Gender, Islam, and Democracy in Indonesia * By KATHRYN ROBINSON

Abstract

This book, written by an anthropologist with several decades of research experience in Indonesia, has an ambitious aim: to offer the first interpretation of Indonesian politics, fully informed by modern gender theory, that examines gender relations as an aspect of the exercise of power in society. Robinson aims to chart the changes in gender relations in Indonesia through the twentieth century and the new challenges women are facing at the beginning of the twenty-first. She unfolds the diversity of gender orders in Indonesia through seven chapters. In ch. 1, she reviews the anthropological literature describing the range of gender orders that present differing opportunities and restrictions to women and men in the conduct of their everyday lives. With examples from the Indonesian Islamic populations of Bugis, Java and Aceh, she discusses the extent to which there is an Islamic dimension to the expression of gender difference, particularly looking at themes of kinship and marriage, property and inheritance, and ritual-religious practice. The main argument here is that the idealized male–female relations in the Suharto era did not adequately represent the variety of gender orders in the whole archipelago. According to the author, matrifocality in bilateral kinship is an important element with the potential to increase women’s sources of power in everyday life.