Political-Social Movements, Revolutionary, Indonesia (Wieringa, Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, 2005)

Political-Social Movements: Revolutionary: Indonesia Author: Saskia E. Wieringa Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures (Brill), entry EWICCOM-0135b https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EWIO/EWICCOM-0135b.xml Retrieved 2026-10-13 In 1942 colonial rule over Indonesia ended with the defeat of the Dutch by the Japanese. When the imperial army was conquered in 1945 Indonesia declared its independence. A national liberation war of four years followed. Women's participation in the nationalist and revolutionary movement was considerable. Until 1965 Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, steered Indonesia on a nationalist and socialist course. The Communist Party, the PKI, gained considerable influence and became the third largest communist party in the world. Islamic and right-wing military forces resented this development. A bloody putsch by left-wing colonels in 1965 was followed by a massacre of socialist groups, spurred on by military-instigated accusations of sexual perversions allegedly committed by young communist women. This led ultimately to the establishment of a right-wing military regime under general Suharto. Women played critical roles in these developments. The women's wing of the PKI, Gerwani, became a women's mass organization until it was banned in 1966. Right-wing women took to the streets after the putsch and demanded the banning of Gerwani. National liberation By the beginning of the twentieth century the newly-educated indigenous elite of Indonesia began to harbor nationalist sentiments. Inspired by the brilliant letters of the young Javanese princess Kartini (Kartini 1987), women began to chart their own course, which combined demands for their own rights, notably that of education with national liberation. The first women's organization was set up in 1912. In the following years many more organizations were formed, particularly in Java and the Minangkabau, a region in Sumatra that is characterized both by matrilineal customary law and a strict adherence to Islam. Both religious (Muslim and Catholic) and socialist women organized themselves. A major Islamic organization, Aisyiyah, was set up in 1917 mainly to give women religious instruction. They opposed a major demand of non-Islamic women's organizations, monogamy in marriage. Socialist women organized under the banner of a male-dominated socialist Islamic organization, the Sarekat Rakyat (People's league). In those years socialist and Islamic views were not so much perceived to clash as they would be in later years. The PKI, established in 1924, counted several women among its members. Some of them were also involved in the 1925–6 communist uprising, which was quickly crushed by the colonial government. In 1928 the first all-Indonesian women's congress was held. Until the Japanese occupation, the unity of the women's movement was continuously threatened by the opposition between Islamic and non-Islamic groups over the issue of marriage reforms. Gradually the women's movement rallied behind the nationalist movement. Their leaders maintained that Indonesian women could only be emancipated after national liberation was won. Sukarno spoke of women as being the “second wheel of the chariot” of national liberation (Sukarno 1963, 255). Women joined the guerilla war against the Dutch who refused to accept Indonesia's independence and tried to regain control of the region. Some young, radical women joined the Laswi, women's army units, and engaged in active combat. Others were engaged as messengers. Many more were involved in public kitchens to feed the fighters and in hospitals to care for the wounded soldiers. Several national women's meetings were held during the years the national liberation struggle lasted. This period culminated in a major national women's congress held in August 1949, which was attended by 82 groups from all religions. Major women's interests were formulated, such as equal rights for women, protection for women workers, and education. The unity achieved at this congress was geared toward the achievement of national unity but left two major issues unresolved – the extent of the marriage reforms discussed (Suwondo 1981), and the struggle for socialist emancipation. Women and socialist nationalism The reign of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, lasted until 1965. This was a period of nation building in which women and men were swept up in nationalist rhetoric, which became increasingly socialist. The new constitution of the republic guaranteed women equal rights, but the marriage issue remained unsolved. Now that the struggle for national independence was won, non-socialist women retreated to the domestic realm and left the political arena to men. Particularly religious (both Muslim and Christian) women increasingly returned to the “kodrat wanita,” an essentialist, supposedly divinely-ordained code of women's conduct, which stipulates women's obedience to men. Gerwani was founded in 1950. Many of its members had been actively engaged in the guerilla struggle against the Dutch. In the first years they focused on building a small group of dedicated women. After 1954 they followed an instruction from the PKI, and started building a mass movement of revolutionary women. The PKI saw itself as the head of an Indonesian “communist family” in which Gerwani was assigned the role of the “mother.” After 1959, when Sukarno established his authoritarian rule called “Guided Democracy,” Gerwani also became radicalized. It was the only women's organization that refused to leave the national political arena to men. The organization's “militant mothers” (Wieringa 2002) concentrated less on gender concerns than they had in their first years but increasingly voiced national concerns. This led to tensions with non-socialist women's groups, particularly the Islamic mass women's organizations. Gerwani never officially became the PKI's women's wing. They had a weekly corner in the communist daily, and for many years published a magazine called Api Kartini (Kartini fire). On 30 September 1965 leftist colonels abducted the nation's top generals, except General Suharto, and murdered them on a field on which young communist women were being trained for a nationalist campaign of Sukarno against the formation of Malaysia. Later the military accused these women of having castrated the generals. This greatly antagonized conservative groups in society and particularly Islamic youth groups were mobilized. Ultimately over a million socialist women and men were massacred and tens of thousands detained for many years. Muslim and Catholic women were in the forefront of the demonstrations and joined in demonizing Gerwani members as “whores” and “perverse women.” General Suharto replaced President Sukarno and restored an order built on women's domestication. During his reign women's political agency was associated with sexual and moral disorder (Wieringa 2002). Initially Islamic women's groups experienced relief; later they realized that they too were no longer able to implement the social programs they had formerly harbored. Saskia E. Wieringa Bibliography R. A. Kartini, Brieven aan Mevrouw R.M. Abendanon-Mandri en haar Echtgenoot met andere Documenten, ed. F. G. P. Jaquet, 1912, Dordrecht 1987. Sukarno, Sarinah. The duty of women in the struggle of the Indonesian Republic [in Indonesian], Jakarta 1947, 1963. N. Suwondo, The position of Indonesian women in law and society [in Indonesian], Jakarta 1981. S. Wieringa, Sexual politics in Indonesia, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire 2002.