ABSTRACT
The Marriage Law was predicated upon a conservative vision of gender order. However, such a vision was not ahistorical. Using Joan Scott’s definition of gender as knowledge which establishes meaning for bodily difference (see Introduction), this chapter interrogates state constructions of gender in marriage laws from the colonial period through to 2005, focusing on female legal subjectivity. The purpose of this chapter is two-fold. First, I aim to situate the Marriage Law within an historical trajectory, scrutinizing the legal history for points of continuity and change in the colonial and postcolonial state’s construction of gender order. In doing so, I will also provide a concrete legal context for my analysis of women’s divorce actions in court in subsequent chapters. Second, establishing the legal meanings that were attached at different historical periods to the category of gender enables me in later chapters to examine how gender operated and was used by the state and by litigants. The chapter is divided into four major sections. In the first section I will
assess the historiography of women and law, highlighting the lacunae which this chapter addresses and the methodology I will use. The second section examines restrictive definitions of female legal subjectivity in colonial and post-independence marriage laws. This leads to my discussion in the third section of constructions of gender in New Order marriage legislation, which I probe for continuities with earlier laws. In the final section, I analyse postNew Order legal developments and calls for reform to marriage laws. By charting legal constructions of female legal subjectivity across a number of state formations, I aim to uncover whether there are continuities in the way in which authoritarian states in Indonesia constructed gender, and what purpose this might have served.
