Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Feminism in Indonesia'

This thesis focuses on an Islamic feminist community organization, and its activities in combating violence against women. The case example discussed in this study is the Rifka Annisa Women's Crisis Center (WCC Rifka Annisa) located in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. By examining the environment and the issues that WCC Rifka Annisa faces, broader thematic concerns can be applied to Indonesian society in general. This study reviews western feminist and community organizing approaches, and examines them in light of the specific religious, cultural, economic and political context in Indonesia. A blend of Islamic feminim and community organizing approaches has emerged in Indonesia. Data collection for this study was based on interviews and direct observations. Exploring this perspective will contribute to the knowledge, practice and values of social work generally, and development work in similar contexts in particular.

This thesis explores the relationships between punk and anarchism in the contemporary contexts of the UK, Poland, and Indonesia from an insider punk and anarchist perspective. New primary ethnographic information forms the bulk of the research, drawing on Grounded Theory Method and an engagement with Orientalism. The theoretical framework is informed by the concept of antinomy which embraces complication and contradiction and rather than attempt to smooth-out complexities, impose a simplified narrative, or construct a fanciful dialectic, the thesis examines the numerous tensions that emerge in order to critique the relationships between punk and anarchism. A key tension which runs throughout the PhD is the dismissal of punk by some anarchists. This is often couched in terms of lifestylist versus workerist anarchism, with punk being denigrated in association with the former. The case studies bring out this tension, but also significantly complicate it, and the final chapter analyses this issue in more detail to argue that punk engages with a wide spectrum of anarchisms, and that the lifestylist / workerist dichotomy is anyway false. The case studies themselves focus on themes such as anti-fascism, food sovereignty/animal rights activism, politicisation, feminism, squatting, religion, and repression. New empirical information, garnered through numerous interviews and extensive participant observation in the UK, Poland, and Indonesia, informs the thick description of the case study contexts. The theory and analysis emerge from this data, and the voice of the punks themselves is given primacy here.

In this dissertation, I develop a postcolonial theoretical approach to localized Muslim feminism(s) in Aceh, Indonesia, based on interviews with women in Aceh in 2009 and 2010. One of the central aims of this study is to challenge the dominant exclusivist discourse of â Islamicâ feminism by providing a viable alternative for â Muslimâ feminism(s), derived from collaborative, indigenous, and post-secular politics. I address the need for a religious feminist model of subjectivity that incorporates both the political and ethical dimensions of agency in potentially non-patriarchal and non-state-centric formations. I suggest a communal understanding of religious law as an alternative to conceptualizing religious law (syariah) in terms of a personal ethical code or a system of laws emanating from a state. I propose an alternative discourse of feminist agency and religious identity, one that reaches beyond a secular-liberal epistemology and challenges the hegemonic discourse of state-centrism within a privatized religious identity.
Ph. D.

This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork of practicing and performing dances with Indonesian migrant women dancers in Perth, Western Australia and socializing with the women and the communities they belong to. The fieldwork was conducted in 2007 with subsequent annual return trips until 2011, as well as through continued engagement by other forms of communication. This thesis follows the women's journeys and their efforts, firstly to gain recognition as professional cultural performers rather than being seen only as members of an amateur, housewife hobby dance group and secondly to elevate their status beyond that of marriage migrant, specifically within the local Indonesian community. Each chapter is based on particular performances and how each performance evolved from creation to reinvention taking into account factors such as community feedback, and reaction to the group's participation in local multicultural festivals and national celebration days. The thesis discusses how the women negotiate cross-cultural gender structuring discourses and valued ideals of femininity through their performances. Their performances are influenced by transnational and translocal (Jakarta or Bali and Perth) engagements gained through: cultural products; their daily lives amongst the Indonesian migrant community in Perth; their annual return trips to Indonesia; and being involved in the local Indonesian consulate's cultural diplomacy activities. Therefore, within the discipline of anthropology and gender studies this research will contribute to the literature on migration studies, specifically marriage migration of women, migrant's cultural performances, and Indonesian migrants in Australia. The thesis also includes a DVD of two and a half hours which records my edited ethnographic footage, as well as footage given to me by the dancers and their family members. The DVD documents the stories and performances that are related in the thesis. Via a menu, the DVD is organized so that relevant sections can be viewed in conjunction with reading specific chapters within the thesis. Each performance, through the trajectory of its creation and reinvention, tells the narrative of how the Indonesian migrant women try to negotiate representations of themselves and how they deal with the many and varied expectations of their own migrant community, the Indonesian consulate and the larger multicultural Australian audiences as well as the various ideals of Indonesian femininity in migration.

