Narratives of Muslim Womanhood and Women's Agency

Minako Sakai, Samina Yasmeen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138560666
• eBook ISBN: 9781351360593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Portrayals of Islamic teachings in mass media, often present Muslim women as victims of patriarchal norms. Often covered in a full veil, and without individuality, they tend to be depicted using a monochrome image, across Muslim countries and regions. It does not portray the social reality and expectations of Muslim women, which are in fact diverse and contextual. This book consists of articles that attempt to answer the question, are Muslim women merely passive objects in constructing their role, despite the spread of social media and the Internet, the increased demands of earning disposable income for their families, and their migration to non-Muslim countries around the world?

It closely examines women's agency in negotiating their role in Muslim-majority societies and in new places of settlement (Australia). These articles analyse Muslim women's narratives in a wide range of economic, political, social and cultural milieu and their relationship to identity construction and portrayal in the new millennium. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.

Performing Muslim Womanhood: Muslim Business Women Moderating Islamic Practices in Contemporary Indonesia

Minako Sakai and Amelia Fauzia

ABSTRACT

Islam is increasing its influence in contemporary Indonesia. What impact does this have on women’s economic activity? In Indonesia there is a strong expectation that women should work. Working outside of the home, however, frequently poses a challenge for Muslim women, especially wives. The growing influence of Islamist (women’s) groups in Indonesia strengthens conservative Islamic values to some extent. Nevertheless, a growing number of Muslim women in Indonesia are working to earn an income to meet their household’s needs. As traditional Islamic teaching prescribes that men should be the main breadwinners for their family, and Indonesian Family Law (1974) also stipulates that husbands are the head of the household, economically successful married women have been put into an awkward position. In view of this development, this article explores how Indonesian middle-class Muslim women have been negotiating between their Islamic values and economic necessity. The article shows that the need to generate an income has led to working Muslim women moderating their Islamic values, enabling them to justify extending their responsibilities into the public domain. We argue that working Muslim women are playing a key role in moderating Islamic theological interpretations and perceptions of Islamic womanhood in contemporary Indonesia.

Question: ‘Have you ever attended an Islamic study gathering where the preacher has suggested that women should stay at home?’

Answer: ‘Never.’ ‘If he did, he would immediately be challenged (didemo).’ ‘We would not attend such meetings!’ (Focus group discussion with Muslim women)

Introduction

After the fall of Suharto’s centralist government in 1998, the democratization of Indonesia has proceeded remarkably well. Indonesia is now a thriving lower-middle-income country, and a relatively stable democracy in Southeast Asia. The growing middle class, with its strong desire for consumption and better education for its children, has led to a more expensive standard of living and there is therefore a growing demand for households to have two incomes to cope with their financial needs (Utomo 2012, 66-68). Younger, lower-middle-class women are also drawn into paid work because they want to have consumer-based urban lifestyles (Naafs 2012, 54).

An interesting challenge for Indonesia is that over 85% of its population are Muslims, giving it the largest Muslim population in the world. Islam and expressions of Islamic faith have been important parts of the identity of the emergent middle class (Fealy and White 2008). Political parties with a strong Islamist orientation influenced by Islamist ideas from the Middle East, such as the Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera — PKS), represent the lower sections of the pious middle class in Indonesia (Rinaldo 2010). The PKS was once popular and well supported, but its popularity has more recently declined, as reflected in the results of recent Indonesian elections (2009 and 2014). Its decline in popularity has been due — among other things — to cases of corruption and the behaviour of party leaders. Such Islamist groups tend to uphold the view that a women’s main role is based on the biological aspect of their gender, and that domestic responsibilities, particularly relating to taking care of the family, belong to women. For example, PKS women point to the Qur’an to support the claim that these gender roles are natural and, on the basis of this interpretation, their view of gender equality lies in sharing moral equity between men and women rather than achieving social equality (Rinaldo 2013, 136).¹

It is worth noting that, apart from these Islamist women, a growing number of Muslims in Indonesia are also showing support for Islamic causes and Islamic orientations, even though their support for Islamist political parties has stalled (Sakai and Fauzia 2014). Middle-class Muslims are predominantly educated in secular schools and contact with the two mainstream Islamic organizations in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the Muhammadiyah,² declines and becomes intermittent as Muslims reach adulthood. However, their middle-class identity is indicated by their consumption of a wide range of Muslim products, such as Muslim clothing (Beta 2014), halal food, and Muslim travel needs (Fealy 2008).³ More importantly, they are generally committed to implementing Islamic teaching, actively use the Internet and social media (Hosen 2008) and turn to popular culture for Islamic knowledge as they make a conscious effort to become better Muslims in their everyday life (Weintraub 2011).

