Review of Susan Blackburn, Women and the State in Modern Indonesia (Hattori Mina, Ajia Keizai, 2006; 書評)

=== [PDF page 1] === 58 Women and the State in Modern Indonesia. === [PDF page 2] === Sarinah 59 === [PDF page 3] === 60 === [PDF page 4] === 61 === [PDF page 5] === 62 === [PDF page 6] === Panduan Pengajaran Fiqh Perempuan di Pesantren Islam Agama Ramah Perempuan: Pembelaan Kiai Pesantren Musdah 2005. Muslimah Reformis: Perempuan Pembaru Keagamaan Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680 Women and the Colonial State: Essays on Gender and Modernity in the Netherlands Indies 1900-1942. Pedoman Umum Sosialisasi Pengarusutamaan Gender Bidang Pendidikan Race and the Education of Desire The Indonesian Women: Potret Pergerakan Wanita Struggles and Achievement di Indonesia Sexual Politics in Indonesia Kedudukan Wanita Indonesia dalam Hukum dan Masyarakat 63

=== [Page 1] === Book Review Susan Blackburn, Women and the State in Modern Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, x+257 pp. Hattori Mina [Mina Hattori] [Lead-in:] ...[the book] shows the need for researchers to be more sensitive than before to differences in the situations in which women are placed, to regional characteristics, to the bearers of women's movements, and further to international gender trends. The book takes as its main object of study women's movements and state policy over roughly one century, from the early twentieth century under Dutch colonial rule to the end of the twentieth century when the Suharto regime collapsed, and is a timely work for reconsidering twenty-first-century Indonesia, which is in the midst of rapid social change. Recent developments concerning gender are deeply related to historical developments from the colonial period to the end of the twentieth century, but the theme of this book shows that, when speaking of women's movements in the Indonesian context, one cannot at the same time speak without taking into account the influence of state policy. As many researchers have pointed out, it is an undeniable fact that, especially under the Suharto regime, state-led women's policy had an enormous influence on women's movements and women's lives. The author, Susan Blackburn, has taught at Monash University in Australia since 1991. A specialist in political science, she was awarded her degree by the same university for a doctoral dissertation on Indonesian nationalism, and in recent years she has also been pursuing research focusing on Indonesia and international development. I Since the collapse in 1998 of the Suharto regime that had lasted about 32 years, Indonesia has undergone major transitions: from "development" to "reform", and from a centralised system to decentralisation and democratisation. As issues connected with women – the debate over whether a woman can be president, the mass rapes of ethnic Chinese women in May 1998, domestic violence (DV) and so on – have come to be taken up as problems attracting public attention, changes have also appeared in the way women's movements operate and in the government's women's policy. The activities of NGOs by women activists are wide-ranging, including DV, the protection of the human rights of women workers, and efforts to review gender-unequal laws [Ogata 2004, 195]; the government side too, influenced by domestic and foreign developments, moved quickly, reorganising in 1999 the previous State Ministry for the Role of Women into the Ministry for Women's Empowerment and promulgating in 2000 Presidential Instruction No. 9 (note 1) on gender mainstreaming in national development. In recent years, research on Islam and women has also increased rapidly, and interpretations of Islam concerning women are being actively discussed (note 3). In general, women in the Southeast Asian region have historically been regarded as having relatively high autonomy because of their wide-ranging economic activities and the characteristics of kinship organisation [Nakatani 2003, 12; Reid 2002, 198-199]. However, economic gaps between urban and rural areas arising from recent social change, complex social aspects based on multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, and cross-border movement of people such as migrant workers... II The structure of the book is as follows. Introduction (on the mainstreaming of gender in national development) Chapter 1 The State's Gender Ideology and Women's Movements (note 2) Chapter 2 Education Chapter 3 Early Marriage Chapter 4 Citizenship Chapter 5 Polygamy Chapter 6 Motherhood Chapter 7 Economic Exploitation Chapter 8 Violence Conclusion As the title indicates, the main object of study of the book is... [continued on p. 59] 58 Ajia Keizai [Asian Economy] XLVII-7 (2006.7) === [Page 2] === Book Review ... women and the state in Indonesia; in each chapter's topic it is analysed how women came to terms with the state over "women's issues", and conversely how the state grasped "women's issues". The author extracts the gender ideologies and the women's organisations and activists characteristic of each period from 1900 to 2003; the periods in which drastic changes appear in the relationship between the state's gender ideology and women's movements are particularly the Guided Democracy period (1958-65), the New Order period (1965-98), and further the democratic transition period (1998-2003). In the Guided Democracy period, Sukarno depicted an ideal image of woman in Sarinah (1963), and, as the importance of women serving the state and of national integration was emphasised, women's movements were mobilised for the strengthening of the Sukarno regime (p.24); in the New Order period, women's