Indonesian Muslim women???s identity and subjectivity are not created simply from a single variable rather they are shaped by various discourses that are often competing and paralleling each other. Discourses such as patriarchal discourses circumscribing the social engagement and public life of Muslim women portray them in narrow gendered parameters in which women occupy rather limited public roles. Western colonial discourse often constructed Muslim women as oppressed and backward. Each such discourse indeed denies women???s agency and maturity to form their own definition of identity within the broad Islamic parameters. Rewriting women???s own identities are articulated in various forms from writing to visualisation, from fiction to non fiction. All expressions signify women???s ways to react against the silencing and muteness that have long imposed upon women???s agency. In Indonesian literary culture today, numerous women writers have represented in their writings women???s own ways to look at their own selves. Literary representations become one group among others trying to portray women???s strategies that will give them maximum control over their lives and bodies. Muslim women writers in Indonesia have shown through their representations of Muslim women in their writings that Muslim women in Indonesian settings are capable of undergoing a self-definition process. However, from their writings too, readers are reminded that although most women portrayed are strong and assertive it does not necessarily mean that they are free of oppression. The thesis is about Muslim women and gender-related issues in Indonesia. It focuses on the writings of four contemporary Indonesian Muslim women writers: Titis Basino P I, Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim, Abidah El Kalieqy and Helvy Tiana Rosa, primarily looking at how gender is constructed and in turn constructs the identity, roles and status of Musim women in Indonesia and how such relations are portrayed, covering issues of authenticity, representation and power inextricably intertwined in a variety of aesthetic forms and narrative structures.

ABSTRACT This thesis offers a feminist cultural analysis of the popular Indonesian television serial (sinetron) Misteri Gunung Merapi (Mysteries of Mount Merapi). It investigates the television text in relation to its various contexts within the social and cultural transformations of contemporary Indonesia. Misteri Gunung Merapi has been produced since 1998, shortly after the financial crisis and the fall of the New Order regime. Since it was first broadcast by the Indosiar television station, it has ranked among the top-rating television programs in Indonesia, and I am interested in its success in this era of social transformation. The purpose of my study is to examine the significance of this success, including exploring the possibility that it is due to the serial’s engagement with recent issues in contemporary Indonesian culture, in particular the changing roles of women. The discussion falls into three main parts: a consideration of the contexts of socio-cultural change and the globalisation of the television industry within which the sinetron is produced; an examination of the way the sinetron draws on traditional theatrical performance, popular memory and supernatural belief; and a study of its representation of women and gender issues within the action-adventure genre to which it belongs. In the context of the television industry, this sinetron’s production signals the changing character of the industry, from state control to free market. In the socio-cultural context, as state control grew weaker and civil society flourished, the flow of globalization became more visible, foregrounding conflicts between Islamic and secular groups, often over the roles and representations of women. As a sinetron kolosal-laga or epic, the series tells historical and legendary stories in such a way that they speak to contemporary Indonesia as it is in the process of reinventing itself. Misteri Gunung Merapi draws on the narrative and dramatic conventions of both traditional theatrical performance and internationally popular genres of action cinema; it constructs popular memory to raise issues about the present; and it employs popular fascination with the supernatural to invoke the mixture of spiritual traditions that has always characterised Javanese culture, in particular. Focussing on the emergence of warrior women in film and television in both the Hollywood action-adventure and Kung Fu/wuxia genres, the thesis investigates the construction of female fighters on screen. I suggest that the sinetron does not share the same problems of gender representation that feminist criticism has identified in either of these genres. Four areas of analysis - heroism, body, power, and the camera - demonstrate that there is a different concept of gender in Indonesia which is illuminated in this sinetron’s representations of women and gender issues.

The rapid expansion of oil palm plantations throughout Indonesia has resulted in a range of environmental and social consequences, including dispossessing rural people of their land. But these people are not accepting the infringements passively. As oil palm plantations have expanded and spread, so have instances of oil palm-related protest and resistance. In almost all accounts of oil palm, however, women and gender relations are overlooked. This thesis examines the role of women and gender relations in oil palm expansion and resistance in Indonesia today. Using a combination of secondary literature (specifically, the fields of agrarian political economy, feminist political ecology and contentious politics) and primary data, this thesis provides both a new case study and a new way - through the lens of gender - of understanding oil palm expansion and resistance in Indonesia. At the heart of this research study are the voices, opinions and experiences of 42 women who participated in one protest against dispossession in Sambas district, Indonesia. Emphasizing the role of these women in their households, communities and in this protest, as well as the gender relations that shape and are shaped by the women’s participation at all of these levels, this study offers new analysis of who is impacted by oil palm expansion, who resists it and in what ways. The Sambas case study demonstrates how gender relations shape all stages and facets of a protest, from womenʼs decisions to participate in protest (by informing their motivations and political opportunities) to womenʼs protest activities and how women experience protest outcomes. It also reveals how at all stages of mobilization, gender relations are not fixed. Rather, gender relations themselves may also be shaped by and through womenʼs participation in protest. This study has far-reaching implications not only for the future of oil palm expansion and resistance, but on women’s participation in protest, in politics in general and on gender relations.