As a result, the increasing need for money to support a consumer-based lifestyle, coupled with their desire to be good Muslims, has put pressure on women to generate an income to meet these needs. Recent research findings (Bahramitash 2002; Blackburn 2008; Rinaldo 2008; Robinson 2008) show that Islamism has not always confined Muslim women solely to the domestic sphere in Indonesia. However, they have been placed under pressure to justify their Muslim womanhood if they engage in paid employment because of the long-standing Islamic assumption that domestic responsibilities constitute women’s natural role in society. Their situation is further complicated as male-dominated Islamic authorities in Indonesia, such as the Indonesia Council of Ulama (Majlis Ulama Indonesia — MUI), tend to promote conservative Islamic teachings to discourage women’s participation in paid work, as we shall outline below.

Only upper-middle-class women with stable financial resources may have the option of staying at home and being ideal Muslim women, taking care of their families without having to manage that role along with paid work. In contrast, lower-middle-class Muslim women need to work to meet their lives’ financial demands, and women’s participation in the workforce in Indonesia increased from 32% in 1971 to 52% in 2002 (Utomo 2012, 65). Historically, many women have worked in informal sectors to generate an income to meet their own and their family’s financial needs, but the pressure to generate an income has increased in recent years. For example, according to a recent report (Asia Foundation 2013,10), small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia generate 56% of Indonesian GDP and employ more than 96% of the workforce. Women are an important segment of the workforce and are also employers, as about 30% of SMEs are owned by women. In some cases, as we highlight in this article, Muslim women are becoming stable income earners in urban areas.

In the light of this development, this article will examine how married Muslim female entrepreneurs in Indonesia are negotiating their Muslim womanhood by juggling work and domestic responsibilities.⁴ We shall focus on married middle-class Muslim women who are closely affiliated with the circle of Baitul Maal wat Tamwil (BMT). BMTs are emergent Islamic Savings and Credit cooperatives that also undertake Islamic charitable activities. We shall examine the profiles of Muslim women who are married and work to support their family. The BMTs offer financial services to SMEs, which are often owned by women. BMTs themselves are also predominantly classified as SMEs. As their business schemes are regulated by Islamic jurisprudence, BMTs tend to merge professional development programmes with Islamic values in managing businesses (Antonio 2008) and to employ only Muslims. Thus, the employees are predominantly Muslims who are committed to Islamic causes, while their clients are SMEs. We show that these middle- class working Muslim women endeavour to define their interpretations of Muslim womanhood to endorse and justify their contested role as income-generator and family carer. We argue that, while these Muslim women have not squarely challenged conservative Islamic gender roles, they have been disseminating non-radical non-Islamist teaching, which enables them to actively participate in paid work in Indonesia. Married and working, these women are mediating the practice of Islam against the spread of Islamist ideas of domesticated womanhood, which are increasingly permeating the public sphere in contemporary Indonesia. We argue that working Muslim women are creating an appropriate and acceptable alternative Islamic womanhood, which runs counter to the narrowly defined role of Muslim women as domesticated and subordinated, without turning to international feminist movements for support. In contemporary Indonesia, Islamic authorities have become very diffuse and individual Muslims have more autonomy in locating diverse religious interpretations (Feener 2014; Sakai 2012). Reflecting this development, we argue that working middle-class women have informed themselves of Islamic tenets by recourse to a wide range of sources; they sometimes perform their acceptable submissive gender role to defend their family from criticism, but tacitly practise an alternative Islamic womanhood that enables them to pursue paid work and entrepreneurship to generate an income to cater for their family’s financial needs.

The structure of the article is as follows. First, we present the change in women’s employment opportunities in Indonesia. We show that women are increasingly moving into the service and informal sectors of the Indonesian economy, including SMEs, to generate an income. Second, we analyse national and Islamic discourses on womanhood in contemporary Indonesia. This section explains how ideas of contemporary Indonesian citizenship and Islamic womanhood have merged. The third section analyses how middle- class married women juggle and balance their role by reinterpreting Islamic teaching and performing expected Muslim gender roles to avoid criticism of their activities. We argue that married working middle-class women justify their role in paid work with reference to Islamic teaching and cultural norms, but tacitly promote their version of Islamic womanhood, which is compatible with the modern demands of work and family.⁵