organisations were mobilised into Ibuism (ibu is the Indonesian word for mother), which stressed an image of women contributing to the stability of the state and the execution of development policy and living in accordance with kodrat (an Arabic word meaning the innate nature of human beings) (note 4) (p.25); and from the 1980s on, characteristics listed include the new trend of the founding of non-profit women's organisations that distanced themselves from such gender ideology (p.27) and the rapid changes in the democratic transition period (note 5) (p.29). In the Introduction the three questions that run through the book are presented (pp.3-4). First, questions about state policy: (1) from about when and why did the state begin to pay attention to women's issues; (2) in which areas of government, and what policy issues, were considered; (3) how did state ideology, intentionally or unintentionally, influence the construction of gender; (4) what brought about changes in the state's gender ideology. Second, questions about women's movements: (1) what role did women's movements play in obtaining benefits for women; (2) what kinds of cooperative relations were beneficial to women's movements and the state; (3) how did women avoid cooptation of the women's movement by the state; (4) what influence did women's movements have on the drafting and implementation of policy concerning women. Third, broad questions from the viewpoint of international relations and women's empowerment: (1) who benefited from the interaction between women's movements and the state; (2) did government policy in the end promote the empowerment of women; (3) what role did international trends and pressures play. To clarify these, the author uses as primary sources the trends of the women's organisations founded in Indonesia and the publications issued by women's organisations, thereby trying to capture the diverse "voices" of women. In the main body, Chapter 1 first gives a historical overview of the relation between the state's gender ideology and the development of women's movements in the twentieth century. Gender discourses and phenomena in Indonesia, which is composed of diverse ethnic groups and religions and has the experience of colonial rule, have spatial and temporal complexity, but the focus of the author's research, it is stated, is not so much the women's movement itself as the women's movement in relation to the state, and what was regarded as women's issues by the state and the women's movement. Chapters 2 to 8 focus on women's issues and examine each issue mainly in the period in which it became publicly discussed. Chapter 2 mainly examines the debate on girls' education, which became most conspicuous in the early twentieth century under Dutch colonial rule. The existence of Kartini, who opened the dawn of girls' education, is already a well-known fact, but the author places the 1910s as the period in which the women's movement blossomed through contact with modern school education and overseas ideas, and the 1920s as the period under the influence of nationalism, and clarifies the relation of influence between the discourse of women's organisations and activists characteristic of each period. Chapter 3 clarifies how the age of marriage became a political issue in twentieth-century Indonesia. As with the "education" issue, influenced by the Dutch colonial government, particularly in the colonial period, the issue of "child marriage" was debated, with a peak in the 1920s, by Western-educated women, the colonial government, Dutch feminists (note 6) and nationalist organisations. After independence, the issue of marriage age came to be advocated by women activists together with marriage law reform including demands to redress discrimination against women over polygamy and divorce... 59 === [Page 3] === Book Review ... [continued:] ... and the process up to the enactment of the 1974 Marriage Law, which finally set the minimum marriage age at 16 for girls and 19 for boys, is analysed. It is also made clear that family planning by the new regime to lower the birth rate affected the postponement of women's marriage as a result, and that the interest of women's organisations after the enactment of the 1974 Marriage Law shifted to the issue of children's rights. Chapter 4 examines, for the colonial period, mainly the debate on suffrage, and, after independence, the characteristics of the state ideology of the regimes and the gender views it contained, and the situation of women's entry into the political world. From the viewpoint of duties and rights as citizens, the author sees both the Sukarno regime and the Suharto regime as having imposed on women duties as members of the nation while neglecting rights. Under the Sukarno regime, women were mobilised into the ideology that regarded the state as one large family (azas kekeluargaan); under Suharto, [women's role was] defined [in terms of citizenship] and the duties of contributing to development and fulfilling the role of mother were imposed. She also analyses that women's participation in terms of involvement in policy decisions was extremely limited except for examples such as wives and daughters of the political elite, and predicts that the political system will continue to be male-dominant in future. Chapter 5 examines the course by which women's organisations urged the state to take measures to curb polygamy, the state's response up to the enactment of the 1974 Marriage Law, the retreat of debate after the enactment of the Marriage Law, and the course leading to the revival of debate at the end of the twentieth century. It is interesting