailing priorities of funding sources. However, the situation is more complex, since the leaders of such LSMs were themselves cosmopolitan people often committed to such agendas regardless of funding exigencies. The new orientation of many LSMs is seen in their preference for talking about rights rather than the duties emphasised by the government. Prominent women’s organisations to emerge from the 1980s onwards were the resource centre Kalyanamitra, the legal-rights organisation Lembaga Bantuan Hukum – Asosiasi Perempuan Indonesia untuk Keadilan (Legal Aid Foundation – Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice – LBH-APIK), Yayasan Annisa Swasti (Annisa Swasti Foundation – Yasanti), which organised with women workers, the women’s crisis centre Rifka Annisa and Solidaritas Perempuan (Women’s Solidarity), which campaigned on behalf of women workers. Their leaders, like Sri Kusyuniati, Yanti Muchtar, Nursyahbani Kacasungkana and Ita Nadia began to be well known through the press, which welcomed their articulate and critical voices. (The media too was acquiring feminist journalists like Debra Yatim, Maria Hartiningsih and Julia Suryakusuma.) Not surprisingly, given their origins, these organisations were very Java-centred, although LBH-APIK gradually opened offices on some other islands. Their founders were tertiary-educated young women who were strongly critical of the official women’s movement’s subordination to the state. Even those like the leaders of Rifka Annisa who were strongly Islamic in orientation spoke the language of the international women’s movement (Muchtar 1999). The older religious membership-based organisations like Aisyiyah and Muslimat NU continued with their religious and social work through their extensive networks in the archipelago. They attempted to maintain their independence of the state by eschewing overtly political stances. The best-known older leader of an Islamic women’s organisation at the height of the New Order was Baroreh Baried of Aisyiyah. Over time they too became more influenced by the feminist ideas circulating internationally from the 1980s. Young new leaders emerged from the ranks of the female youth sections of the Islamic organisations, determined to reinterpret Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 39] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 29 religious texts in more woman-friendly ways. By the late twentieth century there were some formidable new spokeswomen of this kind, such as Lies Markus-Natsir and Siti Dzuhayatin. Women’s organisations affiliated to NU and Muhammadiyah together claim more than 15 million members, making them far and away the largest organisations of Indonesian women In addition to the new organisations, the women’s movement acquired in the late New Order period a number of intellectual spokeswomen as university education spread. Their rise went along with the opening of Women’s Studies programmes at some universities, a development fostered by the Ministry of Women’s Role. New voices in these years included the economic demographer Mayling Oey, the sociologists Mely Tan and Yulfita Raharjo and the psychologist Saparinah Sadli. (Significantly, the first two women are of Chinese descent: such women rarely featured in the leadership of organisations where to be identifiably Chinese would be a distinct political disadvantage under the racism prevalent in Indonesia.) Transition to democracy, 1998–2003 When Suharto resigned in May 1998, the situation again changed dramatically. As in the 1950s, one of the most important contributions of the state to gender ideology at this time of democratisation was just to allow people to organise independently, indicating that the state did not wish to control their activities. Freed from the trammels of New Order ideology, the Ministry for Women’s Role became more outspoken, critiquing government policies from the viewpoint of gender equality. The sympathy of the Wahid government (1999–2001) with gender issues was indicated by the appointment of the strongly feminist (and Islamic) minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa, who changed the name of the ministry to Ministry for Women’s Empowerment. It was also highly significant that at the same time the Family Planning Coordination Board was moved into her Ministry (Parawansa 2002). The fall of the New Order in 1998 saw the mushrooming of new women’s organisations, notably in regions of the country where few had existed before. It was clear that the women’s movement had outgrown Kowani, whose leaders acknowledged that much had changed. Without the backing of state sponsorship and power, Dharma Wanita and PKK have had to adapt to a world in which gender ideology has changed and the basis for their membership has become purely voluntary. This is a great boon for other groups that had felt constrained by the official women’s movement. In December 1998 the Women’s Coalition for Justice and Democracy, a new alliance, organised a women’s national Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 40] === 30 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia congress that recognised the different concerns and greater decentralisation of the women’s movement in the post-New Order phase (Bianpoen 1998). In the new era, women who took a more independent, feminist line in the last years of the New Order became even more prominent as governments conferred official positions upon them, and new opportunities for advocacy emerged. Those who gained prominence as activists for the first time in very recent years include the political scientist Chusnul Mar’iyah, her profession being a sign of the times. Indonesia is undergoing a turbulent transition. Women’s organisations have played an important role in many new developments including conducting voter education and campaigning against rising violence in the country. Both the Habibie and Wahid governments in 1998–2000 demonstrated considerable respect for the women’s movement, as shown by Habibie’s creation of the National Commission Against Violence Towards Women, headed by Saparinah Sadli, and Wahid’s appointment of Khofifah Indar Parawansa to head the Ministry for Women’s Empowerment. Nevertheless, the number of women in parliament actually fell in the 1999 elections, indicating that women had little pull within the political party system.4 Nor did political parties show much interest in women’s issues, and the first woman president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, inaugurated in 2001, herself shows little awareness or concern about the situation of women in her country. The women’s movement still has a long way to go to gain influence over the political process. For one thing, it is hard for it to create a political constituency when it has had little experience in building a politically aware membership base. Failing to use its own members to act as an independent means of social influence, it is still too dependent on the state, which in turn is weak and preoccupied with matters other than the concerns of the women’s movement. Conclusion Indonesia in the twentieth century alternated between periods of stability and turmoil. Turbulent periods are important in providing new opportunities for women in ways that can be capitalised on later in political terms: women learned new skills and were seen in different roles in times like the Japanese Occupation and the Revolution. Upheaval may also bring to the fore issues that were concealed in quieter times, like the grievances of 4 Following the 1999 election, only 9 per cent of the parliament members were women, compared with a peak of 13 per cent under the New Order (Jakarta Post 10 March 2003). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 41] === State gender ideologies and the women’s movement 31 people in neglected regions. Times of stability offer the best chance for careful policy-making and implementation, but whether or not women can utilise these opportunities may depend heavily on state gender ideology and on the strength of the women’s movement itself. In the twentieth century there is plenty of evidence of the impact of state gender ideology on the women’s movement in Indonesia. When that ideology is restrictive, it becomes more difficult for women to form organisations and recruit members freely. Under the New Order the suppression of Gerwani ended for some decades the possibility of recruiting poor women into political organisations. At certain times, most notably during the Japanese Occupation, state control over the movement has been extreme. The state has also sought to influence the agenda of women’s organisations, one of the most obvious examples being the New Order’s imposition of ‘the role of women in development’ and in particular its mobilisation of women behind the Family Planning Programme. On the other hand, it is harder to discern the influence of the women’s movement on the state. While the state has been relatively independent of pressure from women’s organisations, it has been far more responsive to other forces, in particular the Islamic movement which has frequently been at cross-purposes with the women’s movement. Some significant changes, such as the introduction of the Minister for Women’s Role during the New Order, have resulted from international rather than domestic pressure. In the chapters that follow, gender issues of concern to either or both the women’s movement and the state will be examined to determine more precisely the influence of state gender ideology, and the conditions under which women’s organisations have succeeded in attracting state attention to their concerns. A further question will be to what extent state intervention or assistance is efficacious in producing the kinds of changes desired by the women’s movement. How effective the women’s movement itself has been in improving the situation of Indonesian women is another question raised at several points in this book. The women’s movement has been through a number of cycles and generations. During the colonial period, women’s organisations, as a ‘modern’ phenomenon, attracted young, relatively welleducated women. Few such organisations survived suppression by the Japanese. While religious organisations have shown great staying power, others, like Perwari, seem to have a fixed lifespan as their members age. Groups associated with the officially approved New Order women’s movement are seen to belong to the older generation and may not long outlive the collapse of their sponsor. While new organisations and leaders Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 42] === 32 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia help revive the women’s movement, lessons learnt by the older generation may well be forgotten, particularly when the state has attempted to repress memories. Fortunately some individuals, like Saparinah Sadli and Herawati Diah at the end of the century, soldier on to bridge the generations. As the following chapters will show, there has been no shortage of committed talent in the Indonesian women’s movement. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 43] === 2 Education From Kartini on, Indonesian women have regarded education as basic to their advancement. The first area of public policy in which Indonesian women openly engaged with governments was the education of girls. It was and continues to be a matter of mutual interest. The main areas of contention have been the kind and amount of education that the state should fund for girls and the outcomes to be expected from it. While arguing over these matters, protagonists reveal their assumptions about gender relations. This chapter examines the nature of the debate, which was at its most prominent and heartfelt early in the century. The education issue was closely related to a number of other concerns of women, which are the subject of later chapters in this book, such as marriage, motherhood and employment. Later in the century, while access to schooling remained a prominent issue in the public arena, the ways in which education might influence the construction of gender received little attention, for reasons that will be discussed. Education is a broad term. This chapter will focus on one section of it: schooling, in which the modern state has played a prominent role as provider. Before colonial rule, Indonesian girls were of course educated informally, supervised by parents who wanted them to be properly prepared for their role in the workforce and/or married life. Girls were, after all, married early, as the next chapter will discuss. Although schools existed, they were intended for boys, and it was rare indeed for girls to attend them. Most were managed by religious groups, to train boys in the reading of sacred texts, since religions were led by men (Reid 1988). This was to change with the establishment of Dutch colonial rule in the Indies. Schooling serves many purposes. For the modern state, it must help build a suitable labour force and a stable, governable but flexible society. Nationalist movements opposing colonialism wanted schooling to promote commitment to national unity and independence and help mould skilled citizens capable of constructing a strong modern society. For individuals, education is variously a meal ticket, a socialising influence, an 33 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 44] === 34 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia entrée to a wider cultural and intellectual heritage, a form of child care, a means of escape from economic and social constraints, and the locus of many other hopes and desires. What is interesting from the point of view of the construction of gender is the different purposes which education is expected to serve for men and women. In Indonesia, as in many other developing countries this century, the emphasis on schooling for boys has been on economic and political outcomes, both for themselves and for society, while for girls schooling has been legitimised more by reference to social and cultural outcomes. Anxiety about the education of girls revolves around their perceived responsibilities for maintaining tradition and raising the next generation. In other words, assumptions about the sexual division of labour are basic to views about educational change. Men are expected to provide the backbone of the formal workforce and public political life, while women’s contribution in these areas is subsidiary and incidental to their primary role as housewives and mothers. Feminists frequently support the education of girls because of its potential to confer greater autonomy on them, that is to empower them by providing access to employment and to knowledge of the world, boosting their self-confidence and assertiveness in dealing with others, and improving their capacity to communicate with others and thus possibly influence them. In this chapter a crucial question will be the extent to which Indonesians believed that emancipation was a goal of the education of girls. There is no logical reason why the state might not join with women in considering this as important: it is a matter for investigation. The focus here is on the colonial period in Indonesia, because the foundations of later discourse were laid in the earlier part of this century. Modern education was a colonial import. During the colonial period in Indonesia as elsewhere, educational infrastructure was assembled, in people’s minds as much as in school buildings, and proved to be as lasting as the railway system that was another legacy of colonialism. This is not to say that colonial views were simply perpetuated, for during this period the nationalist response also emerged: the origins of a nationalist education system also go back to colonial times. But the pioneers of nationalist education, being themselves in part the product of Western education, necessarily entrenched some aspects of that system. The question examined here is how the recipients and administrators of education systems envisaged gender construction, with emphasis on the earlier, formative period. Of course, it is not possible to discuss gender in isolation from other important variables in the construction of identity, like class and ethnicity. In the colonial period the focus of the education debate was on the wealthier section of Indonesian society, since neither resources nor political will Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 45] === Education 35 were available to extend schooling to the majority of the population in the countryside. The class and ethnic origins of early modern education have been of lasting importance for gender construction. Although Western schooling was initially more advanced in north Sulawesi because of the Christian missionary effort there, it was the more densely populated Java, and to some extent also Sumatra, which proved the focus of the debate about public schooling for girls, a debate which came to reflect an amalgam of Western bourgeois and Javanese priyayi values. Those values, and their implications for gender, have had a lasting effect on schooling for girls. Religion has been less important than class in influencing the discourse about the state’s role in the education of women, because the state has taken responsibility only for secular education; religious groups have had their own education systems that have had varying degrees of support from the state. Since this book focusses on women and the state, this chapter will not consider religious education, which deserves a book in itself. The Ethical Policy opens up state schools for girls Modern-style schooling, providing secular instruction, did not really begin until the nineteenth century when the Dutch, having occupied most of the archipelago, introduced schools primarily to train men for colonial administration. The government funded a few schools in urban areas, mostly in Java, the main centre of population, teaching in Dutch and in Malay, the lingua franca of the archipelago. Institutions were also opened to train doctors, midwives and nurses. In addition Western education was offered in some private schools, including those established by missions. Most children attending these modern schools were from European or Eurasian families, who wanted their children educated in the Dutch fashion. Few Indonesian parents desired to send their daughters to school, considering the cost, traditional objections to the mixing of the sexes and the lack of employment opportunities for educated women. At the end of the nineteenth century there were only about 15,000 Indonesian girls in Western-style schools, about one-sixth of the total number of Indonesian pupils, in a population of some 30 million people at that time (Bemmelen 1982: 27). The real expansion of modern education dates from the early twentieth century, promoted by the official adoption of the so-called Ethical Policy in 1901, whereby the Dutch recognised an obligation to improve the standard of living of their colonial subjects. The number and range of government-funded schools were greatly increased, although they still offered education to only a small minority of the population: the Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 46] === 36 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia main beneficiaries remained Europeans. The introduction of vernacular language schools for Chinese and Malay-speaking children, however, expanded access at least to primary schooling. Under the influence of Western education, Islamic schools too were being transformed during the early twentieth century to take on more secular teaching like basic mathematics and literacy in non-Arabic languages like Malay. During the early decades of the twentieth century the state school system consisted of schools based on the Netherlands curriculum intended primarily for European children, separate schools using the Dutch medium for Chinese and ‘Native’ children, vernacular schools (teaching in, e.g., Malay, Balinese or Javanese) for village children and linkage schools to enable Indonesian children to learn Dutch in preparation for attending secondary schools and tertiary institutions where all teaching was in that language. The colonial system of formal education was thus highly fragmented and not well articulated, so that it was difficult for a child who attended a village school, where the teaching medium was the vernacular, to access higher levels of education. Little advanced education was available and a few hundred Indonesians, including some women, attended universities in the Netherlands. A major influence in colonial education policy at the beginning of the century was J. H. Abendanon, the colonial Director of Education. Both he and his wife, Rosa Abendanon, befriended the young aristocratic Javanese woman Raden Ajeng Kartini, whose educational ambitions they encouraged. Kartini’s father, the regent (highest rank among the priyayi) in Japara, was unusual for his times in allowing his daughters to attend Dutch elementary schools. However, when they reached puberty they were confined within the house as was the custom in priyayi families in the period leading up to early marriage – an insurance policy for the virginity of the bride. Kartini pleaded with her parents to allow her to continue her schooling and wrote impassioned letters about it to her Dutch friends. She is considered to have made out the most eloquent case for the education of Javanese girls. In 1903 Kartini privately memorialised the Dutch Government in support of the education of the Javanese (Kartini 1974). Although not arguing purely for girls’ schooling, much of her proposal concerned this cause. Tactically she saw the need to start with the education of ‘the daughters of the nobility’. The argument for educating them was primarily along moral lines, resting on their potentially civilising influence as wives and mothers. Although in her personal correspondence with Dutch friends Kartini argued the need for women to be educated for reasons of autonomy, she was apparently not prepared to put that view publicly. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 47] === Education 37 The posthumous publication of Kartini’s letters by Dutch friends in 1911 (Kartini 1911) served to fuel the campaign for girls’ schooling. Since Kartini was seen by the protagonists of the Ethical Policy as a prime example of the kind of Javanese they wished to promote, she represents a fusion of the views of both educated Indonesian girls and elements within the colonial state. As Director of Education in the Indies at the time, Abendanon championed the cause of the education of girls, but he had no success in convincing his superiors of the need to devote resources for this purpose (Wal 1963). Only a few Christian mission schools in Minahasa succeeded in attracting girls in considerable numbers. In order to fulfil Kartini’s mission, Dutch friends moved privately to set up the so-called Kartini schools for Javanese girls from 1913 onwards. Debates of the 1910s Kartini’s well-known trumpet call on behalf of Javanese women starts the twentieth-century gender discourse off on a high note. What happened in the world of girls’ education in the following decades has received little attention, thus missing the excitement of these years. The second decade of this century in the Dutch East Indies was a period of social and political ferment, when many Indonesians were exploring new ideas, challenging old ones and dreaming of new futures. It is a period that has been examined by authors like Takashi Shiraishi (1990), who has given loving attention to the detail of turbulence among the intellectuals and political activists of Java. However, his account has entirely missed the equally passionate spirit that pervaded many women’s circles at the same time. From the point of view of women, it was also an ‘age in movement’ as Shiraishi put it, and the main force at work was the same: Western schooling and contact with foreign ideas and ways of organising. By the 1910s a growing contingent of Indonesian women had received schooling, although admittedly they still constituted only a tiny minority of the population. But like the men about whom Shiraishi wrote, they were pioneers, a remarkable collection of individuals. At this time the case still needed to be argued for educating girls, and educated young women played a prominent part in that public debate. The right of girls to education is now so widely accepted that it is hard to recapture the subversive potential of its defence earlier this century, although it would help to remember that the battle is still being fought in some countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Colonial supporters of education for girls did indeed regard it as radical in the Indonesian context, but just as we know now that Western education Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 48] === 38 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia in the Indies created the largely unintended consequence of nationalism among its recipients, so it seems the European proponents of schooling for girls did not foresee its full consequences. Their words and actions had quite different reverberations in the Indies than they did back in Europe, giving rise to uncertainties, contradictions and conflicts, as well as emancipatory implications for many women of that time. Part of the interest of this period, apart from its engaging freshness, its feel of a new wind blowing, is as a counterpoint to later periods of education of girls. It is hardly surprising that education at the turn of the century produced a Kartini – in fact far more than one Kartini. From the history of the education of women we expect it to be liberating, to shake old notions of the construction of gender. What is perhaps more surprising is that so few years of schooling could have such far-reaching effects. In Indonesia today schooling is almost universal at the elementary level, and although higher education is enjoyed by only a small minority, there is no great distinction between the access of men and women (Oey-Gardiner 1992). But few would argue that education in Indonesia now has the power to galvanise its beneficiaries into new thought and action in the way it did for a significant, tiny minority in the early part of the last century. Some would blame this on the New Order’s vice-like hold over the education system, but the process can be traced further back in time, particularly as far as gender construction is concerned, to the period of the rise of nationalist education from the 1920s onwards. The 1910s was a period when the Indonesian world of ideas was broken open by modern education, a time when almost everything was up for challenge, including the construction of womanhood. Although many Dutch people had firm notions of how they wished Indonesian society to be restructured, their views were not universally accepted by Indonesians and even those foreign ideas that were adopted often served as irritants in the situation where they were newly implanted. In this turbulent environment, Indonesian women also had a role to play in the search for new structures, new trajectories – as reflected in the debates of the time about education. Declining Welfare Commission, 1914 Whereas Abendanon had been told by his superiors at the start of the century that Indonesians showed little interest in sending their daughters to school, by the 1910s everyone involved acknowledged that the situation had changed significantly. The number of girls attending government schools, although still minuscule in proportion to the population, Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 49] === Education 39 was rising.1 Apart from the private Kartini schools established by the Dutch, a number of Indonesians had also begun setting up their own separate schools for girls. The best-known of these were women: Dewi Sartika founded schools in West Java, while Rohana Kudus and Rahmah El Yunusiyyah worked in West Sumatra. However, at the start of the decade the government still did not give financial support to schools for girls, expecting instead that girls would attend mixed schools, despite evidence that parents in most regions were opposed to coeducation. Nor did most parents, even in higher ranks in society, generally send their daughters to school. During the 1910s, therefore, the proponents of education for Indonesian girls had to put up a strong fight, which they did in numerous public forums. The first of these was the Commission Enquiring into Declining Welfare in Java and Madura (Mindere Welvaart Commissie – Declining Welfare Commission). It met over a number of years and published several volumes of its findings, including one in 1914 on the position of women (Netherlands Indies Government 1914). The Commission took evidence from many people, including written submissions from several Indonesian women. Most of the women’s submissions put great emphasis on the need to educate girls, resting their arguments on similar premises although there was considerable variation in the way these arguments were worded, largely reflecting class differences among the women. Three submissions came from women belonging to the royal houses of central Java, the socalled Principalities of Yogyakarta and Surakarta.2 All three recognised that the purposes of educating girls of different classes must differ. Vocational education, although relevant for girls of lower classes who might be expected to earn their own income (for instance as teacher, doctor, nurse, typist or clerk), was not so important for wives of the nobility whose lives were restricted. These women appeared to envy the greater freedom of the lower classes and to hope that increasingly women would be able to support themselves. In the meantime, even if women chose marriage as their main goal, schooling could help prepare them for that task. Priyayi woman contributors of lower rank were more outspoken in some respects, but in other ways they echoed Dutch-middle class views 1 In 1909 only 3,097 girls attended village schools provided by the government; by 1914 that number had risen to 19,455 and in 1919 to 36,649 (Bemmelen 1982: 185). 2 Raden Ayu Ario Surio Sugianto (daughter of Pangeran Gondo Sewojo from the Mangku Negoro House and married to a son of Mangku Negoro V), Raden Ajeng Karlinah (daughter of Pangeran Notodirodjo of Yogyakarta) and Raden Ajeng Amirati (daughter of Pangeran Ario Paku Alam VI). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 50] === 40 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia of the period and clearly addressed themselves to the needs of that minority of women in their own social sphere. For instance, Raden Ayu Surio Hadikusumo, a sister of Kartini, argued that girls should be prepared at school ‘to become competent in an occupation by means of which they can later become financially independent’ or to learn how to be a good housewife, able to raise children, look after the health of the family and be ‘a life-companion of an educated and civilised man’. However, as might be expected of a sister of Kartini, she did not lose the opportunity to criticise the ‘social evils’ which she believed that education of girls would help eliminate: child marriage and polygamy. She argued that educated girls would find themselves able to resist these pressures both because a ‘financially independent’ woman would not be pressured by her family to marry against her will, and because schooling would teach a woman to value herself, to ‘learn that she is not an object but a person just as a man is, with the right to live’ (Netherlands Indies Government 1914: Bijdrage van RA Soerio Hadikoesoema). The submissions of Raden Ajeng Martini and of Umi Kalsum echoed these sentiments. Compared with Kartini’s 1903 submission, these women felt less constrained in arguing the autonomy case for the education of girls. But the most interesting and forthright views were expressed by the three women who had carved out independent lives for themselves: Jarisah, a midwife from Bandung, Raden Dewi Sartika, head of a girls’ school in Bandung, and Raden Ayu Siti Sundari, editor of a Javanese women’s journal. Jarisah made a strong argument for women to acquire the knowledge that was essential to their future lives. Women would need to learn to speak in public, because ‘it is an inescapable fact that the ideas of men and women differ in many respects’. She pointed to a recent meeting of the social welfare organisation Maju Kemuliaan (Noble Advancement), where women repeatedly expressed their craving for knowledge ‘so as no longer to be fooled by men about things which we women can and must know for ourselves’. Cases in point for this midwife, drawn from her own hard experience, were the ignorance of girls about sex and pregnancy, and the dangers of venereal disease. She endorsed views expressed in other submissions about the need for Javanese women to know more about housekeeping (especially in relation to hygiene and child-rearing), condemned easy divorce and polygamy, and concluded with a rousing appeal to men’s desire for progress: ‘Briefly and to the point, I give men this choice: Progress with free women or remain in darkness with slaves for wives. If they want the former, then outdated religious ideas may not be spared!’ (Netherlands Indies Government 1914: Bijdrage van Mevrouw Djarisah). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 51] === Education 41 From her experience of almost a decade of running private schools for girls, Dewi Sartika3 put forward her view that the schooling needs of boys and girls did not differ much and emphasised the moral advantages of a sound education. This was clearly an important point for her to win in light of the criticisms she had to contend with. She described her trials in dealing with the opposition of the conservative Sundanese older generation to sending girls to school. That generation, she explained, educated their girls only to be good housewives, and this was done at home, before they were married off at an early age. These parents were reluctant to send their daughters to school because they did not see the use of it, they were afraid of letting the child out of their supervision, and they disliked the ‘frankness’ which they felt girls learnt at school and which would lead them into bad behaviour. All these fears she had spent years allaying. Dewi Sartika’s submission went on to express still stronger feelings about the purposes of educating girls. She wanted the opportunity to extend vocational education for girls to train them for jobs previously held only by men, such as civil servant, clerk and bookkeeper. By keeping women out of such occupations, she said, ‘Thereby men have treated our women as a lesser class who, having learnt no trade, must earn their bowl of rice with coolie work in factories and businesses. As a woman it cuts me to the quick that such women, although performing the same duties as men, earn lower wages than them.’ Like others who contributed submissions to the Commission, Dewi Sartika was convinced education would slowly bring about the decline of bad practices affecting women like child marriage, prostitution and polygamy. She came as close as anyone to making an overt link between education and the autonomy of girls: Raise the child to be an independently thinking individual, who values herself. Through the awakening of her self-awareness the woman will of her own initiative also take sides against arranged marriages, and against the dissipation and tyranny of her husband, factors which have made many a marriage into a disaster. Men will learn to value her better. After long years the Woman will be able to become the equal of the Man. (Netherlands Indies Government 1914: Bijdrage van Raden Dewi Sartika) The longest submission came from R. A. Siti Sundari, a feisty young Javanese woman about whom relatively little is known despite her input 3 On Dewi Sartika (1884–1947) see Wiriaatmadja (1983) and Government of Indonesia (1967). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 52] === 42 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia into a number of debates on women during the 1910s and 1920s.4 According to her own account she had been the honorary editor of a fortnightly Javanese periodical, Wanito Sworo (Women’s Voice), and had set up a private school for Javanese girls and women, the popularity of which proved how much separate schools were wanted. Much of Siti Sundari’s submission (Netherlands Indies Government 1914: Bijdrage van Raden Ajoe Siti Soendari) covered the same ground as Dewi Sartika. A new point raised by her was the desire of educated young men to marry educated wives, ‘so that they can talk with them about things worth knowing and about politics’, and because, having learned Dutch ways of living, they wanted wives who also had that understanding. Like most other contributors, she differentiated between the kind of education appropriate for girls of different classes. In my opinion, education for village children does not need to be too extensive, because it would not be useful for their way of life. If they just learn to read and write in Javanese and learn to know Latin letters, and to do arithmetic, that is sufficient. Besides that, daughters of village and kampung [lower-class urban residential area] people should be given training in cooking, making Native cakes, sewing, making batik and such matters which will later be of use, e.g. if they wish to set up a street-stall or feed boarders, or become a cook. And knowledge of these things will strengthen the marriage bond. Siti Sundari clearly admired the ability of village women to gain independence through earning their own living. It meant they were less afraid of divorce, for instance, or of polygamy, which she regarded as an abomination. Like Dewi Sartika, she concluded that education was the key to necessary social and moral changes in Javanese society: ‘It is very difficult to change customs and usages grounded in religion. I have thought long and hard about it and have found no effective means of doing away with these unsuitable customs. Finally I know of no other weapon against rotten customs than in the first place: education.’ Although expressed much more colourfully and feelingly, the views of these independent-minded women were not far removed from those of progressive Dutch officials of the period. The chairman of the Declining Welfare Commission, H. E. Steinmetz, spent much of the volume on women cataloguing very similar opinions, culled not just from Java but also from European feminist writings, and combating conservative opponents of schooling for girls. For Steinmetz, however, such opinions 4 According to De Inheemsche Vrouwenbeweging (1932: 8), she was the daughter of a teacher in Ponorogo. A contemporary article about her (Dekker 1914) claimed she was the daughter of a headmaster called Wirio Darmobroto, and her own school was at Pacitan. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 53] === Education 43 were easy to come by in European circles of the time, while for the Indonesian contributors to the report these views had continually to be defended. Even what might appear to be uncontroversial views about teaching housekeeping and child-rearing to girls were potentially explosive issues in their day, representing as they did the likelihood that girls were being taught notions that contradicted the customs of their parents and relatives. The Colonial Education Congress of 1916 The level of official Dutch interest in education in the colonies is reflected in the fact that two congresses on the subject were held in the Dutch capital, The Hague, in 1916 and 1919, taking submissions and hearing evidence from a range of witnesses. In both congresses sessions were devoted to the education of Indonesian girls. In general the contentious issues were which girls should be educated and how; it was accepted that the education of girls was desirable but since the resources and demand were not considered to exist for universal education, choices had to be made. Unlike the 1914 Declining Welfare Report, debate here covered the Outer Islands as well as Java, although as usual Java received the most attention. Not surprisingly given the Dutch location, the views of Dutch educators and administrators tended to dominate these debates. The 1916 congress received strong input from A. Limburg, former director of a well-established school for daughters of chiefs and notables in Minahasa, a Christian area of North Sulawesi with the highest level of education of girls in the archipelago. In his view there was still no strong demand for the education of girls from the population at large, and for the time being he felt it should be limited to girls of higher classes, particularly considering the lack of resources (notably female teachers). He expected that such education would have liberating effects, causing girls to question old-fashioned customs as had been the case with Kartini, a name frequently evoked at these congresses. As for what should be taught to these girls, he advised that it should be largely of a practical nature: ‘I would like to see them taught hygiene of body, house and yard, domestic science, handicrafts, singing, nursing of young children and the sick, good manners, and a feeling for all that is fine and good and true.’ He advocated the kind of education he himself had been involved in providing: segregated schooling in the Dutch language for upper-class girls, preferably through boarding schools where there was more opportunity to mould susceptible young minds. The long-term aim of educating girls was clearly social change to produce women in the domestic Christian Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 54] === 44 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia mould (Eerste Koloniaal Onderwijscongres 1916: 194–202, and Prae- Adviezen 1916: 181–94). Slightly different ideas were expressed by prominent Dutch officials. A former inspector of native schools, C. Lekkerkerker, opposed separate schools for girls up to the age of ten or twelve on practical grounds (lack of female teachers) but admitted that for later years they were necessary. He was however concerned that the education system was becoming streamed along class lines (Prae-Adviezen 1916: 293–300 and Eerste Koloniaal Onderwijscongres 1916: 224–6). As might be expected, J. H. Abendanon strongly defended the education of girls. For those going on beyond lower education, he argued, the purpose was not just to make them into good housewives and wives but to give them ‘the opportunity to mean something in society, not just for the upbringing of children but also to be able to be independently active’ (Eerste Koloniaal Onderwijscongres 1916: 224–6). Abendanon’s views were consistent with those of many feminist-minded Indonesians, from Kartini onwards. A lengthy deposition was made to the 1916 congress by Miss M. S. van Willigen, a Dutch woman on leave from her teaching post in Java. Like many protagonists of female education, she emphasised its moral significance. Purely intellectual education ‘laid the foundation for materialism of the grossest sort’. In the area of moral education ‘woman has a great – the greatest – task to fulfil’. This was a strong premise for arguing against the commonly held view that the education of boys should precede that of girls. Basic to her was the role of mothers, who should be trained to provide education in the wider sense of upbringing. In Miss van der Willigen’s view, educated women would run their households economically, lead their children’s education and provide a home which kept husbands from gambling and opium and the company of unworthy women. ‘That is the great moral influence which will flow from the educated Native woman, who by nature has this inborn sweetness and civilisation, which is the strength of the weak’ (Eerste Koloniaal Onderwijscongres 1916: 210). Such a woman, too, would never allow herself to be married off against her will, or be content to accept a place as a co-wife in a polygamous marriage, and would want the means to support herself so as to make her own way in life ‘as so many of her European sisters do’. It was clear that Miss van der Willigen espoused education of the kind that contemporary Dutchwomen of a liberal feminist persuasion wanted for girls anywhere. Like the administrators, however, she was prepared to concede that different kinds of schooling would have to be provided for Indonesian girls in different circumstances. Schools for girls of the ‘popular class’ should be separate from those for daughters of the more Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 55] === Education 45 well-to-do and better educated. The education of the former should be of more limited duration and be practically oriented, in Malay, providing girls with skills they would need in later life, both in the home and in the workforce. For the latter, girls should get schooling of a higher intellectual level, in the Dutch language, but also with the addition of skills of practical use to women such as simple bookkeeping, health and child care, and ‘naturally feminine handcrafts’. Most of these girls would remain at school until the age of twelve or thirteen and get a ‘rounded’ education which would suit them for marriage to lower-level officials. For those who wanted it, further education opportunities should be provided. Like Limburg, she emphasised the value of boarding schools both to encourage parents to send their girls to school and ‘for character formation’, which she clearly thought was lacking in Indonesian families. Indonesian men had little to say about the education of girls at the 1916 congress. Their representatives were the nationalists Sam Ratulangi, from Minahasa where girls’ education was already well advanced, and R. M. Suwardi Suryaningrat from Java, both of whom were students in Holland at the time. Suwardi’s views are particularly interesting, given his prominence in Indonesian education thinking and policy, under the name he later assumed, Ki Hajar Dewantoro. One of a radical triumvirate of nationalists who were exiled to the Netherlands in 1913, during his six-year stay there, Suwardi and his wife obtained teaching qualifications and steeped themselves in ideas about alternative education, in particular those of Montessori, Frobel and Steiner (McVey 1967; Tsuchiya 1987). In the debate about girls’ education the nationalist spirit was already strongly to the fore with both young men. For them, other issues had priority over the education of girls. Although in favour of it, they had little to offer as to its nature, extent or objectives. Two Indonesian women made contributions to the 1916 congress discussion on women’s education: Mrs Kandou from Minahasa, the first Indonesian woman to take out her education diploma in the Netherlands, and the indefatigable Siti Sundari, who had come to Holland in 1915 in search of training as a teacher (Poeze 1986: 111–12). Contemporary documentation revealed that she was a young widow who had left her child behind in Java (Deventer 1915). Mrs Kandou wished to speak from the point of view of a Minahasan. Clearly she felt that remarks about the inferiority of women were out of place in Minahasa, where ‘the customs and legends show us that women in the original conception of the people took a place in the family perfectly equal to that of men’. However, she did wish to plead for an extension of the schooling available to girls in that region. Although lower education had been available to girls there for four decades, they felt the lack Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 56] === 46 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia of higher education, especially since it made it hard for well-educated young Minahasan men to find suitable wives among their compatriots (Eerste Koloniaal Onderwijscongres 1916: 223). Like Ratulangi, she felt coeducation was suitable for Minahasans and advocated providing higher schooling for girls of a general nature but including some attention to hygiene and household matters. Hers was a family-oriented view of the value of education for girls. In her usual spirited manner, Siti Sundari defended girls’ education. The arguments put forward in support of sending Javanese girls to school (and she claimed to be able to speak only for Javanese women) were threefold: that mothers as first teachers of children must be educated; that educated men would naturally want educated wives; and that it was necessary for the respect of the Javanese nation. In her view, girls should receive the same standard and quality of schooling as boys, involving general education like arithmetic, writing and reading, but in addition they should also learn ‘women’s work like sewing, cooking and batik’. They should be taught in Javanese but should also know how to speak Malay, and those who wished to continue with their studies should be taught Dutch. Like other speakers, she felt it was necessary to provide boarding schools for girls who were continuing beyond basic education, but her reasoning differed from that of the Dutch speakers. While they saw boarding schools as a way of moulding Indonesian girls to a more European pattern, she explicitly recommended that in these schools life should have a Javanese flavour, ‘so that these girls do not take on different customs and lose their own nationality’. Her views here coincided with those of Suwardi Suryaningrat, whether under his influence or in reflection of the growing nationalism of the time. She concluded her speech by saying, ‘At this moment the spirit of the late R.A. Kartini watches our endeavours: it illuminates us’ (Eerste Koloniaal Onderwijscongres 1916: 232). The congress of 1919 had little to add to the debate of 1916, largely because a number of contributors were more concerned about the fate of Eurasian girls than they were about vocational training for Indonesians, and no new ideas were put forward. No Indonesian women participated in this discussion. By this time, however, training facilities for Indonesian girls were opening up and the government was subsidising private girls’ schools, albeit on a very limited basis (Bemmelen 1982). The views of recently educated girls The full flavour of the radical impact of Western-style schooling in the 1910s is really felt only by sampling the heartfelt writings of young women Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 57] === Education 47 who had recently experienced that education. A good example of these views is to be found in Sunting Melayu (Malay Ornament), a weekly newspaper for women and edited by women, published between 1912 and 1921 in Minangkabau (West Sumatra). This newspaper demonstrates that what might now appear at official level to be fairly conservative views about the education of girls translated in practice, in Minangkabau at least, into quite radicalising experiences for girls. Given our knowledge of Kartini’s correspondence a decade or so earlier, this should not be surprising. For Minangkabau girls, debate about their education occurred in the context of conflict between the kaum muda (young group) and kaum tua (old group), those who challenged and supported adat (tradition) respectively. The patron of Sunting Melayu, Datu’ Sutan Maharadja, whose daughter Zubaedah Ratna Juwita was one of the paper’s editors, was a strong supporter of the education of girls (Abdullah 1971). The other editor was Rohana Kudus, who pioneered private schools for girls in West Sumatra (Djaja 1980). The pages of Sunting Melayu were full of contributions from advocates of girls’ schooling, apart from the occasional letter from someone raising concerns about its consequences, particularly for morals. The engaging thing about Sunting Melayu is that almost all its contributions came directly from female readers, creating a feeling that the paper represented the thoughts of members of a club of young women who felt free to air their opinions and experiences among themselves. These were the first generation of Minangkabau women to have received a Western-style schooling; many contributors were still at school, mostly at coeducational state schools. What is very striking, as with the case of Kartini, is how only a few short years of schooling (almost none of these women received more than elementary education) could produce such a strong impression of breaking open a new world. It emphasises the fact that the impact of education on women is not so much dependent on the length of that schooling as on its context and timing: just three years of elementary education in the 1910s could change an Indonesian girl’s outlook on life more than a secondary education in the 1990s. The reason is that the ideas conveyed by education at that time were new to Indonesian society, so that any recipient of an elementary education was on the cutting edge of change, was an intellectual purveying ideas which were frequently in tension if not outright conflict with her environment. And as we have seen, this was anticipated to some degree at higher levels: education was expected to lead to social change in all sorts of areas like marriage and child-rearing. What also needs to be taken into account is the particular ethnic and regional environment in which girls’ schooling occurred. It had entered Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 58] === 48 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia Minahasan society in the late nineteenth century with little overt commotion; perhaps, as Ratulangi and Mrs Kandou argued in The Hague in 1916, because women already held a strong position in Minahasan society. Certainly some of the earliest women to take advantage of higher education were Minahasans (e.g. the first Indonesian woman doctor was Minahasan). In the matrilineal society of Minangkabau, where women were by custom expected to play a prominent role in social matters at least, village women of relatively high rank benefited from schooling earlier than those in, say, patrilineal Batak circles. But the ideas of that schooling could give rise to friction with relatives when they conflicted with adat expectations of girls, particularly in relation to marriage and employment. The pages of Sunting Melayu overflowed with poems and letters in praise of schooling for girls, from young women, mostly in rural areas, who signed their names, citing also their village and father. For instance, in the issue of 27 July 1912, Siti Ruhana, a pupil in class 5 at Payakumbuh, sent verses which, roughly translated, said: ‘I have been to school for a long time: now I sit in class five. Four of us girl friends are together and I give their names here... Oh my three friends, we study with a strong faith; so that we advance into the garden of a pure heart and a pleasant fate.’ For such girls, schooling had an almost religiously revelatory impact and bonded them to the privileged few who shared the new experience. And it was that schooling that enabled them for the first time to read the views of their sisters and to express their own opinions in print, an experience which clearly elated many of them. They supported one another in newly held opinions which might earn the ire of their nearest and dearest. For instance, in the issue of 9 November 1912, Zahara of Bukittinggi wrote an article entitled ‘Bad customs of ours’, attacking parents who married their young daughters to old men, and criticising polygamy, the incidence of which was higher in West Sumatra than in most other parts of the Indies (see Chapter 5). Polygamy was a frequent target in the pages of Sunting Melayu. On 3 April 1913, Marni, the daughter of Mas Ada of Padang, wrote in heartfelt tones to tell the story of how her relatives had prevented her from taking a job as a clerk in Padang: she was qualified for the position but her brother would not permit it. The tale flowed onto the page breathlessly and indignantly, calling on her sisters for sympathy. The attitude of these young women to education was whole-hearted: they saw its uses in so many ways. For many of them it was instrumental: it gave access to income-earning work, either of a modern type as teachers or nurses, or via skills in weaving and embroidery; and it made Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 59] === Education 49 them more efficient mothers. It also had moral and social significance by introducing them to a better life free from bad old customs and featuring happy, harmonious families, as well as opening up to them a wider world of knowledge that linked them with women not just in West Sumatra or the Indies more generally, but throughout the world. All of this was encapsulated in the word kemajuan (progress) to which education was the key. Reading Sunting Melayu, like reading Kartini’s letters, impresses one with the full lived significance of this experience of access to a new kind of autonomy, with all its attendant joys and sorrows. Nationalism and education of girls Indonesian male nationalists had definite ideas about why girls should be educated. Women needed modern knowledge to understand and support the nationalist movement, and to raise healthy and loyal Indonesian citizens. Little of this rationale was framed with any reference to the interests of women themselves. Although their views were not generally addressed to the colonial state, from which they expected little, they indicated what they felt to be the obligations of governments in a future independent Indonesia. By the 1920s most Indonesian women’s organisations had begun to be influenced by these nationalist views. The first national congress of these organisations, held in Yogyakarta in December 1928, clearly signalled its nationalist orientation, which was a feature of the federation of women’s organisations that emerged from the congress. The first resolution passed by the congress concerned girls’ schools. It urged the government to increase the number of separate schools for girls because of the continuing difficulty in getting many parents to send their daughters to coeducational schools (Congres Perempoean 1929: 20). The need for education surfaced often in the speeches of leading women at this congress, as at those that followed. The congress marks a turning-point as nationalism began to dominate the women’s movement. Views about education reflected efforts to combine a nationalist justification for education with a search for women’s autonomy. One of the most prominent speakers at the congress was the same Siti Sundari who had contributed to the 1914 Declining Welfare Commission and participated in the Colonial Education Congress of 1916. In her speech, entitled ‘Responsibility and ideals of Indonesian women’, she made a number of observations about education (Congres Perempoean 1929: 49–61). She argued very strongly against older traditions of educating children, whereby, she claimed, children were considered as the possessions of parents who could be treated according to their own Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 60] === 50 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia wishes. According to new educational notions, she said, education was about developing the child’s own gifts. This child-centred view of education naturally had important novel implications for girls in particular. She went on to make out a nationalist case for freedom in the education of girls. Women had important responsibilities in working to strengthen the Indonesian nation, and to do so they would need freedom: ‘For a long time Indonesian women have depended on others, when small on their parents, when adult on their husbands... Young women now ask for education directed towards independence, and freedom in social intercourse. Our education must look after this, so that we do not become just marriage fodder’ (Congres Perempoean 1929: 59–60). For Siti Sundari, women’s role in building the nation was primarily as mothers, but this was interpreted in a broad sense to serve as a basis for arguing in favour of educating girls for autonomy. Another influential speaker at the 1928 congress on the topic of education was Nyi Hajar Dewantara, the wife of Ki Hajar (formerly Suwardi Suryaningrat). With her husband, she was one of the leaders of the nationalist private school system, Taman Siswa (Garden of Pupils), founded in 1922. Significantly, her talk was entitled ‘Women’s refinement’, and had to be translated into Malay from Javanese. In line with Taman Siswa ideology, she argued that a woman’s nature (kodrat) was to bear children, and her behaviour should always be in keeping with that destiny. Women and men were complementary, made to live together so as to bear and raise the next generation. Women must be careful not to let their sexual attraction for men dominate their motherly qualities, for fear of earning the scorn of men rather than their respect. It was women’s responsibility to infuse purity and refinement into life, to be a force for harmony and not a source of conflict among men. Contemporaneously, these views were being expounded by Nyi Hajar’s husband in Taman Siswa publications, where he developed the institution’s guidelines for the education of girls. Building on the view that men and women had quite different natures, he argued that equality of rights and status with men could never mean that men and women should be treated the same. Women’s destiny to be mothers meant that they had softer, more refined feelings. In Taman Siswa, he wrote, it was felt that ‘Women’s existence is needed everywhere, because they have a great influence on their surroundings in terms of purity, refinement and spirituality, which is beneficial for activity in the world of education.’ Since he considered the presence of girls in school had a civilising influence on the behaviour of boys, Ki Hajar was in favour of coeducation. Yet in order to protect women’s kodrat, girls must be educated differently in some things, such as sport. Western women playing sport exhibited too much of their bodies. ‘In sport we must take care that our girls do not just copy Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 61] === Education 51 Western custom in this matter of sports clothing, so as not to ruin the feeling of purity, that is their feminine feeling.’ From a nationalist perspective, he argued, due care must be paid to girl pupils holistically, so as to ensure good physical and spiritual inheritance for the race, since women are the mothers of the next generation. In discussing the philosophical basis for what was intended to be a national education system providing an alternative to the colonial one, Ki Hajar Dewantara never put forward an economic justification for the education of girls. Rather, the moral defence he used rested on an amalgam of priyayi values from his native Java and European educational thinking, imbibed when he was studying in Holland (Dewantara 1967: 240–48). As more Indonesian parents, and those of immigrant ethnic minorities like Arabs and Chinese, came to accept mixed primary schools, the numbers of girls at government-funded schools rose dramatically in the colonial period. In 1939 about 62,000 Indonesian girls attended schools and higher education institutions (most of them state-funded). However, this constituted less than a quarter of the total number of Indonesians enrolled, at a time when the colony’s population stood at 60 million (Bemmelen 1982: 185, 204). Education since independence Ever since the Declaration of Independence in August 1945, Indonesian governments have been strongly committed to equality in education, recognising it as a right of all citizens, a means of promoting national unity and a necessity for economic development. In line with the Constitution, which rejected the notion of an Islamic state, governments since 1945 have also chosen a secular state education system, although the state does extensively subsidise (and supervise) religious schools that conform to its criteria. The fact that Indonesian governments have promoted secular education has caused little friction with devout Muslims, who have their own, largely state-subsidised schools. Within state schools, the prevalent notion of kodrat accords with Indonesian Islam, although there was conflict when the wearing of Islamic head-coverings by girls was forbidden in state schools in 1982. In this case opposition from Islamic organisations led to the withdrawal of that prohibition a decade later. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, it was estimated that fewer than half the children of primary school age were enrolled (Oey- Gardiner 1997: 140). After the transfer of sovereignty in 1949, a rapid expansion of the schooling system occurred. The history of education since then has been one of increasing access to schooling and literacy more generally, for both sexes. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 62] === 52 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia The emphasis at first was on universal primary schooling, which was only achieved in practice by the end of the 1980s after the bounty of the oil boom in the 1970s expanded government resources. Until then it had not been possible for schools to be built and staffed in the many remote rural areas of Indonesia. Foreign aid, readily available since the inception of the New Order, has also helped to expand educational spending. By the mid- 1990s, when the population of Indonesia had reached 200 million, 95 per cent of children of primary school age were enrolled at school (UNDP 2001: 176). Although in 1990 the government adopted a policy of nine years’ compulsory universal education by the year 2005, the timetable will not be achieved; even when the new goal was announced, about a third of children did not complete primary school. Retention rates decline still further at secondary level and rapidly thereafter. Only about 10 per cent of young people attended higher education in the early 1990s. Apart from regular schooling, governments have attempted to encourage adult literacy by other means, including intensive campaigns and ‘packages’ of teaching materials for people who cannot or choose not to attend schools. By the end of the twentieth century adult literacy had reached 86 per cent (UNDP 2001: 143). As far as gender difference in access in education are concerned, the point of divergence has been when primary school graduates have to transfer to junior secondary schools, which for rural families may require sending their children by bus into town or even finding accommodation at a distance from home. At this stage some parents still consider this undesirable for their daughters, and the expense of schooling, although low, is an obstacle in what remains a poor country. Given the need to choose, sons get priority. It should be remembered that formal education supplements, but may also conflict with, instruction within the home, where girls are still taught to take a greater share of household chores than boys. Moreover, even with the same level of education, men earn more than women. At secondary and tertiary levels of education, where the proportion of children at school drops considerably, girls lag behind boys. The proportion of girls to boys at primary level in the 1990s was around 93 per cent, dropping to 87 per cent at lower secondary and 85 per cent at higher secondary schools (Oey-Gardiner 1997). The dropout rate is highest among the poor and in rural areas. Although around 93 per cent of girls are enrolled in primary school, still only 8 per cent of girls reached the tertiary level in the 1990s compared with 15 per cent of boys (UNDP 2001: 221). Access to education has always been an important topic in Indonesia, including its gender aspects, particularly since the international attention fostered by the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–85). However, Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 63] === Education 53 it has not since independence been a matter of controversy: governments have been committed to increased access and to equalising literacy rates between men and women: currently there is still a gap, with women lagging about ten points behind men (UNDP 2001: 212). Apart from quantity, however, there is the question of the quality of the education system, which has frequently been criticised. In part this has been the result of low per capita expenditure on education, but it was also a consequence of tight control exerted by the New Order regime, involving prescribed textbooks, rote-learning and centralised examinations, as well as centralised appointment of teaching staff. Although at higher levels of the system increasingly students were taught in private institutions because government-funded schools could not meet demand, most private schools were also subject to strict government supervision. As a result, there was increased uniformity in the content and pedagogy of Indonesian education. Although justified in the name of equality and national unity, this system was regressive in a number of ways. For instance, ethnic traditions were suppressed and the Chinese minority and regional groups were forced to comply with Jakarta’s standards. Until recently, the gendered content of educational policy was not subject to critical scrutiny, partly because of the priority given to making schooling more accessible for girls, partly because of the New Order Government’s well-known suppression of criticism and partly because the gender bias built into the education system reflects conservative values endemic in Indonesian society. Gender bias had been built into the system first by the Dutch and subsequently by policy-makers like Ki Hajar Dewantara who was the first Minister of Education in the independent Republic of Indonesia and a long-standing educational advisor. Other prominent educationists had also taught or been educated in Taman Siswa schools. Like so many other aspects of education, the gender bias of the curriculum and pedagogy, already incorporated into the education system, was not challenged by the New Order regime. Hence textbooks tended to depict women and girls in stereotyped nurturing, child-rearing and domestic roles while boys and men dominated the public sphere. Continuing a practice started in the colonial era, some secondary schools were also designated to specialise in home economics; they were attended exclusively by girls, just as the technical schools that taught trades were the preserve of boys. (The vast majority of secondary school pupils, however, have always attended schools with a general curriculum.) Amongst teaching staff, women are concentrated at the lower levels. Until very recently, only foreigners studied gender bias in the Indonesian education system, reflecting the priorities of Indonesian state funding of research. In their study of schooling in Bali in the late 1970s, Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 64] === 54 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia Jan Branson and Don Miller (1992) concluded that the national education system was a force for change in rural life, but not necessarily for the better as far as the construction of gender was concerned. In their view, schooling influenced pupils to disdain their parents’ occupations and to embrace a sexual division of labour which favoured boys over girls, a departure from the greater equality between the sexes to be found in older-style village life. This was the result of the Western values centring on individualism embodied in modern education. Branson and Miller’s conclusions are supported by Lynette Parker’s work on schooling in Bali in the 1980s. She argued that ‘through school curricula and institutional routines, the government assigns each of the genders one of these goals: girls get the job of moral responsibility and service, principally within the family, and boys get the job of economic development’ (her emphasis, Parker 1993: 9). As she goes on to show, class (and in the Balinese context, caste) is intertwined with gender to undermine equality in the classroom. In school at least, a higher-class/caste Balinese girl experiences a greater degree of freedom from gender restriction than that felt by her lower-status sisters. From early this century onwards, it seems education has had more to offer to upper- and middle-class girls. In her analysis of gender roles in elementary school texts in the early years of the New Order, Martha Logsdon noted a remarkable tendency to portray gender roles similar to those promoted in the West, with women restricted to home duties. So divergent did this seem from the real roles played by most Indonesian women that it required explanation. In her view it was linked to the government’s desire to transform Indonesians into a modern ‘developed’ country. ‘The role which Indonesian children seem to be prepared for by these books is a patrifocal, male-dominated society, in which women can be prepared to serve as a “reserve labor force” (they are, after all, encouraged to study hard) but in which their primary role is reproduction’ (Logsdon 1985: 260). It is difficult to assess the actual effect on the lives of men and women of the gender construction implicit in Indonesian schooling. For one thing, it cannot be isolated from other similar influences reaching people though other arms of the state apparatus, like the family planning programme. We know, too, that most ordinary women continue to live very differently from the middle-class and domesticated model purveyed by the state education system. But such pervasive gender ideology must at the very least be considered an obstacle to extending their autonomy. The Asian financial crisis of 1998 caused great concern about access to education in Indonesia, as government funding shrank and parents took their children out of school to reduce costs and contribute to family income. There is some evidence that girls were more affected than were Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 65] === Education 55 boys by these events, something that aroused the concern of a number of women’s organisations. More positively, the democratisation of Indonesia since the end of the New Order in 1998 has enabled fresh approaches to thinking about education. The highly centralised, rote-learning system is being dismantled and more attention is being paid to the content of education. For instance, the National Human Rights Commission and women’s organisations criticised sex-stereotyping in school texts and the tendency of girls to take up a limited range of subjects, particularly at higher levels, thus limiting their career options (Komnasham 2001). There is a clear connection between lower levels and kinds of education that girls receive and the fact that they are employed in less remunerative jobs (see Chapter 8). As the heavy hand of New Order control on research was lifted, Indonesian scholars were free to investigate the issue of gender bias in the education system. One of the books on the subject was a recent publication by Muthali’in (2001), which studied primary schools in Java and Bali. He concluded that there was indeed pervasive gender bias, in subjects, textbooks and pedagogy, and strongly recommended changes to the education system. It remains to be seen whether regional autonomy legislation, which took effect in 2001 and has devolved some responsibility for education to the district level, will make it easier or harder to address these concerns. It is likely that the problems of implementing educational devolution will mean that gender concerns will be given a low priority. Conclusion There was a clear difference in the colonial and post-independence discourses about responsibility for ensuring girls’ access to education. In the Dutch East Indies, few argued that schooling for girls had important economic benefits, for themselves let alone for the colonial economy. On the contrary, given the cost of training more female teachers and expanding school places, why should the colonial government invest in schools for girls or subsidise private ones, and why should parents undertake the expense, in school fees or opportunity costs, of sending their daughters to school? It was considered too soon to provide much education for the great mass of the female population who lived off agriculture or the informal sector: schooling for them must remain scarce and simple in nature, providing little economic benefit. Most of the debate revolved around what to do about education for daughters of the wealthier minority, most of whom would never be expected to earn their living, although some of them might go on to train for modern occupations like teaching, nursing, typing, etc. The defence of education for girls here rested on moral and Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 66] === 56 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia social outcomes: the ability of educated women to raise the moral tone and thus the status of Indonesian society, especially by helping to combat social evils, and to become suitable mothers and wives for male leaders in the new age of progress. Such notions persisted into the New Order and came to be questioned only at the end of the century. These arguments were put forward with varying degrees of emphasis by many advocates of the education of girls. Few protagonists couched their case in terms of the ability of education to increase female autonomy: that has not been a politically tactical argument in an Indonesian society where collective values prevail. Aspects of female autonomy nevertheless haunted the debate and were heard quite strongly from the young women who reflected on the significance of schooling for their lives. However conservative and even restrictive the content of schooling during the colonial period, those who received it felt themselves to be a privileged elite with direct and indirect access to a range of new ideas. For these people, their world was transformed. For some the experience led directly to nationalism; for many women it put them in conflict with their own families while opening up new opportunities and new networks in their own imagined community of educated sisters of the kind that Sunting Melayu represented for Minangkabau women. For later generations of Indonesian girls, a little knowledge was not such a dangerous thing: it would take a much deeper draught for them to overcome the restrictive aspects of the existing education system which had been captured first by the nationalist agenda and then, in the New Order, by a particular view of women’s role in ‘development’. As schooling for girls became more widespread it lost much of its transformative power and instead contributed to the domestication of women, something that is only now beginning to be recognised. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 67] === 3 Early marriage As the previous chapter on education showed, a prime concern of Indonesian women in pressing for schooling for girls was to prevent them from being forced into early marriage. Concentrating more directly on how the age of marriage became a political issue in twentieth-century Indonesia, this chapter investigates the changing intensity, focus and participation in debate over the issue. Compared with India, the incidence of very early marriage among Indonesian girls appears never to have been very high, yet among those trying to ‘modernise’ Indonesia it was considered to be a ‘social evil’ that parents married off their daughters at or before the onset of puberty. Social reformers differed as to the reasons for their concern and as to what action should be taken and by whom. In particular there were strong disagreements about whether government intervention was either desirable or effective in raising the age of marriage. The age at which it is appropriate for girls to marry has been a contentious matter in many countries. In societies where marriage was considered to be the prerogative of families, the children themselves were rarely consulted and the age of marriage, or at least of betrothal, was likely to be quite young, before children could exert their own will. Although physical readiness for sexual intercourse and child-bearing was a consideration, this was a matter for the supervision of adult kin, and the timing of the wedding could if necessary be separated from the consummation of marriage. Apart from families, the only other institutions directly concerned with marriage were likely to be religious ones. Indonesia in the twentieth century has seen the gradual and often disputed emergence of ‘modern’ ideas about marriageable age. Until recently, few Indonesians knew their precise chronological age because birth records were rarely kept, and marriages tended to occur early under the control of kin and religious (primarily Islamic) authorities. It was the presence of Dutch colonial rule which made the question of marriage age This is an abridged and revised version of an article written with Sharon Bessell (Blackburn and Bessell 1997). My thanks to Dr Bessell and to Indonesia for their permission to publish in this form. 57 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 68] === 58 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia into a political issue, as Western education spread notions of individual rights and the state extended its influence over family life. After independence in 1945 the nature of the debate about early marriage changed: the Indonesian state had greater legitimacy in the realm of social reform, the arguments in favour of later marriage shifted somewhat, and new players entered the scene. Women’s organisations now play a less prominent role. The debate about ‘child marriage’ in the Netherlands Indies During the colonial period, public debate about early marriage was framed in the context of ‘child marriage’. In the lexicon of social reformers, child marriage is a term of opprobrium. Almost exclusively associated with girls, it carries overtones of child sexual abuse, of precipitating children too early into adulthood and at the very least of depriving them of the right to choose their spouse. Differing attitudes to child marriage formed part of the clash of cultures between ‘modern’ and ‘backward’ peoples which characterised many colonial situations, not only in the Netherlands Indies. The best-documented case of the politics of child marriage is undoubtedly British India, where the problem of Hindu child brides was compounded by a stigma against divorce and widowhood and the tragedy of sati. Campaigns by Indian and British reformers led to legislation being passed by the colonial government against child marriage, notably the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 (Forbes 1979). Compared to British India, the politics of child marriage in the Netherlands Indies was more muted and did not result in legislation. It was, however, a cause close to the hearts of social reformers in different camps, including both women’s organisations and state authorities. Although the actual incidence of child marriage in the Indies was unclear, it was felt by many people to be unacceptably high. Being Muslims, most Indonesians contracted marriages under Islamic law, which stipulated no minimum age. Girls need not personally agree to marriage: consent could be given on their behalf by their male guardian, a father or grandfather. Those who opposed child marriage did so on a number of grounds associated with ‘modern’ values: protection of children (especially from sexual abuse), championing of the rights of girls to determine their own futures and the need for a modern, respected nation to be based on strong, stable families. All these reformers can be seen as participating in a common project of refashioning the Indonesian family in line with ‘modern’ notions of childhood and motherhood. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 69] === Early marriage 59 A formidable array of factors confronted campaigners for change. Not only were there vested interests in the form of supporters of the rights of Islam and of parents and kin to control children, but also the practical obstacles were daunting. The only accurate age data for Indonesians related to a few Christian groups in the Outer Islands. In many cases, too, the formal wedding ceremony was not immediately followed by cohabitation or physical consummation, which might be postponed for months or years, thus confusing the issue of alleged physical damage to prepubescent wives. Conversely, in regions of Eastern Indonesia where bride-price was demanded, cohabitation might begin before the formalities of marriage were completed on payment of the final instalment of bride-price. Early statements by Indonesian women As we have seen, from early in the twentieth century Indonesian women who had received a Western education began to draw attention to the problem of child marriage. One of the earliest cries of outrage came from R. A. Kartini, a consistent opponent of customs she considered oppressive to women. Thus in 1901 she wrote to her Dutch friend Mrs Abendanon about the marriage of Mini, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the Regent of Ciamis: I had tears of rage and regret and desperation in my eyes – and especially of sympathy for that poor child when I read the announcement of the proposed marriage. Mini, that dear, wonderful child, who had such a promising future – marrying – that young thing! – oh, I still cannot imagine it. It is outrageous! Oh, do not create illusions which must be destroyed – do not encourage dreams, when one knows beforehand that rude awakening must follow. It is cruel – cruel! (Kartini 1992: 121) The letter shows how much Kartini had absorbed from her Dutch friends and teachers: to her Mini at thirteen was still a child, and she felt that the girl’s dreams of a ‘promising future’ had been betrayed. As a young woman of the same priyayi class, Kartini found it easy to imagine that Mini entertained her own dreams, the result of exposure to a world beyond the narrow one of priyayi girls where early marriage like this was not unusual and was seen by many merely to mark a transition into adulthood. The first heads of Kartini schools, private elementary schools established for girls by the Dutch in Java from 1913 onwards, frequently reported that pupils of twelve to fourteen years were withdrawn from studies by their parents because they were to be married (Vereeniging Kartinifonds 1938: 46, 64; Kartinifonds 1939: 21). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 70] === 60 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia Not only among Javanese priyayi families were girls in the early twentieth century beginning to protest against being married off by their parents. As mentioned in the previous chapter, in the weekly newspaper for women Sunting Melayu, young women in West Sumatra were also taking a stand against parental pressure to marry early. Correspondents to the paper argued strongly that a girl should be allowed to attain the adult qualities required of a wife and mother, so that her marriage could be stable; otherwise divorce would result with all its undesirable consequences. Parents who ignored such considerations when arranging their daughters’ marriage were depicted as selfish. One daring contributor advocated that girls should not be married before the age of eighteen (because otherwise ‘her body will quickly deteriorate’ and ‘if she gives birth to a child, she won’t know how to look after it’) and that it should be left to the girl herself to find the husband (‘Girls are human, aren’t they? They also have brains’) (Soenting Melajoe 1914). This brought a heated response from a male member of the old guard, arguing that the age of eighteen might be suitable for a cold country but not for the Indies, on the grounds that in hot climates children matured faster. Moreover, he argued, it was ridiculous to say that until the age of eighteen girls did not know how to look after children, since most had looked after younger siblings. If the girl had menstruated and reached the age of fifteen, she was old enough to marry. It is right for parents to choose the husband. And among us [matrilineal] Minangkabaus, the rights of male elders must be consulted. If you leave it to a girl, she may be tricked into marriage by a womanizer or misled by men who deceive girls as we read about in Europe (the story of Don Juan). A daughter must respect her parents and their wishes so as not to cause them The rights of adat (local custom) were argued here against the foolishness of Western custom. In Minangkabau novels, this battle of Westerneducated children against parental and adat claims dominated plots, and often centred around choice of marriage partner (Stuers 1960; Postel- Coster 1985). The same year (1914) saw the publication of the volume dealing with women from the report of the Commission Enquiring into Declining Native Welfare in Java and Madura. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the volume contained submissions from nine Javanese women commenting on what would be required to raise the status of women. Seven of these correspondents, including the well-known educator Dewi Sartika from Bandung, all mentioned the necessity of abolishing child marriage and more broadly the need for women to be consulted about Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 71] === Early marriage 61 marriage partners. Dewi Sartika labelled child marriage ‘truly a cancer in the Native society, which must be rooted out’(Netherlands Indies Government, 1914: Bijdrage Sartika). All argued that sound marriages could be contracted only when the parties involved were adult and had fully consented, not been coerced by parents. Otherwise, warned Dewi Sartika, their children would suffer in turn and women might even be driven into prostitution by the break-up of marriage. The answer, they all agreed, was education: people who had been educated did not submit to ‘barbaric’ customs. The views of civil servants The 1914 volume of the Declining Welfare Report was also interesting for the first public official analysis of child marriage by Dutch and Indonesian civil servants. One of the members of the commission undertaking the enquiry was Raden Achmed Jayadiningrat, then the Regent of Serang (Banten), an area subsequently shown to have a high incidence of child marriage. In Serang, he reported, child marriage of girls of seven to ten years used to occur according to the custom referred to as kawin gantung (suspended marriage), whereby children were formally betrothed but actual consummation of marriage was delayed for four to six years. According to Jayadiningrat, however, in villages in the north of the district postponement of consummation belonged to the past, the main motive of parents being to marry off their children as quickly as possible. The Regent of Wonosobo also stated that the age of marriage was declining in his district: at the time of the report, girls were usually married off at the age of ten to fifteen and boys at the age of thirteen to fifteen. Some thirty years before, he claimed, average age was about five years older. The two regents summed up the main reasons for early marriages in rural Java in similar terms. There were economic advantages to parents in gaining the help of a son-in-law, or through receiving the contributions which guests customarily made at a marriage feast. At the same time, parents saw early marriage as in the interest of their daughters: if marriage were postponed the child might ‘go astray’ and lessen her chances of marriage. After all, because children went to work early, they grew up quickly. The regents claimed that people were ignorant of the disadvantages of early marriage both for the couple and for their offspring. Finally, they said, the Javanese were conservative and early marriage was an established tradition (Netherlands Indies Government 1914: 6). Many of these reasons were also advanced in later years: they represent a mixture of parental desire for gain through marrying their daughters, a conviction that childhood was brief and a fear of the sexuality of girls. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 72] === 62 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia The rest of the report’s notes on child marriage summarised further evidence and commented on the phenomenon. As against the observations of the two regents and reports of a rise in the incidence of child marriage in twenty-six districts, it was noted that in twenty-seven other districts ‘this abuse’ was declining, either for economic reasons (e.g. coolies were easy to get, so the labour of a son-in-law was less necessary; or the cost of living had risen, meaning dowry or wedding feasts were less affordable) or because ‘the European example’ was spreading. In general, concluded the report, ‘marriage was more a matter for parents than for the children involved, especially among the more well-to-do’. Although many child marriages were no more than betrothals, there was no doubt where the report stood on the matter: early marriage led to divorce, to polygamy and to the early physical decline of the wife. The Dutch were most scandalised by early consummation of underage marriage, the sexual violation of childhood, for it was on this point alone that they took legislative action. Article 288 of the Criminal Law Code of 1915 stipulated that ‘A man who has sexual intercourse with a woman who he knows or may well suspect is not yet of marriageable age, and inflicts physical injury on her as a result, incurs a jail sentence of at most four years’, with heavier penalties in case of more serious injury. On the other hand, this conflicted with another article of the code which, as we shall see in Chapter 8, ruled out the notion of marital rape. As was later admitted, the law was unenforceable and not policed. The Declining Welfare Report set the scene for later statements by Dutch and Javanese officials on the question of child marriage, for instance in the People’s Council (Volksraad) in the 1920s. In this advisory representative assembly, the subject of child marriage was raised on a few occasions. It was usually European members of the assembly who voiced concerns over child marriage. In 1922, for instance, Bergmeijer referred to reports from missionaries in Sulawesi and Central Java of the sufferings of very young girls at the hands of husbands who abused and abandoned them (Netherlands Indies Government 1922b: 418). His observations echoed the concern expressed in an earlier report of a Volksraad committee, where an unnamed member was reported as urging the government to pass a law forbidding child marriage (Netherlands Indies Government 1922a: Ond.1-Afd.II-Stuk 6). In response to this pressure, two Indonesian official members of the Volksraad, the Regents Jayadiningrat and Ariodinoto, argued that although there was room for concern about child marriage, they were certain that the custom would gradually decline with education and social change. Neither showed any sense of urgency about it. According to Jayadiningrat, little had changed in villages since he testified to the Declining Welfare Commission eight years Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 73] === Early marriage 63 before, although among priyayi families and others where Western influence was stronger, girls were being married older, not usually before the age of sixteen. Jayadiningrat was aware that ‘voices have been raised for the government to take measures against child marriage’, but he wished to show that the matter was not as simple as many thought. For one thing, he said, there was no real evidence that girls suffered from it. Many people practised kawin gantung, whereby parents delayed handing over the bride until she ‘shows the first signs of being a woman’, presumably a euphemism for menstruation. ‘Also on the side of the husband generally great calm and caution is taken, as required by adat’, and as supervised by the girl’s guardian. ‘For these reasons’, he concludes, ‘it is very rare that in such marriages a woman suffers physical damage.’ As evidenced by the 1915 legislation, Dutch officials did not always find these arguments against the harm inflicted on girls quite so compelling. They were more impressed by the next set of cautionary comments by Jayadiningrat. According to Muslim law, a father has the right to marry his daughter off, even against her will, as soon as she is marriageable. This is probably the reason why Muslim Javanese, who commonly wish to retain the choice of their son-in-law, will not willingly give up rules sanctified by religion and marry their daughters off as early as possible. Therefore I do not think it necessary or desirable for the government to take special measures against such customs. Just as among the higher ranks of Native society, so too in the village, tradition concerning marriage will gradually of itself change for the better. The signs are already present: thus in towns where the ordinary villager often comes into contact with the intellectual section of the population, child marriage has almost disappeared. (Netherlands Indies Government 1922b: 40) In these views Jayadiningrat was backed by Ariodinoto. While admitting that child marriage had ‘harmful results’, he agreed that it could not be overcome by force: ‘we can only override it by reason, by the use of education’ (Netherlands Indies Government 1922b: 241). The Director of Justice, responding to the debate in the Volksraad, showed a similar unwillingness on the part of the government to take action on the matter (Netherlands Indies Government 1922b: 402). Dutch colonial views, 1920s Behind the scenes, however, Dutch officials were less confident in their approach. During the 1920s they debated among themselves whether there was any effective action they could or should take on child marriage. The debate began with concern expressed by the Resident of Lampung Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 74] === 64 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia over a ‘social evil’ in his district, the custom of wealthy Lampungers marrying young girls who were treated as slaves: in fact he saw the custom of secondary wives in Lampung as a direct continuation of the taking of house-slaves, a practice declared illegal in the previous century. The problem was compounded by the recent trend for these girls to be bought from the neighbouring province of Banten, where poor fathers sold their daughters into what was virtual captivity, labouring for their husbands in remote and unfamiliar locations. The fact that divorce was very rare among the Lampungers meant a woman’s chances of escape were slim (Acting Adviser for Native Affairs 1921). Dutch official attitudes to the ease and frequency of divorce in Java were contradictory: whereas some saw it as mitigating the harm of child marriage, others saw the strong association between early marriage and divorce as evidence of the evil effects of the custom. While it is true that divorce meant that unhappy child marriages could be dissolved (unlike, say, among the Hindus of British India where divorce was unacceptable), it must also be remembered that under Islamic law women could initiate divorce only with the greatest difficulty. Although the problem of Banten girls in Lampung was addressed by the government by appointing a ‘protector of Bantenese’ in Lampung and spreading information on the Lampung situation in Banten (Adviser for Native Affairs 1923), the discussion led immediately into a wider debate about child marriage. The Adviser for Native Affairs, Kern, explained at some length to the Director of Civil Service the customs of marriage among Indonesian Muslims. ‘As a rule’, he began, ‘it can be said that the peoples of the Indonesian Archipelago marry as soon as they are adults.’ But parents who wished to control the choice of husband often married daughters off while they were still children. Child marriage, he claimed, ‘must be considered an Indonesian institution’, and since it was ‘a principle of Dutch colonial government policy to respect native institutions’, it was ‘therefore appropriate that our laws do not make child marriage a punishable offence’. Moreover, he believed that most marriages at very young ages were not in fact consummated until adulthood (kawin gantung), to which there could be no objection (Adviser for Native Affairs 1922). Freedom of choice for girls obviously did not receive high priority with Kern. Kern then considered the feasibility of government intervention. Legislation was unworkable and undesirable. ‘If one limits oneself to surveillance, then one would have to cover all non-adult girls who are unmarried, to make a judgement about whether they are already fully-grown before they marry, or whether they can have intercourse with their spouses, and... also keep watch on whether the husband does not by oversight sleep with the girl.’ Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 75] === Early marriage 65 In Bandung, according to Kern, the regent took strong action to prevent child marriage, which he interpreted as marriage under the age of sixteen, by requiring local Javanese officials to prevent such marriages being contracted. Kern noted that this action ‘aroused discontent’. ‘I honour his courage and high conviction, but I wonder whether he is not taking on a heavier burden than is advisable. It is going against Muslim marriage law.’ It was one thing for a devout Muslim regent to interfere in that way, but if it were done on the initiative of a ‘heathen government’ it ‘would become an assault on religion’. In Kern’s view, the only answer was to rely on the social evolution already under way in the Indies. Increasingly world traffic has broken the isolation of the Muslim world, calling forth comparisons of the position of women in Christian and Muslim countries which are to the disadvantage of the latter. Thus we see attempts to make a rational explanation of religious law, and more and more women raise their voices and urge more just treatment... This movement of catching up with the world outside Islam leads one to expect that early marriage will decline. Government can speed that process by promoting development in general and of women in particular. To go further seems to me decidedly inadvisable. The Director of Justice felt rather more concerned. In 1923 he acknowledged that there was pressure from some regents and residents in Java to take action against child marriage, and that there was evidence that although ‘people try to give child marriage the appearance of only a betrothal (kawin gantung), nevertheless the bodily immature but already married girl is misused, i.e. that what is called consummation or rather violation is not infrequent in child marriage’. Article 288 of the Penal Code against injuring an immature wife through sexual intercourse was a dead letter, since it had never been publicised and ‘it would be extremely difficult to produce evidence of the crime’ (Director of Justice 1923). The question is: what can the legislator do about this? He can, through legislation, as so many times has happened, exercise moral influence; he can unambiguously let it be known that child marriage is an anti-social and thus objectionable deed; he can through legislation lend support to the Regents, vice-regents and sympathetic village chiefs to fight against the evil of child marriage. This need not happen by threatening punishment, which would not work... But... it can be made objectionable and impermissible. Kern responded by reiterating that it was undesirable and unfeasible to interfere in deeply rooted practices which were often defended by Indonesians as supremely ethical. ‘It is obvious that too early marriage is harmful. It is desirable it should disappear. But Islamic law, as here received, condones it and one cannot oppose it without coming into conflict with the syariah [Islamic law]’ (Adviser for Native Affairs 1923). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 76] === 66 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia It seems that Kern did not win this argument – at least not immediately. In 1925 the government Secretary issued a circular about child marriage to governors (Government Secretary 1925). Although there could be little objection to kawin gantung, it said, where consummation was not postponed and physical harm was caused to the young woman, ‘combating such marriages is urgent and is the serious duty of our government’. The government had decided that legislation on the matter was likely not to be as effective as ‘the evolution of ideas of Native society itself’, but it relied on the personal influence of Native officials. ‘Various Javanese Regents have already given a good example by telling marriage officials to oppose marriages with not yet marriageable women’, although ‘much tact and care are needed so as not to give occasion for complaint’. The government would also publish information in local languages about the physical and moral damage wrought by child marriage. And finally, in order to monitor whether ‘the evil of child marriage’ was declining without legal prohibition, the government required officials to provide, on a six-monthly basis, statistics about the number of child marriages contracted in their areas. The emphasis in the colonial authorities’ response was again on the need to protect children from harm. In the event, neither of the surveillance measures proved feasible. Two years later another circular called off attempts to bring prospective brides before officials to ascertain whether they were marriageable. For many years, it noted, this had been done and if the bride was found to be too young, the parents were ‘seriously advised not to go through with the wedding’; indeed in some places marriage contractors were instructed not to authorise such weddings. However, it had been decided that such actions were problematic. It was not practical to require parents to call off a wedding when all the preparations had been made, and ‘there are widespread, understandable objections to interrogating young brides, because the questions asked are offensive to her feelings and those of her family members, besides the fact that such enquiries are conducted by men unknown to her’. As a result, the Governor-General now wished to advise against such action (Netherlands Indies Government 1927). The debate peaks By this time the interest in and concern about child marriage had grown considerably. Evidence of the views of Dutch feminists was to be found in De Vrouw in Huis en Maatschappij: Propagandablad voor de Vrouwenbeweging in Indonesie (The Women in the Home and in Society: Propaganda Paper for the Women’s Movement in Indonesia), an unusual paper edited Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 77] === Early marriage 67 in 1926 by a Dutch feminist, Mrs Corporaal-van Achterburgh, and written in both Dutch and Malay by European and Indonesian women. It was clearly motivated by a desire to bring women of different races together, at a time when, with the decline of the Ethical Policy and rapid growth in the size of the European community, such efforts were largely doomed. A number of Dutch writers in this paper reflected on the problems of Indonesian married life. For instance, it was noted that ‘child marriages still flourish’: ‘And with festivities the martyrdom of a child’s soul is celebrated, tearing her from her childish games, forced into a whirlpool of passion which she doesn’t understand, the victim of a man often three or four times older than her, sometimes grey-haired. Thus one sees in the villages, children with children at the breast... An end should be made to this’ (Op de Uitkijk 1926). The campaign against child marriage was also growing amongst Western-educated Indonesians. The year 1928 represented something of a peak in their public activity on this issue. In December that year Indonesian women’s organisations held their first congress in Yogyakarta. Child marriage featured prominently on the agenda of concerns expressed. A speaker named Mugarumah made a speech specifically on that topic, and that indefatigable campaigner against the oppression of women in marriage, Siti Sundari, also denounced it. The congress made a resolution to stop child marriage: every member was requested to make propaganda about the evil of child marriage and to ask civil servants to assist by giving information to the people about it (Congres Perempoean 1929). Despite the strong stand on child marriage at the 1928 congress, it is notable that the issue rarely featured in conferences of the women’s federation that was then formed. Along with other issues associated with marriage, it obviously proved too controversial for the Islamic women’s organisations. To keep them in the federation meant avoiding divisive topics. After all, the largest Islamic women’s organisation, Aisyiyah, would have had difficulty taking a stand against child marriage when it was named after one of the Prophet’s wives who had been married to him at the age of nine.1 Outside the constraints of the federation, however, women continued to campaign against child marriage. It was precisely the refusal of the federation to deal with issues such as marriage laws that contributed to the formation in 1930 of the more radical women’s organisation Istri 1 Two Islamic women’s organisation journals from the colonial period, Isteri-Soesila Taman Moeslimah (Solo, 1924–6) and Soeara ’Aisjijah (Published in Yogyakarta 1932 and 1941–2) contained no articles on child marriage. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 78] === 68 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia Sedar (Aware Women). In the pages of its journal Sedar, practices of forced marriage and child marriage were denounced, and change was demanded not just in people’s behaviour but also in Islamic marriage law, on the grounds that women must have the freedom to control their own lives and that child marriage was likely to damage the health of both the wife and her offspring. Nationalist parties were also active in campaigning against child marriage. In 1928 the secular nationalist Dr Sutomo, leader of the Indonesische Studieclub (Indonesian Study Club) in Surabaya, produced a book entitled Perkawinan dan Perkawinan Anak-Anak (Marriage and Child Marriage), significantly published by the government-owned Balai Pustaka, dedicated to issuing improving and informative works in Malay. As the only book published by an Indonesian on the subject of child marriage, it is clearly a significant contribution to the debate. Sutomo’s book puts him squarely in the league of nationalist social reformers. A medical doctor by profession, Sutomo pronounced in his Introduction that his intention was to write a book to be read by ‘civil servants, teachers, doctors and others who on account of their position and daily work have the opportunity to lead the People from a dark world into the light’ (Soetomo 1928: 6), a phrase that immediately evokes the title of the selection of Kartini’s letters published by J. H. Abendanon: Door Duisternis tot Licht (Through Darkness to Light). Sutomo forms a bridge from Ethical Policy attitudes to those of the nationalist movement, continuing thus: ‘There are many conditions and rules in our Indonesian society which need to be examined if we intend to gain a respected place amongst other nations, which is what we very much desire’ (Soetomo 1928: 7). One of those conditions in need of scrutiny was clearly marriage customs. Sutomo took great pains in this book to convince his Indonesian readers that the spirit of Islamic ideas on marriage was perfectly compatible with modern Western notions. The book was liberally sprinkled with quotations from the Koran and hadis (sayings of the Prophet) side by side with J. S. Mill, Western sociologists and the new Dutch guide to modern marriage, Dr Th. van de Velde’s Over ’t Volkomen Huwelijk (Ideal Marriage), published in 1926. Sutomo started out confidently: ‘It is certain that a marriage which is intended to last forever, regardless of circumstances, must be based on a firm love, mutual respect, giving oneself to the other’ (p. 12), and cited van de Velde’s four conditions of love and happiness: sound choice of spouse; health; agreement about children; and well-matched sexual desire (p. 21). About half the text of the book and all its lengthy appendices (speeches and regulations) concerned child marriage. Sutomo’s greatest objection Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 79] === Early marriage 69 to child marriage was that it represented a form of forced marriage, burdening children with responsibilities which they could not fully understand (p. 37). Moreover, child marriage frequently led to divorce, which ‘hinders good family life and is also a bad influence on the upbringing of children’ (p. 40). It was up to Islamic marriage officials, he claimed, to help stamp out the evil of child marriage. Religious organisations, both Islamic and Christian, were already making praiseworthy efforts in this respect. In fact, Sutomo went to considerable lengths to document numerous cases where Islamic organisations in recent times had criticised child marriage. As a secular nationalist with a dubious reputation among Islamic organisations, Sutomo sought to bolster the Islamic credibility of his cause. Apart from what he identified as the necessary and growing support of Muslim organisations, Sutomo hailed the women’s movement as an ally, and urged Muslim women’s organisations to join with others in a united front. Women’s equality, he argued, would not harm society, and he pointed to Scandinavian countries as examples of the way in which women’s movement towards equality had led to increased protection of children. He referred to the work of Kartini (‘She convinced men of our nation about the oppression of men towards women’) and to the female contributors to the Declining Welfare Commission (p. 47). In conclusion Sutomo called on every right-thinking Indonesian to make child marriage a national issue. The government could do much through schooling where children were taught to postpone marriage and respect women, and civil servants and local officials also had a role to play. Pointing to the success of the government’s campaign against opiumsmoking, he hoped that the same kind of attitude change could occur in relation to child marriage (pp. 48–9). Sutomo’s book judiciously blended the arguments against child marriage which every interested party – Dutch, nationalist, Muslim and feminist – would wish to see expressed. As far as action was concerned, he called not for government legislation but for awareness-raising which would lead to a change in values. It is very much what one might expect of a reforming type of Indonesian nationalist who through his work as a doctor saw social problems at first-hand. It might not be going too far, either, to discern in his thinking on this issue the influence of his wife, a Dutch nurse whom he held in high regard.2 It was certainly the most outspokenly ‘pro-woman’ of his writings and distinguished him as possibly the sole male nationalist to take up what were usually regarded as ‘women’s issues’, as against just trying to recruit women into the 2 See Sutomo’s memoirs for his touching tribute to his late wife (Soetomo 1934: 127–8). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 80] === 70 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia nationalist movement. The distinction here is, however, a fine one: for Sutomo, child marriage was a nationalist issue, because it affected the strength and reputation of the Indonesian nation. Colonial government measures in the 1930s Meanwhile, the Adviser for Native Affairs was saddled with the task of interpreting the six-monthly statistics on child marriage requested by the government in 1925 (Adviser for Native Affairs 1930 and 1932). For some years he wrestled with the motley collection of figures and comments provided to him by local officials (mostly local level Islamic marriage officials), becoming more and more frustrated in the process. The whole exercise faced insuperable problems. First of all, there was no agreement amongst informants as to what constituted child marriage. In most cases, officials reported it to be either marriage of a girl below a certain age (anywhere from under nine to under sixteen years) or marriage before menstruation occurred. There was no way of establishing exact age for most girls without proper birth registration. In many cases it was obvious that the 1927 circular against requiring girls to appear before officials to establish age was not being followed. Witnesses were often called in to give evidence about age or an estimate was made by judging whether the outward appearance of the girl showed she had reached puberty. If ‘marriageable age’ were based on evidence of menstruation, no tactful and reliable way could be found to determine this, although in many cases again witnesses were questioned. Sometimes officials responsible for compiling the reports simply evaded the issue of definition, perhaps revealing how unfamiliar and incomprehensible the whole notion of child marriage was, or alternatively that they could not be bothered investigating it. In the western district of Borneo, for instance, child marriage was defined in circular terms as marriage where the girl was not yet marriageable, and in Benkulen and Aceh the bland statement was proffered that ‘Only marriages between marriageable persons are known.’ The six-monthly reports contained a number of fascinating local variations in the monitoring of child marriage. In some districts (Krawang, Pamekasan and Temanggung) a girl was held to be of marrigeable age when she ‘has a dream of orgasm’, presumably demonstrating that she was ready for sex. In Blitar, ‘to determine age, the circumference of the girl’s head is measured with a thread, which is then laid on the girl’s neck, and if the ends do not reach her nipples, the girl is marriageable’. In many cases the girl had to run the gauntlet of so many interrogators that she (and Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 81] === Early marriage 71 her relatives) must have found it a humiliating (or farcical) experience, particularly considering that by this stage the wedding arrangements had mostly been completed. Secondly, there was the vexed question of kawin gantung, a practice which existed under other names in many places. The report sheets required officials to specify whether the so-called child marriage was in fact a case of postponed consummation. Understandably, it was impossible to ascertain whether such postponement actually occurred. In some areas, officials insisted that only kawin gantung marriages were permitted for child brides, whereupon all early marriages were recorded as kawin gantung. Finally, the statistics were often unbelievable. Even statistics provided for the one district, where presumably the criteria were constant, fluctuated in illogical ways, undermining their credibility and making it impossible to establish clear trends. Alternatively, credibility was weakened when the local regent or resident was known to be strongly against child marriage, leading lower officials to cease registering any cases for fear of disapproval. Despite the chaotic nature of the reports, the Adviser for Native Affairs found some value in them if only because the requirement to collect them illustrated the government’s concern about child marriage. This put pressure on local officials and fuelled the efforts of non-government organisations, principally in the women’s movement. Moreover, it was possible to draw a number of tentative conclusions from the collected data. Firstly, it seemed to the Adviser that overall, the combined statistics and official comments which accompanied them showed that the incidence of child marriage was declining. The reasons advanced for this decline were many and varied. More predictable explanations were that people were becoming more educated and/or susceptible to pressure from their leaders, those in nationalist parties or in official positions, who opposed child marriage. Less obvious explanations included a report from Grobongan regency that people had noted the bad consequences of child marriage, including that ‘often there were love affairs here between the mother-inlaw and the son-in-law because the wife was still too young [for sexual intercourse], which resulted in violence’, and because mishandling of young brides was also not uncommon. Similar observations came from Grissee, where according to the regent, ‘fights often occur as a result of liaisons between mother-in-law and son-in-law’, leading to parents-inlaw ‘mostly trying to urge the son-in-law to resort to public women while he may not still sleep with his young bride’. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 82] === 72 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia Secondly, there was of course considerable regional variation in the apparent incidence of child marriage. In a few regions like West and Central Java and Solo, it appeared to be relatively high. In Serang Regency, for instance, in the period 1928–31 more than one thousand cases of child marriage were recorded every year. In the Outer Islands the only place registering significant numbers of child marriages was West Sumatra. As noted, however, reporting was dubious at best. At one point the Adviser for Native Affairs had queried the Aceh report that there was no child marriage in the region, calling the Governor’s attention to Snouck Hurgronje’s earlier writing on the Acehnese, which documented cases of child marriage. After that hint, the Governor obligingly came up with some figures of child marriage, presumably gained by twisting the arms of the local chiefs who were responsible for providing them. By about this time, the results of the 1930 census were becoming available. The census collectors reported the familiar problems of establishing age and incidence of child marriage. No exact ages were listed; instead, collectors were required to list every individual as belonging to one of three age groups. The first of these, infancy, was relatively easy since it covered infants who were not yet walking, but it proved extremely difficult to distinguish the boundary between the next two categories, non-adult and adult, especially since married girls were likely to be automatically classed as adult: as in the English language, it seemed virtually impossible to view a wife as a child rather than a woman, as though marriage were a rite of passage. Assuming that the understatement of the level of child marriage was relatively uniform, however, one could still conclude from the census that the provinces with the highest rate were West and Central Java, followed by East Java, with some areas of Sumatra (Aceh, the northeast and the west) also showing as relatively high. In no district, however, were more than a few percentage of girls in the second age group listed as being married, leading the census compilers to conclude defensively that although there were undeniably ‘many married children’, the problem in the Indies was less serious than in India; and in any case, they added, ‘such alliances are... not always of long duration’(Netherlands Indies Government 1930: vol. VIII, 51).3 Even before the census results had been published, the government had decided that attempts to collect statistics specifically on child marriage no longer served a useful purpose. In June 1932 another circular was sent to officials requesting them to cease providing their six-monthly reports. The statistics had been unreliable, and in any case it seemed that as a 3 In British India in 1929 research on age of marriage estimated that 42 per cent of the female population were married before age fifteen (Forbes 1979: 413). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 83] === Early marriage 73 result of ‘intensive combating’ in many places, the incidence of child marriage was declining. ‘Rejection of this practice can be left to public opinion. In the first place it rests with women’s organisations to concern themselves with this matter’ (Netherlands Indies Government 1932). The colonial government made one last and abortive bid to tackle the issue of child marriage head on. In 1937 it launched a draft of an ordinance for optional monogamous marriage for Muslims. As will be discussed further in Chapter 5, the main thrust of the proposal was to offer Muslim couples the option of registering monogamous marriages. However, it also stipulated a minimum age for such marriages: eighteen for men and fifteen for women (Netherlands Indies Government 1937). When it proved unacceptable both to Muslim organisations and to nationalist parties, which resented colonial efforts to interfere in personal affairs, the government withdrew the ordinance after only a few months’ informal discussion. That was the end of its efforts at social reform in the area of Indonesian marriage practice. Indonesian women’s intiatives, 1930s The Indonesian women’s movement, however, pressed on with the campaign against child marriage. Women in Muslim organisations began to be more vocal on marriage issues, partly in response to the government’s marriage ordinance project of 1937. At its 1938 congress, for instance, the women’s wing of the Islamic Union of Indonesia Party (Partai Sarekat Islam Indonesia – PSII), which had never before made political statements, included some outspoken comments on the need to abolish child marriage. S. Sumadhi denounced the marriage of young girls as caused by parental greed and likely to damage the health of mothers and offspring. A statement by the executive claimed it had received many requests to consider the matter of child marriage. Although it acknowledged that according to Islam child marriage was lawful, nevertheless the practice should be opposed. Young girls were not capable of taking responsibility as housewives and mothers (Pergerakan Isteri PSII 1940). Nevertheless, the organisation still refused to set an appropriate chronological age for marriage, preferring the assessment to be left to individuals and, no doubt, wishing to avoid a confrontation with religious leaders on the matter.4 One woman who kept the issue in the forefront was Chairul Syamsu Datu Tumenggung, a Minang married to a colonial civil servant living 4 A contemporary publication by Aisyiyah, the modernist Islamic women’s organisation, makes no mention of child marriage (Aisjijah 1939). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 84] === 74 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia in Batavia and active in the Assocation of the Wives of Indonesian Civil Servants (Persatuan Isteri Pegawai Bestuur), for whom she edited the monthly journal Pedoman Isteri (Woman’s Bulletin) in the 1930s. The pages of the journal occasionally carried articles opposing child marriage, principally arguing that the practice weakened the family. Mrs Datu Tumenggung also contributed a chapter entitled ‘Combating child marriage’ to the Indisch Vrouwen Jaarboek 1936 (Indies Women’s Yearbook 1936), a compilation of papers on women in the Indies by women of all races (Schreven and Boomkamp 1936). After sketching the incidence and causes of child marriage along familiar lines, she condemned parents for ‘committing a crime against young children which can haunt them for their whole life’. Better-educated people, she claimed, were well aware of ‘the evil’ and their efforts against it, combined with those of the government and of civil servants, had led to a decline in the practice in recent years. How she could be so sure of this is unclear, since she admits to the many obstacles facing the campaign such as Muslim opposition based on the lack of a prohibition against child marriage in Islam, and the difficulty of ascertaining the age of girls. It is likely that the decline she observed was in urban society. Mrs Tumenggung acknowledged the value of Sutomo’s book ‘in arousing concern in many circles’ and praised women’s organisations for doing likewise. As a result, she claimed, ‘people are slowly realising that indeed child marriage is a cancer in our world which must be strongly opposed’. Ever aware of the responsibilities of leadership, she concluded that ‘This task, i.e. of bringing this understanding to their uneducated sisters, rests on the shoulders of those women who are called to it by their education and development.’ In short, Mrs Tumenggung’s stance accorded with that of Sutomo, crusading for a social reform by means of education and leadership. Finally, at the end of the colonial period, the women’s movement began to take practical if small-scale action on marriage problems, by setting up in 1939 the Marriage Consultation Bureau. By the time the women were married it was of course too late to prevent child marriage, but the bureau began to document cases of abuse and abandonment which it considered often resulted from forced or child marriage. The aim of the bureau was to offer assistance and advice to women in such difficulties. Their evidence is particularly interesting in the light it sheds on cases of arranged marriage which never ‘took’ because one partner refused to accept the other. Where this led to the wife being deserted without divorce, she was often in trouble, since under Islamic law it was very difficult for a wife to initiate divorce proceedings or to claim support. The bureau helped some women work through these legal and financial Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 85] === Early marriage 75 ‘Early marriage’ discourse since 1945 Once Indonesian nationalists gained control of the state in 1945, women’s organisations expected governments to take stronger measures than in colonial times to improve the situation of women. In 1946, shortly after the Declaration of Independence, the Ministry of Religion, which was given responsibility for registration of marriage, divorce and repudiation, issued a law on the matter (No. 22 1946), followed in 1947 by an instruction to marriage officials to discourage and avoid registering forced and child marriages (Suwondo 1981: 79). Maria Ullfah Santoso (later Subadio), an active campaigner on women’s issues and Minister for Social Welfare between 1945 and 1947, observed that in practice the instruction was not fully implemented, suggesting that this could possibly be attributed to its relatively inferior status as an instruction (Soebadio 1981: 15). It far from fulfilled the demands of women’s organisations, which continued to lobby for more substantive reform, despite some disagreement as to precisely what form any legislation should take. Following the transfer of sovereignty in 1949, the struggle to raise the age of marriage was inextricably intertwined with the efforts of the women’s movement to reform the marriage law, a matter that will be considered in greater detail in Chapter 5 of this book. Although Kowani, the women’s federation, included organisations that differed on religious and political grounds, there was widespread consensus on the need for a national marriage law that would ensure women’s rights in marriage, with particular concern over polygamy, child marriage and women’s lack of rights within divorce. For more than two decades after independence, the agendas of women’s organisations were dominated by the issue of marriage law and efforts to have such legislation adopted. In August 1950, in response to concerted lobbying by both women’s organisations and female members of the Provisional Parliament, the government formed the Panitia Penyelidik Peraturan Hukum Perkawinan, Talak, dan Rujuk (Panitia NTR or Committee for Marriage, Divorce and Reconciliation) to examine the prospects for a new marriage law. In addition to investigating possible legislative approaches to marriage and divorce, the committee considered the question of whether Indonesia should have one law for all citizens, regardless of religion, or whether laws should be specific to particular religions. This issue continued to create division until the introduction of the 1974 Marriage Law. In December 1952, Panitia NTR produced a draft law on marriage, presented to the Ministry of Religion in 1954, which advocated a minimum marriage age of fifteen for girls and eighteen for boys. This initiated an on-going struggle between religious organisations and women’s Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 86] === 76 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia organisations, on the one hand, and between women’s organisations and the parliament, on the other (Soebadio 1981). For Muslim women’s organisations the matter of child marriage, like the associated issues raised by the marriage law debates, was fraught with difficulties, since male Islamic leaders resisted state interference in their religion. While the ensuing debates, and the on-going concerns of women’s organisations, included opposition to child marriage, the dominant issues were polygamy and discrimination against women in divorce and inheritance, regarded as being most detrimental to the status of women within marriage. Moreover, they posed the most direct threats to the interests of the women engaged in organisations and campaigns in favour of protective legislation. Although women’s groups continued to lobby for reform of early marriage, it was overshadowed by these other concerns. One explanation for this prioritisation of grievances is the fact that marriage itself is a rite of passage by which girls become women.5 In a society like Indonesia where very few women did not marry, those involved in organisations had already undergone that rite of passage and were confronted with more immediate concerns within the institution of marriage. While the rights of women were of primary importance, and some mention was made at various junctures of the rights and needs of children, child wives, often not in a position to speak on behalf of themselves, fell between these two categories. Moreover, the association of child marriage with life in rural areas tended to remove the issue to the periphery of the agendas of groups with a largely urban, and relatively educated, membership. In the 1950s, however, girls continued to marry very young, with signs of a gradual change in the following decade. Opposition to child marriage was based on concerns about the implications for girls’ health and education, and women’s organisations spoke on behalf of those who were married off, or likely to be married off, at an early age. As in the colonial period, child marriage was also often associated with forced marriage, where consent was absent and the girl might not have met her husband prior to the marriage, a state of affairs strongly opposed by a range of women’s organisations and by (often female) representatives of political parties including Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI – the Indonesian Communist Party) and Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI – the Indonesian Nationalist Party) (Nasution 1992: 220–3). 5 That marriage is considered to be a rite of passage into adulthood is reflected in the 1979 law on Child Welfare, which defines a child as any person under the age of twenty-one unless already married. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 87] === Early marriage 77 After 1965, the New Order Government of President Suharto had new priorities for women. In particular, in 1968, it began to promote family planning in an attempt to reduce Indonesia’s high growth rate. This offered a new reason for the state to support a higher age of marriage of girls, in an attempt to reduce the number of years of child-bearing. At the same time, the women’s movement maintained its pressure on the government. In 1973, a report entitled ‘The status of women and family planning in Indonesia’ was published, based on the work of a research team comprised of a number of individuals (notably Nani Suwondo) who had been active in the women’s movement and in the campaigns to reform marriage laws. It observed that although minimum age at marriage was rising, child marriages still occurred, particularly in the villages and especially in West Java. The need for comprehensive marriage legislation applicable to all Indonesia was emphasised (Ihromi 1973). The 1974 Marriage Law In 1973, a new marriage bill, applicable to all Indonesian citizens, was finally introduced by the government. During 1973–4, the bill became a source of considerable tension between various interest groups. In its final form, the legislation was a result of considerable compromise on a range of matters (including polygamy, as will be discussed in Chapter 5), and the minimum ages that were ultimately adopted were lower than those identified in the initial draft and advocated by a number of women’s organisations and the official family-planning policy. These compromises were concessions to Muslim lobby groups, both within and outside parliament. The amended act was promulgated in 1974. Thus the New Order Government became the first in Indonesian history to succeed in passing national marriage legislation, but even such a strong and authoritarian regime was obliged to make concessions to Islamic opposition, including in the area of minimum marriage age. In February 1973, a consultation between members of parliament and members of the women’s federation, Kowani, concluded that the appropriate minimum age for marriage was eighteen years for females and twenty-one years for males. In July of that year, the draft marriage legislation advocated these ages (Soebadio 1981: 17). Ultimately, the 1974 legislation adopted minimum ages of sixteen and nineteen years for females and males respectively. Significantly, the legislation also states that dispensation may be granted to allow the marriage of individuals who have not yet attained the minimum specified age. It does not, however, identify the circumstances that justify underage marriage. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 88] === 78 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia It is difficult to assess the impact of the 1974 law on marriage age. The population censuses of 1971, 1980 and 1990 indicated an upward trend in marriage age, in both urban and rural areas and among both males and females. Census results also confirmed earlier evidence that a far greater percentage of girls than boys marry before the age of twenty. There was variation between provinces with some, such as West Java, continuing to show a higher incidence of early marriage. Trends towards later marriage were more pronounced in urban than in rural areas, and studies in Java showed that the move to later marriage was strongest among the urban middle class (Taj 1990). Nevertheless, in rural areas there was also an identifiable trend towards later marriage. While child marriage (referring to girls under the age of fourteen) was, according to official figures, becoming relatively infrequent, marriage remained widespread among girls below the age of twenty, and the term ‘early marriage’ usually related to the fifteen to nineteen age group, amongst whom more than one-third were already married in 1980. It was, however, impossible to ascertain from census figures the percentage of girls who married under the legal age of sixteen, as the age cohorts used were under fourteen and fifteen to nineteen. A central question is the extent to which the introduction of the 1974 Marriage Law was responsible for the upward trend in marriage age. As indicated above, there were signs that the practice of marrying off very young girls, in many cases before puberty, was declining before the introduction of age restrictions. The demographer Gavin Jones has argued that the 1970s witnessed a ‘revolution in marriage patterns after at least half a century, and probably much longer, of near stability’, whereby the marriage of girls under the age of sixteen became less frequent (Jones 1994: 76). The origins of this transition predate the 1974 law. On the other hand, research carried out in the Bangkalan Regency of Madura in 1977, suggests that the marriage of girls under the age of sixteen remained commonplace and was widely accepted within the community. The study found that, of the 130 village heads interviewed, only approximately one in four knew the legal minimum age for marriage (Adfdol 1979). That few people in rural areas, including community leaders and local officials, were conversant with the new law indicates that both the debate about the appropriate regulation of marriage, including minimum age, and the impact of the law itself was, initially at least, confined to a relatively small and elite group of political, religious and social organisations. Later research has confirmed that in Madura the age of marriage remains low, explained by the conviction of the Madurese that the important thing is to follow their own version of Islamic law (Jones 2001). Moreover, because marriages below the age of sixteen are not Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 89] === Early marriage 79 permitted without special dispensation, it is likely that they are vastly understated in the statistics. Anecdotal evidence shows that some local officials collude with parents in disguising child marriage: false certificates of age are issued or age is incorrectly recorded at marriage. Corruption makes this possible, especially if a pregnant girl needs to be married off quickly, but cultural attitudes are also still important: particularly in strongly Islamic rural areas many people still consider it desirable that girls be married as early as possible.6 Over time, legislation is likely to be one factor contributing to the rising age of marriage, particularly in urban centres and places where people hear and respond to government information. In rural and remote areas, the impact of the legislation is likely to have been limited, as indicated by research in Madura. Other factors, including the strength of Islamic practice, and increasing the participation of girls in primary school, have probably been significant. Changes in the nature of marriage, particularly greater spousal choice and a move towards the convergence of marriage ceremony, consummation and cohabitation as opposed to kawin gantung, are also conducive to later marriage (Hull and Hull 1987; Taj 1990). Further, greater employment opportunities for girls in some areas, resulting from the expansion of the industrial sector from the mid-1980s and the feminisation of the industrial labour force have helped increase marriage age and spousal choice among teenage girls by giving them a somewhat greater degree of control over their lives (Wolf 1992). As discussed earlier, a primary motivation for official efforts to introduce a minimum age for marriage was its perceived role in family planning. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the government launched a campaign aimed at reinforcing the delay of first marriage for girls until the age of sixteen, that is the minimum age for marriage under the 1974 legislation. By the 1990s the government was encouraging a longer delay of marriage, with twenty identified as the preferred minimum age for females and twenty-five for males (UNICEF 1994: 76). After the collapse of the New Order, voices within the women’s movement again took up the call for higher marriage ages (Jakarta Post 27 August 2003; Kompas 8 January 2001). By this time, the state had taken up international rhetoric on reproductive health which had become a part of official rhetoric, calling attention to the high maternal mortality associated with teenage pregnancies (see below and Chapter 6). The health and education interests of young people have continued to be reasons proffered by the state and women’s 6 For other accounts of the continued practice of child marriage since 1974, see Siwidana (1981) and Suara Merdeka 16 October 1982. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 90] === 80 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia organisations for encouraging a higher marriage age. Efforts to extend basic education to both boys and girls, a cornerstone of New Order policy, have been an important factor in delaying marriage, at least into the early teen years. Keeping children in the formal education system for a specified number of years has also contributed to a changing notion within society of appropriate activities and roles for children by promoting childhood as a prolonged phase that should be characterised by activities that are distinct from the adult world. This notion is not easily reconciled with marriage or the role and image of mother or wife. Child-focussed organisations enter the scene Since 1974, the issue of early marriage has not featured prominently in the agendas of women’s organisations. While the issue has become of marginal concern to women’s groups who were, in the past, the main advocates of later marriage, it has been taken up by groups focussing on children’s issues and rights. The 1990s witnessed a proliferation of child-focussed organisations that have a broader agenda than the promotion of child welfare, instead adopting an empowerment- and rights-oriented approach to children’s issues. In recent years, opposition to early marriage has been endorsed by a small number of these groups which emphasise children’s rights, particularly to education and to ‘childhood’ as a time not only of learning but also of play and development. Early marriage is seen as contrary to the fulfilment of these rights.7 In 1992, one such organisation, KOMPAK (Komite Pendidikan Anak Kreatif – Committee for the Education of Creative Children), published an illustrated booklet entitled Pengantin (The Bride) to illustrate the detrimental effect of early marriage on girls. It described the marriage of a young girl, Riani, to a man almost twenty years her senior as follows: ‘All that remains is Riani with a broken heart, because of the loss of her childhood which should be a time of learning, laughter and play with other children her age. At the time she was not yet 12 years old.’ The Bride described the health risks associated with early marriage, discussing the plight of Riani’s sister who, after being forced to marry at a young age, gave birth to a child who died and suffered severe health problems herself. While the physical risks of early marriage were identified as a prime 7 According to the 1990 census, fewer than 1 per cent of girls aged between ten and fourteen were married; 0.41 per cent in rural areas and 0.16 per cent in urban areas. For the fifteen to nineteen age cohort, however, the figure jumps to 18.19 per cent for all females in Indonesia: 23.5 per cent in rural areas and 9.06 per cent in urban areas. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 91] === Early marriage 81 reason against the practice, the notion of a child’s right to childhood was central. Here, KOMPAK drew a close connection between early marriage and premature entry to the workforce, noting that both are situations that rob children of their rights. KOMPAK worked primarily with young girls employed in the industrial complexes on the periphery of Jakarta but identified a similar set of factors, including poverty, the view that girls are and should be submissive and docile, and the neglect of children’s rights, as operating to push young girls into the workforce prematurely and into early marriage. Another child-focussed organisation, SAMIN (Sekretariat Anak Merdeka Indonesia – Secretariat for Independent Indonesian Children), has raised concerns about the connection between early marriage and child prostitution. This NGO initiated research into the extent and nature of child prostitution in Indonesian, which included an examination of the marriage law, particularly minimum age regulations, and the consequences of early marriage. The high divorce rate among couples who marry when the girl is very young has, in some circles, been mooted as being one factor that may lead young divorced girls towards prostitution.8 Research on prostitution in Indonesia has also identified a link between early marriage and prostitution. In the case of Indramayu, a province in West Java known to be a major source of prostitutes, early marriage together with low levels of education and high levels of divorce have been identified as reasons for the high number of sex workers (Jones, Sulistyaningsih and Hull 1995: 39–41). That the issue of early marriage is receiving attention from some of these organisations indicates greater recognition of childhood as an extended period, during which rights as well as welfare should be acknowledged and advanced. Linking early marriage to notions of children’s rights is, however, new and remains tentative. The international arena is a source of pressure on the Indonesian government in relation to age of marriage. The United Nations body most concerned with children’s affairs, UNICEF, has expressed concern at the continuing incidence of early marriage in Indonesia, and has periodically in annual publications noted the significant number of women who marry at or before sixteen years of age. For instance, its Situation Analysis of Women and Children in Indonesia in 1994 described the issue of early marriage as ‘complex because it is rooted in the beliefs and traditional social attitudes of people and is often exacerbated by poverty. Parents are 8 Based on interviews conducted by Sharon Bessell in Indonesia in 1994 and 1995, and personal correspondence. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 92] === 82 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia often eager to marry off their daughters as soon as they reach puberty to avoid the stigma of remaining unmarried as well as being an economic liability in poorer households’ (UNICEF 1994: 85). Echoing the concerns of earlier proponents of later marriage, UNICEF draws links between early marriage and low levels of education on the one hand and high levels of maternal mortality on the other. The health risks associated with early marriage and early childbirth are underscored by statistics that indicate maternal mortality among women under the age of twenty is over 160 per cent higher than that of women in the twenty to twenty-nine age bracket (UNICEF 1994: 95). Conclusion In the course of the twentieth century the debate about marriageable age in Indonesia has waxed and waned in intensity, and the debaters and their arguments have shifted over time. Launched in the period of the Ethical Policy in the Netherlands Indies, a period when ‘social evils’ in Indonesian society began to be identified and addressed, the debate reached a peak in the 1920s when women’s organisations, secular nationalists and the colonial state agreed on the need for social change. The possibility of government intervention was explored but largely rejected, both because of the practical difficulties involved and because the notion of minimum marriage age was too intimately interwoven with broader marriage law reform. The latter subject aroused too much opposition in strongly Islamic circles for any government to engage with it in a serious way until the New Order regime implemented the 1974 Marriage Law. In the meantime, as a result of other social and economic trends in Indonesian society, the age of marriage began to rise of its own accord, reducing the urgency of the debate. In the long run, it is doubtful how important legislation or government efforts have been in raising the age of marriage, particularly since it seems many Indonesians are quite unaware of the legal minimum age. Change in attitudes has been the most important contributor to girls marrying later, and this is the result of many factors, including indirectly related social and economic changes (such as increased literacy and new employment opportunities for women) and also, more directly, the efforts of organisations and leaders of the kind referred to in this chapter. The forces of resistance to change have consistently been those who felt most threatened by change: families (particularly parents) who considered they were acting in the best interests of the group and the individual in marrying off young daughters, and devoutly Islamic groups who felt Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 93] === Early marriage 83 that an attack on early marriage was indirectly an attack on Islamic law, which had no concept of mimimum age and permitted girls to be married off without being consulted. Over time it seems that both these sources of resistance have come to accept the desirability of later marriage for girls, in the belief that in a ‘modern’ society longer schooling is required for girls and that adults make better mothers and wives. