ABSTRACT
Indonesia is a country of some 230 million people of whom almost 90 per cent claim to be Muslim, making it the largest Islamic nation in the world. One would expect that the character of its women’s movement would differ from non-Islamic countries and have something in common with other Islamic countries. Unlike some Islamic countries, however, Indonesia is not an Islamic state, meaning that its governments have never, like those in Iran or Pakistan, been committed to the enforcement of Islamic law, with its many negative consequences for women.1
This chapter will attempt to identify what is special about feminism and the women’s movement in Indonesia. Although few in Indonesia would claim to be feminists, it is legitimate to use the word to apply to much of the women’s movement ifweunderstand feminism in abasic sense as ‘analyzing theproblemsof women’ and ‘acting to oppose discrimination against women’. In some important respects, the Indonesian situation resembles that in otherAsian countries, and Iwill discuss these similarities before explaining the combination of circumstances that make Indonesia unique.
