Gender, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Book Review

Gender, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Book Review

Introduction

Gender, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia is an overview of the subject from colonial times to the present written by a sympathetic scholar who has spent a life's work studying, interviewing and observing Indonesia's women (Robinson, 2009). The book should be required reading for all those in Indonesian studies, as many of our fields are blind to the gender perspective Robinson effectively demonstrates is so vital in understanding the country's politics, policy, economics, society, law and religion--at least if one wants to understand the whole population.

Discussion

Robinson's book starts with an important corrective to mainstream history. The fall of Suharto in May 1998 was precipitated by student protests, right? No, actually, it was the Voice of Concerned Mothers (Suara Ibu Peduli, SIP) protest in February 1998 that Robinson argues began the protest movement. The women of SIP turned a central feature of New Order ideology on its head, the idea that women are primarily wives and mothers and that the nation was like a family with Suharto the benevolent and wise father. Women's "counter-hegemonic use of the role of 'mother' is more significant as an act of resistance than critics give it credit for. If women can stand up as mothers against the fathers, the familist paradigm totters" (152). The women centred their protest on cost of living and women's role in feeding the family and the trial of those arrested as a way to showcase the "crisis in trust" in the government (Robinson, 2009).

Robinson's book has many strengths. It brings together a wide variety of studies, drawing on the most prominent names in the study of Indonesian women, along with the author's own years of field research, consulting and study. I particularly enjoyed a section on how some women scholars are using Islam itself to critique those who would limit women's rights. Lily Munir uses the overarching push for egalitarianism and justice in Islam to critique parts of the tradition which appear to put women in an inferior position. Siti Musdah Mulia uses the concept of tauhid, the oneness of God, to argue that domination of man over woman involves putting the dominant party in the position of God; therefore, since God is one, equality between men and women is preferred (Robinson, 2009).

Robinson points out that violence against women was a feature that ran throughout the history of Suharto's New Order regime, from the "founding myth" that Communist women had danced over the corpses of slain generals through the rape and murder of labour activist Marsinah in 1993 to the rapes of Chinese Indonesian women in 1998, at the time of the regime's downfall. Robinson discusses the New Order regime as a hegemonic masculinity which used violence and domination, particularly against women, in order to stay in power. Interestingly, Robinson shows how some discourse since the fall of the New Order has represented an attempt to keep males dominant, under a new justification, ...