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 94] === 4 Citizenship The role of Indonesian women as members of a polity has been a contested one. The first issue to arise during the colonial period was whether women should have the right to vote; later during independence the right of some Indonesian women to citizenship was disputed; and at the end of the twentieth century, quite unexpectedly, there was a vigorous debate about whether a woman had the right to lead the country. This chapter draws together these debates under the rubric of citizenship, since they all relate to the equality of women with men as citizens of the Indonesian polity. Consideration of citizenship brings into focus the relationships between the individual, the collectivity and the state, in a way that highlights important political concepts such as identity, freedom, equality, justice, care, participation and power, all central concerns of feminist politics. In the context of twentieth-century Indonesian history, these have all been contested matters as far as women are concerned, and they have particular resonance now with the return of democracy to Indonesia. Taken as a whole, literature on citizenship canvasses three related issues: membership of a political community, the rights and obligations associated with that membership, and participation by those members in the life of that polity. This chapter investigates Indonesian women’s experience of each of these aspects of citizenship. As the largest Islamic country in the world, Indonesia’s case carries weight since Islamic women are frequently perceived as political victims rather than active, full political citizens. Membership Citizenship highlights the individual’s legal identity as a member of a polity. Western political theory is divided in its representation of the This chapter incorporates excerpts from one of my published articles (Blackburn 1999c). I thank Australian Journal of Political Science for permission to use it. 84 Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 95] === Citizenship 85 citizen: whereas organicists or communitarians see citizens as integral components of their communities, liberals envisage them as independent individuals relating directly to the state. It is the former notion that has had most resonance in twentieth-century Indonesia. In modern states, all citizens are legally equal in their relationship to the state. Inevitably, this creates conflicts with other kinds of membership which citizens experience, and which prevent that equality from being realised (Yuval-Davis 1997). Before Indonesia became independent, the question of who was a citizen hardly existed, since inhabitants of the archipelago were colonial subjects. In this period, however, the foundations of later citizenship were laid. The Dutch colonial authorities divided the Indies population into three main categories: Europeans (less than half a million in 1930), Foreign Orientals (mainly Chinese and Arabs – about 1.2 million) and Natives (more than 59 million). Strictly speaking, Europeans were the only real citizens, and as such they enjoyed the greatest privileges. Religion provided another layer of difference in this society: while the vast majority were Muslim, there were Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and animist minorities. Dutch colonialism established a legal system that acknowledged the many identities of its subjects, at least as far as personal law was concerned: matters such as marriage and inheritance were left to customary and religious law. Whether or not women were treated as equal then depended on the ethnic and religious group to which they belonged. Among Indonesian nationalists in the early part of this century, membership of the putative nation began to be imagined: since the country had never previously existed, the content of ‘Indonesian-ness’ needed to be invented. Most nationalists were reluctant to accept non-indigenous peoples within their own organisations, foreshadowing their exclusion from the nation-to-be. The role of women as boundary-markers and as educators of children who would identify as Indonesians became increasingly important. Women who had sexual relations with men regarded as non-Indonesian, such as Europeans or Chinese, could be reviled by nationalists, and in turn those ‘alien’ groups also became more exclusive in their behaviour. The underlying assumption that women should always ‘follow’ men and that their children should belong to their father’s group led women who associated with ‘outsiders’ to be considered as traitors to their nation. After the Declaration of Independence in 1945, the new Constitution of 1945 stated (Chapter X Article 27): ‘Without any exception, all citizens shall have equal position in Law and Government.’ The break with the hierarchical and racist colonial past was clearly made. The legal identity Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 96] === 86 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia of various groups as Indonesian citizens or otherwise took some time to sort out, decades in the case of many people of Chinese ethnicity. Even now, ethnic Chinese with citizenship papers are still regarded by many fellow-Indonesians as outsiders. Equal membership of the Indonesian polity is obviously more than a legal matter, as Chinese Indonesians have suffered discrimination on a number of counts, having to do with the practice of their religion, use of language and access to state schools and universities. Being marked as ‘non-Indonesian’ can be a matter of life and death when there is a breakdown in law and order and resentful mobs turn on Chinese Indonesians. In the May 1998 riots in Indonesia leading up to the replacement of Suharto as president, gangs singled out ethnic Chinese women for special treatment: they were raped and sexually assaulted in a disturbingly vicious way (see Chapter 8 on violence). Another issue in the identification of women in particular as Indonesian citizens related to the legal identity of women who married foreigners. According to law since the colonial period, women take on the citizenship of their husband. From time to time this has been a matter of dispute by women who feel aggrieved at the way in which they are treated as subordinates of men. After all, Indonesian men who marry foreigners do not thus lose their citizenship – and their children in the case of divorce, since the children follow the citizenship of their father. This inequity only began to be addressed in new legislation before the parliament in 2003 (Jakarta Post 9 February 2003). As these cases illustrate, the most pervasive problems for women relating to their identity as members of the polity arise from the fact that citizenship is only one form of membership in their lives, and not always the dominant one. From colonial days onwards, governments have not wished to override women’s membership of subordinate communities that limit their rights. When it comes to the point, women’s membership of families and religious and ethnic groups has been considered more important than their membership of the polity. The state has been reluctant to deal with women on an individual basis; it prefers to see them as part of communities. There are good reasons for this, since the state has not been willing or able to devote resources to deal with the consequences of treating women as equal individuals. The support of widows, divorced and elderly women, single mothers and so on is left to the care of local communities. The price to be paid is that women must also, on occasion, suffer subordination within those communities. Community does not here refer to a private domain as distinct from a public one, related to that female=private / male=public dichotomy, well known in liberal discourse and attacked by many feminists. As Maila Stivens (1990) has noted, that distinction has been largely meaningless in Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 97] === Citizenship 87 Indonesian society, where notions of the private scarcely exist and women have always moved and worked freely in public places like markets and fields. Longstanding communities have, however, had differing traditions of gender, from the matrilineal society of the Minangkabau to the more patriarchal style of the Balinese. Some of these communities offer great freedom to their women; the problems arise in relation to the restrictions that many of them impose. Examples abound of women’s subordination in such communities, and of the state’s reluctance to combat such discrimination. As shown in the previous chapter, during the colonial period, the government was aware and disapproved of the practice of parents marrying their daughters off at very young ages, sometimes before adolescence. When it was clear that the difficulties involved in trying to intervene on behalf of girls were too great, the government gave up the attempt, leaving girls at the mercy of their families on the grounds that they could not interfere with religion and custom, and trusting to social change to solve the problem. Even the Marriage Law that was finally passed in 1974 failed to eradicate discrimination against women in marriage, leaving them subject to religious codes that, for instance, oblige Muslim women to accept co-wives and make divorce easier for husbands to initiate than wives. The state has disregarded Islamic law in areas it regards as ‘public’ such as criminal law. Thus the notion contained in syariah law that women’s witness is worth less than men’s has been ignored in Indonesia’s criminal code, inherited from the colonial period: in criminal matters there is no distinction between men and women. In contrast, personal and family laws have been left to religious and adat (customary law) courts, involving varying degrees of discrimination against women in relation to inheritance, custody of children and so on. (As we shall see, however, the state has not been averse to interfering in the operations of Islamic courts.) The notion of Indonesian women as equal citizens with men is undercut, therefore, by governments’ recognition that their membership of subordinate groups in society actually overrides their ‘equal’ membership of the polity in a number of respects. For most women, in fact, their membership of family, kinship group, village, ethnic or religious group determines the subordination that faces them in their daily lives, contradicting the fine rhetoric of equality of individuals embodied in the constitutional statements about citizenship (von Benda-Beckmann 1994; Bowen 2003). While Indonesian ethnic groups are patriarchal to varying degrees, in all there is some kind of discrimination against women. Moreover, as Kathryn Robinson has remarked (1994: 72), ‘In contemporary Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 98] === 88 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia Indonesia, modes of fashioning ethnic difference are tied up in the constitution of gender difference and gender relations.’ As ethnic groups seek to maintain themselves in the face of forces like schooling that push for national homogenisation, and the current trend to decentralisation, there is resistance to changing relations between the sexes. Where the state can relate directly to individual citizens in pursuit of its own interests, it has done so, and not always in the interests of women. The New Order Government’s supervision of civil servants’ marriages is a case in point, of particular interest because in some ways it was intended to benefit women. As will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, the New Order wished to reform marriage along ‘modern’ monogamous lines as part of its developmentalist project. Although it failed to achieve these ends through the 1974 Marriage Law, the government had more control over its large bureaucracy. It proceeded to introduce regulations in 1983 whereby civil servants had to submit their marriages to scrutiny by their superiors who were instructed to make it impossible for them to enter polygynous marriages and very difficult to obtain a divorce. Although intended to protect wives as well as to create a more harmonious state, the move went along with other measures that made civil servants’ wives uncomfòrtably dependent on their husbands (Suryakusuma 1996). Women were in effect moving from a small community of subordination to a larger one. The membership aspect of citizenship is thus an ambivalent one for Indonesian women. As members of ethnic, religious and other groups there are certain restrictions on them, but also, as in most Southeast Asian societies, they have enjoyed considerable freedoms, varying of course according to class and age: examples include considerable physical and social mobility and control of their own property. The challenge for women is to defend the freedoms conferred on them by tradition against encroaching repression by the state, and to try to use state pressure to erode undesirable features of local gender traditions. In other words, they try to incorporate into Indonesian identity the aspects of the country’s constituent communities which best suit them, and to use their relationship as citizens with the state to enlarge their freedom. This is likely to be a difficult task, but it is becoming ever more pressing in the current era of decentralisation in Indonesia, when the Autonomy Law of 1999 has conferred far more power on districts to impose their own conceptions of customs and even of Islamic law. The Indonesian state has been too weak or reluctant to try to displace subordinate groups as they exert control over women. When it does claim the citizenly obedience of women, it is not always to their advantage. As we will see in the next section, it is more likely to demand new duties from them than to confer new freedoms. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 99] === Citizenship 89 Rights and responsibilities In Western political tradition a long debate has been waged between the liberal view of citizenship which champions the rights of individual citizens against the state, and the communitarian view, which sees the citizen as part of a collective to which he or she owes responsibilities. There are difficult issues here relating to justice, liberty and care that affect women in particular ways. Indonesia has a history of prioritising the communitarian tradition of citizenship: rights are conceived as pertaining to communities rather than to individuals, often to the disadvantage of women who are expected to fulfil numerous obligations but to have few rights. Although Indonesian women have been reluctant to use the language of rights, they have in fact successfully deployed this terminology in their struggle for justice. As we have seen in Chapter 2, women’s right to an education was fought fiercely by women like Kartini and largely won in subsequent decades. This formed a foundation for other rights demanded by them, such as the right to choose one’s marriage partner and the timing of marriage. Interestingly, devout Muslim women appealed to the Koran as an authority for educating girls, arguing that the Prophet said that both men and women had a duty to acquire knowledge. This represents an appeal to a different kind of discourse, and a powerful one at that in a religiously oriented society. Unlike rights discourse, it does not posit a claim by the individual or group against the state in the name of equality or justice, nor is it an obligation imposed on citizens by the state. Rather, Muslim groups implied that it was the individual’s duty (and presumably that of parents in the case of a child), decreed by Allah, to gain an education by his/her own efforts. Within the modernist Islamic movement in particular, a tradition persists of not relying on the state but rather of mobilising the religious community to meet its own goals. With the rise of the nationalist movement, male leaders like Sukarno argued that women should postpone all talk of their rights until after independence was gained, since the only relevant right was that to national self-determination – a clear case of communitarianism (Brown 1981). That the male-dominated nationalist movement disapproved of women making any claims for equality against the colonial state is showed by their almost total opposition to the notion that the Dutch administration might legislate for more equal marriage laws, as discussed in the next chapter. However, rights did feature on the agendas of secular Indonesian nationalist organisations, even the most nationalist of them. One gendered case of citizenship rights relates to the right to vote, an issue of enormous importance for women’s participation in the polity. Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press === [PDF page 100] === 90 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia The right to vote The movement for women’s suffrage in Indonesia originated with Dutchwomen seeking the vote for themselves, since women did not gain the vote in the Netherlands until 1919. In the Indies the movement broadened its scope when the Dutch began establishing representative councils in the Indies, first at municipal level and, in 1918, at the national level with the opening of the People’s Council or Volksraad. Although the latter was largely an advisory body with very little power, it was hoped it might develop into something more resembling a parliament. In 1908 a branch of the Dutch Women’s Suffrage Association (Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht or VVV) was founded in the Dutch East Indies, as an extension of the movement in the Netherlands. At first concerned purely to support the Dutch campaign, the VVV became interested in women’s suffrage in the Indies when restricted male suffrage (based on income and literacy) was introduced there for municipal councils in Batavia, Semarang and Surabaya. In 1915 the Indies VVV sent a request to the Queen supporting equality of voting for the municipal councils. The request was rejected in the Netherlands (Jaarverslag 1915). In 1918 the Indies branches of the VVV lobbied the new People’s Council members about their support for women’s suffrage and requested that the Governor-General open elections for municipal councils to women (Jaarverslag 1918). Voting at this level was critical because elected (as opposed to appointed) members of the national People’s Council were indirectly chosen by the municipal councils.1 When women gained the vote in the Netherlands in 1919, the Indies branches decided to continue the campaign for suffrage in the colony and renamed themselves Vereeniging Voor Vrouwenkiesrecht in Nederlands Indie (Association for Women’s Suffrage in the Dutch East Indies).2 They found support for women’s suffrage in the Batavia municipal council and attended the 1919 meeting of the People’s Council that voted in favour of women’s suffrage. The VVV followed this up with a deputation to the Governor-General on the matter (Jaarverslag 1919). 1 Only a minority of People’s Council members were thus indirectly elected, the rest being appointed by the Governor-General, and the Council’s powers were almost non-existent. Representation was skewed towards the Europeans. Not until 1931 did Indonesians make up half of the People’s Council. After various reforms to establish other local councils and expand the electorate, in the late 1930s elections were held for thirty-two municipal councils (mostly in Java) and seventy-six regency councils in Java which in turn elected members of the People’s Council. The eligible electorate was small: for instance in the two largest municipalities of Batavia and Surabaya, the combined number of voters in 1938 was about 16,000 European citizens, 8,000 Indonesians and 3,000 ‘Foreign Orientals’ (Netherlands Indies Government 1940: I, 144). 2 For the sake of simplicity, I will continue to refer to this organisation as VVV, although it changed its name several times during the colonial period (see Blackburn 1997). Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492198.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press