Gender Geographies of Activism: Motherhood, Migration, and Labour Protest in West Java, Indonesia

Abstract

This article contributes to the literature on the geography of unionism through an examination of the processes shaping women's labour activism in Indonesia. Based on in-depth interviews and survey data, the study is a comparative investigation of two villages in West Java. The research investigates both the factors that women factory workers consider when deciding whether to participate in labour protests, as well as the gender-specific pressures on women to refrain from participating in labour activism in the two villages. The study explores the ways in which ideologies of motherhood and femininity operate differently in the two communities and within groups of women with different migration and marital statuses. In sum, the article contends that in order to develop a more complete analysis of the geographies of labour activism, research must take seriously the specificity of community-scale negotiations over gender norms and expectations, and address women's active roles in the on-going production of gender relations and spaces of activism.