By taking the experiences and narratives of Indonesian women in Malaysia as the empirical material, this dissertation offers an analysis on spatialised power practices in the context of paid domestic workers. Family survival prompts these women to work abroad, but patriarchal norms shift their economic contribution as supplementary to the men’s role as the breadwinner. The interviews reveal that these women chose Malaysia as their destination country after having listened to oral stories, but despite the transnational mobility involved in their decisions, they are rendered immobile in the employers’ house. Furthermore, the analysis shows an intricate ensemble of power relations in which gender, class and nationality/ethnicity interact with each other, inform and reproduce spatialised domination and labour exploitation practices by the employers. Immigration status of the workers, meanwhile, puts them in a subordinated position in relation to the employers, citizens of the host country. Without the recognition from the state on this particular form of embodied labour, the employers are responsible for defining the working conditions of the workers, leading to precarious conditions. Findings on several resistance practices by the workers complete the analysis of power practices, where resistance is treated as an entangled part of power. Contributing to the study of gendered geographies of exploitation, the study identifies the home and the body as the main levels of analysis; meanwhile, practices at the national level by the state, media and recruitment/placement agencies and globalisation processes are identified as interrelated factors that legitimate the employers’ practices of exploitation. Finally, the dissertation contributes to feminist geography analysis on gender, space, and power through South-South migration empirics.

This thesis explores the relationship between feminisms and visual arts in Indonesia. Focusing on works by Indonesian women artists produced from the 1940s until the present day, it provides a new understanding of the history of Indonesian modern and contemporary art from a feminist perspective. Its main aim is not only to analyze the actual works of Indonesian women artists historically and today, but also to illuminate the sociocultural and political contexts in which the artists worked through feminist reading. Feminisms are often regarded as a purely Western concept that is irrelevant to the Indonesian context, but during a brief period of time after 1998, there was a surge in the Indonesian mainstream consciousness about gender issues. Feminist scholars, activists and cultural workers successfully created a discursive space in the mainstream media to discuss issues which were previously taboo, such as the politics of the female body, domestic violence, sexual abuse and more. Women artists such as Arahmaiani and Titarubi made significant contributions to this discourse, for example through their critical installation and performance art pieces. The thesis sets out to explore the works of these and other women artists, employing multiple methodological approaches from psychoanalysis to semiotics in order to construct a framework for an active re-reading and re-visioning of Indonesian art discourses. Strategies of correction and interrogation are applied to both critically asses the patriarchal structure of the Indonesian art world and revise the existing readings of works by women artists. By looking beyond the labeling but not rejecting the term itself, the thesis highlights a trajectory of change in the way feminisms operates in Indonesian visual arts. As important drivers of this process of change, Indonesian women artists neither resist patriarchy in a ‘politically correct’ way nor revel in eroticism, but steer a course between these two positions. Furthermore, the thesis demonstrates how works by Indonesian women artists can include difference and absorb ambiguity within their frame of reference, thus avoiding the totalising and exclusionary practices sometimes associated with feminisms.

The main focus of this study is to examine the role of Muslim feminists in pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) in promoting gender equity. These are important issues because the pesantren is an educational institution within the Islamic community in Java that tends to preserve patriachal values.