that, especially in recent years, the argument that the 1974 Marriage Law, which, while making monogamy the public norm, set out the conditions under which polygamy is limitedly permitted, is an example embodying inequality between men and women has again become active in Indonesia, but it is pointed out that there are limits to the state taking concrete action. Chapter 6 examines how "motherhood" was defined by the state and women's organisations from the colonial period to the present, and what influence the notions of "motherhood" of each period had on policies and movements. There are places that overlap with the previous chapter, but the state's involvement in the issue of "motherhood" in the form of birth control under the Suharto regime is examined. Conversely, as for women's sexual and reproductive rights, it is pointed out that the state and women's organisations finally paid attention only in the later twentieth century because of international external pressure, and that many problems, such as abortion, still require work. Chapter 7 shows that the state and women's organisations had until recently hardly responded to the difficult situation in which women, particularly poor women, are forced to work in the informal sector at low wages and in poor conditions. The author takes up the Marsinah case (note 7) and the problem of migrant workers under the Suharto regime, and examines how sex discrimination and sexual violence frequently occur in the environment surrounding women workers. And with regard to this situation, it is shown that at first international external pressure rather pushed forward efforts at improvement, but in recent years new women's organisations have begun to tackle the problem. Chapter 8 examines that it was likewise only in the late twentieth century that women's organisations began to tackle the problem of violence against women, as with "economic exploitation", and that in the background the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and the 1995 Beijing International Women's Conference provided the occasion for action and research on this problem. The author points out that the state's passivity on violence was because it ran counter to the harmonious-society image based on the ideal family that the government had constructed. However, as the rapes carried out in the name of maintaining security in Aceh, East Timor, Papua and elsewhere, and the mass rape of ethnic Chinese Indonesian women in May 1998, came to be recognised as facts that no one could hide, the taboo against discussing violence against women publicly was broken and public debate has become more active. Even so, the author argues that women's organisations have still not come to exert great influence on the state. In the Conclusion, a summary is made through the concept of empowerment, and the examination proceeds by distinguishing the areas in which women were empowered by women's movements and state policy from the areas in which they were not empowered. 60 === [Page 4] === Book Review As points of empowerment, the author lists: (1) education (the women's movement and the state both played important roles in expanding educational opportunities for girls), (2) early marriage (the women's movement contributed, through negotiation with the state, to a tendency to strengthen women's status in marriage), (3) the gaining of equal citizenship, (4) birth control. Conversely, as areas that have not reached empowerment she lists: (1) economic exploitation (many women are in precarious employment without legal protection), (2) women's health (not noticed as a women's issue until the end of the twentieth century, and only in recent years are sexual and reproductive rights finally being recognised), (3) violence against women (debate has only recently become active as international trends and domestic rape incidents have come to light), and she clarifies tasks for the future. III First, I would like to list the following three points for which this book should be appreciated. First, the book takes as its object roughly one century from the early twentieth century to the present, and can be said to be an extremely useful work for grasping the historical transition of Indonesian women's movements and state policy. As the author points out, previous studies often targeted specific regions, periods or women's organisations (note 8), and at present there is almost nothing that takes up diverse topics over a long span as this book does. Second, the book thoroughly analyses women's movements and the state from a political perspective, and this too has hardly existed in previous studies. The centre of the analysis is placed on what influence women, or women's organisations, as political actors could exert on the state, and how the state dealt politically with women's issues. And perhaps the author is in the end trying to ask what strategy is necessary for Indonesian women's organisations to exert great influence on state policy. Third, the book places importance on publications issued by women's organisations and on the writings of Indonesian women themselves as primary sources, and its account does not fall into mere policy debate. While stating that it is difficult to define what exactly are "women's issues" for Indonesian women, and acknowledging the difficulty of picking up voices that do not become voice, the author states that as a result she has put the spotlight on people and women's organisations who can to some extent define what women's issues are. In this sense, although the voices and actions of women taken up in the book inevitably run the danger of being limited to