Women activists, both in the West and the East, are reluctant to self-identify as feminists (a) given the various understandings of the term ‘feminist’; and, (b) due to its positive and negative connotations. Among Muslim gender activists, the debate centres not only on ‘feminist identity’ but also on the conceptualisation of gender issues in Islam. Sometimes their understandings are not only different but contrast strongly with one another. One factor that influences the ways in which people understand gender issues in Islam and deal with the associated controversy is the approach they take when reading and interpreting Islamic texts. Some Muslims interpret them textually while others approach them contextually. Some work has been done on gender activists by others from organisations outside of universities who have expressed their ideas about particular gender issues; but, no comprehensive work has been done on Indonesian gender activists in universities. Therefore, this research is designed to fill the gap between the issues of feminism and Islam that obtain among gender activists and scholars at universities. This research, in effect, discusses two highly controversial notions, i.e., feminist identity and the conceptualisations of contentious gender issues in Islam of Muslim Gender Studies Elites. The thesis’ major tasks are to investigate ‘feminist’ identity among Muslim gender activists in Indonesia’s university-based Centres for Women's Studies (PSWs/Pusat Studi Wanita) or Centres for Gender Studies (PSGs/Pusat Studi Gender), to explore what the term ‘feminist’ means to university people who identify as feminist and to those who do not and why some reject that identity, and to ascertain their understandings of Western feminism. This research shows that for strategic reasons, some respondents opt not to publicly identify as ‘feminist’. Self-identification as ‘feminist’ carries a higher risk for women than for men. For those Muslim women who identify as ‘feminist’, the most preferred label is ‘Muslim Feminist’, whereas among non-feminists it is ‘Gender Activist’. The second task is to discuss the variety of understandings of contentious gender issues in Islam. The research reveals the most and least contentious issues among Muslim gender studies elites in PSWs/PSGs. As well, it shows that while almost all of the respondents evinced progressive views regarding gender issues that are not taken to the religious court, they were less progressive vis-a-vis issues related to ritual (ibadah) activity. Respondents’ progressive views and non-progressive views on polygamy and women’s status were relatively equal. The only gender issue towards which male and female respondents’ attitudes showed significant difference was polygamy, which is more problematic for women than for men. Respondents who advocated moderate and progressive views were to some degree close to the feminist positions. While most respondents argued that their gender equality values were not imported from Western feminism, they admitted that many Western feminist concepts and strategies had influenced and shaped their thought and their strategies for dealing with women and gender issues in Indonesia. They agreed that Western feminists are able to raise awareness of gender issues, strengthen feminist identity, and build up faith in Islam among their Muslim counterparts. This research employs an admixture of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The respondents were recruited from six PSWs/PSGs in six universities in Yogyakarta: three were religious-based and three were secular. The respondents numbered 165, including 70 males and 95 females, 105 from religious based universities and 60 from secular universities. All had been involved in PSWs/PSGs and identified as Muslims. In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 respondents across all categories. In order to provide the context in which gender activists and scholars at universities play their roles within gender equality movements in Indonesia, I documented the social and historical background of the gender equality movement in Indonesia, details of the Constitution and the functioning of the Centres.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy
This study is a literary analysis on five stories from Helen Garner’s Postcards from Surfers. This study also translates these five stories from English into Indonesian and discusses some challenges that occurred in the process of translation. The aim of the study is to investigate Garner’s feminist ideas as reflected in the stories from Postcards from Surfers viewed from a Buginese perspective. The five stories are “Postcard from Surfers”, “La Chance Existe”, “The Art of Life”, “All Young Bloody Catholics”, and “Civilization and Discontents”. Through these stories, how Garner expresses her feminist ideas are juxtaposed with Buginese culture. By using Edward Said’s work on contrapuntal reading, Mohanty’s feminist-as-explorer model, and Lazar’s Critical Discourse Analysis, I move back and forth between Buginese culture and Australian culture to consider how Australian women and men are represented and how mainstream Australian society engages with, or challenges discourses of patriarchy and power. This movement back and forth I have theorised as “dancing”. My study examines the potential dialogue between Australian culture and Buginese culture in terms of feminism and its resulting cultural hybridity where some Australian feminist thoughts are applicable to Buginese culture but some are not. From this dialogue, it is found that both Australian women and Buginese women have their own sets of issues stemming from male domination. The way they empower themselves to resist are also different. Therefore, my study centres a Buginese standpoint while dialoguing with Australian feminisms.

This thesis examines the convergence of neoliberal rhetoric across popular media, academic, and institutional discourses, and draws connections between contemporary women's travel literature and common scripts in study abroad promotion. Finding such narratives to be freighted with ethnocentric constructs and tacit endorsements of market-based globalization, I critique the mainstreaming of neoliberal attitudes that depict travel as a commodity primarily valuable for its role in increasing the worth of U.S. American personhood. I question both the prevailing definitions of "global citizenship" and the ubiquitous claims that study abroad prepares students for "success in the global economy" as ideological signifiers of a higher education system that is increasingly corporatized. Utilizing a postcolonial and transnational feminist theoretical framework, the thesis offers a literary analysis of contemporary women's travel memoirs, examining patterns of narcissism and "othering" in their depictions of cross-cultural encounter, and connects these neoliberal trends to consumerism in higher education, study abroad, and post-second wave feminism. Shared themes in the representation of privileged U.S./Western women abroad and the student-consumer model in higher education bespeak a movement toward individual international engagements that reinforce corporate motives for travel and endorse the commodification of global environments, cultures, and people. In hopes of contesting this paradigm, I argue for the reassertion of a social justice-oriented definition of global citizenship and for educational models that foster self-criticism and the decolonization of knowledge.
Graduation date: 2012

This thesis examined the extent and the manner of the gender mainstreaming policy implementation in three Islamic primary schools in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. It investigated the commitment, gender ideology and practices of policy makers, school principals, teachers, and the school committees. Furthermore, the thesis analyzed gender roles depiction in the primary school textbooks as well as investigated the students‘ perception of gender roles.