the claims of certain particular people, it can be said that the book has successfully approached the "women's issues" that Indonesian women themselves perceive as problems. Next I would like to raise the following three questions. First, relating also to the setting of the theme, because the object of study is grasped too much in a binary way as the state versus the women's movement, there seemed to be places where other important factors are discarded. For example, in Chapter 2 the author sees the main factors that promoted girls' education as the results of colonial education and the Ethical Policy (p.58), but does not mention the influence of the Islamic reform movement. Also, by making state policy the main point of examination, I received somewhat the impression of a general history of state policy over a century. Second, the book seems to portray Islamic organisations somewhat negatively as a monolithic whole, as forces that cling to Islamic tradition in opposition to the state and women's organisations, rather than as a diversity of Islamic organisations and forces. For example, concerning the clarification of the age of marriage, the pros and cons of polygamy, and marital rape, a little more consideration seemed necessary of the fact that various interpretations exist even among Islamic organisations. Related to this, when examining Islamic organisations, the claims of Muslim men tend to be emphasised, and the fact that how Muslim women thought about women's issues from the Islamic viewpoint was not examined seems to have resulted in overlooking the diversity of interpretation within Islam. Third, many of the chapters in the first half [contain] 61 === [Page 5] === Book Review ... considerable examination of the Dutch colonial period, and I thought it may have been a stretch to cover a century for each chapter's topic. Also, because a century is covered, the examination of each period tends to be general, and it seemed that deeper examination became difficult – of the diversity of women's organisations and differences of interpretation, and of the human relations and bargaining through which state policy was implemented. The author herself, in the Conclusion, states as future research tasks that (1) analysis of women's organisations founded outside Java, (2) research on Islamic women's organisations, especially analysis of Islamic women's organisations newly founded by young women in recent years (note 9), (3) analysis of records of women who experienced polygamy and of the actual state of divorce, and (4) analysis of the State Ministry for the Role of Women founded in 1978 are needed (p.225); it is certainly true that research on Indonesian women's movements has only just begun and that many unexplored areas still remain. Certainly, under the Suharto regime it was difficult to investigate women's organisations from a political viewpoint (p.4) (note 10), and the accumulation of research by Indonesian researchers was also slight. However, since democratisation this situation has gradually changed, and Indonesian researchers themselves have come to investigate the history and dynamics of women's movements. Further, it will be necessary to pay attention to trends in new women's movements amid the recent currents of democratisation and decentralisation. Notes (1) INPRES Nomor 9 Tahun 2000 tentang Pengarusutamaan Gender di Semua Sektor. (2) In response to the aforementioned Presidential Instruction, in the field of education too, guidelines and teaching materials for gender education practised in schools have been worked on. For example, Proyek Peningkatan... (2003a; 2003b). (3) Examples are too numerous to list, but Muhammad (2004), Ikhsanudin, Mohammad Najib and Sri Hidayati (2002), Mulia (2005), etc. Magazines include Jurnal Perempuan untuk Pencerahan dan Kesehatan [Women's Journal – Enlightenment and Health], Swara Rahima: Media Islam untuk Hak-hak Perempuan [Voice of Rahima – Islamic Media for Women's Rights], etc. (4) In the New Order period, in 1978, the State Ministry for the Role of Women was established. 1978 was within the International Decade for Women (1975-85), and international external pressure had an influence. (5) In the period of President Abdurrahman Wahid (1999-2001), the State Ministry for the Role of Women was renamed the Ministry for Women's Empowerment under the leadership of the feminist minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa. (6) For example, the author cites Mrs. Corporaal-van Achterbergh, who in 1926 edited Woman in Home and Society – Propaganda Report for the Women's Movement in Indonesia (p.67). (7) The Marsinah case: in 1993 Marsinah, a young factory worker in East Java, took part in a strike demanding the legal minimum wage and legally recognised workers' rights, and after protesting the dismissal of strike leaders went missing and several days later was found dead. There were signs that she had been tortured and raped before being killed, and the body was mutilated. (8) For example, Vreede-de Stuers (1960), a pioneering study on women's movements; Locher-Scholten (2000), focusing on the colonial period; and Wieringa (2002), who studied the women's organisation Gerwani of the 1950s-60s. Studies by Indonesian researchers are even fewer, such as Suryocondro (1984) and Suwondo (1981). (9) The author gives as an example the "new liberal" Islamic women's organisation Rahima (RAHIMA), founded in Jakarta, and the woman active there, Farha Ciciek. (10) For example, the author points out that in the 1980s, in the Dutch researcher Saskia Wieringa's research on Gerwani, interviewing Indonesian women involved danger (p.4). 62