Women’s participation in the waged workforce in Indonesia

Indonesia has successfully developed its economy since the 1970s, and the country’s changing economic landscape has affected employment and also increased women’s workforce participation. Between 1987 and 2002, the Indonesian economy grew strongly, despite the setbacks of financial crises, averaging 7% per year in that period (Suryadarma, Suryahadi, and Sumarto 2012, 554) and Indonesia has achieved the status of a lower-middle-income power since the 1990s (Rhee 2012). Gradual industrialization and urbanization have played a key role in reducing agriculture as a main economic activity, although it still accounted for 16% of economic output in 2009, which is larger than countries of similar development levels (Reserve Bank of Australia 2011, 35). On the other hand, the positive economic growth rate has enabled the government to increase funding for education and Indonesian school enrolment has increased, although there is some inequality; data suggest slightly more male students than females tend to finish their nine-year basic education (BPS 2011, 30-31). With by the rapid expansion of industrialization, the contribution of agriculture to the country’s GDP declined from 53% in the mid-1960s to less than 20% in the 1990s, while the contribution of industry and manufacturing grew to over 60% of GDP in the 1990s (Brown 2012, 736-737) and continued to grow in the 2000s. Along with this change, commercial services and manufacturing/ mining have become an important source of employment, as has the public sector (Parker and Ford 2008). In 2009, manufacturing accounted for 12% of total employment (World Bank 2012, 4).

The impact of support for education and the availability of job opportunities in urban areas have encouraged women to pursue tertiary and professional education for employment. For example, the percentage of women in the labour force increased from 27% in 1960 to 41% in 2000 (Utomo 2012, 65). Furthermore, women have been choosing to study business and accounting at the tertiary level since the mid-1990s. In 2004, more than half of the tertiary students studying business and accounting were female (Lindawati and Smark 2010, 33). It is worth noting that female participation in the workforce has also been assisted by Indonesia’s successful family planning programme, which began in the 1970s. The fertility rate was 6.0 in 1970 but fell to 2.59 by 2000 (Bennett 2012), which means that women limit their child-bearing years and have greater possibilities for find productive work. Furthermore, women’s participation in the workforce received international policy endorsement because of the gender mainstreaming programme officially endorsed by the United Nations’ Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Since 2000, the Indonesian government has been following the Beijing Platform and has introduced policies to support gender mainstreaming programmes and achieve gender equality, including Presidential Instruction No. 09, 2000 on gender mainstreaming. This instruction highlights that all development programmes need to have a balanced gender involvement.

Despite the implementation of new policies, the availability of job opportunities and professional education training, and the widespread expectation that families will become smaller in size, Indonesian women have not been tempted to participate in paid work to their full capacity. Indonesian females seldom advance to managerial positions (Lindawati and Smark 2010, 33). Executive and senior managerial positions are per-ceived as being more suitable for men (World Bank 2011, 207). Furthermore, Indonesian women do not actively seek higher managerial positions since the government promotes the idea of husbands being the head of households and wives as being housewives through the Marriage Law of 1974 and the nation-wide Family Welfare Program (Pendidikan Kesejahteraan Keluarga/Family Welfare Education or PKK).⁶ As housewives, women are responsible for everything related to domestic household matters, such as cooking and taking care of children, and they leave responsibility for working in the hands of husbands. This stipulation indirectly justifies the pressure that women feel not to pursue paid work or a career but rather to be mothers and housewives. Consequently, they are generally happy to remain secondary to their husbands in generating income for the family (Utomo 2012).

Another important finding is that SMEs provide a livelihood for over 90% of the country’s workforce, especially for women and young people (Tambunan 2007, 33). However, the rate of the ownership of SMEs by women in Indonesia lags behind that in other East Asian countries (Asia Foundation 2013, 10), even though Indonesian women play the main role in developing SMEs. Nevertheless, economic necessity does push women to seek new sources of income. For example, overseas migrant work is an emergent area in which low-skilled women are actively seeking employment as domestic servants in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Migrant work has been promoted by government agencies since the 1990s and the number of women employed in this way has gradually increased. There are currently an estimated 6.5 million Indonesian overseas workers, of whom 75-80% are domestic workers (Saifuddin 2014). When these women are single, they send regular remittances to their families in Indonesia, and they end up spending longer working as domestic servants in order to maintain this income (Anggraeni 2010). Furthermore, many women continue to work overseas even after they have a family of their own, as finding an alternative source of income at home to support their family is not easy. Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia are all countries that send large numbers of workers abroad, and more than half of these legal migrant workers are employed in unskilled domestic work, and the majority of them are married women with at least one child (Ukwatta 2010). They leave home to earn an income so they can...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Performing Muslim Womanhood: Muslim Business Women Moderating Islamic Practices in Contemporary Indonesia
• 2 Pakistan, Muslim Womanhood and Social Jihad: Narratives of Umm Abd Muneeb
• 3 The Malaysian Islamization Phenomenon: The Underlying Dynamics and Their Impact on Muslim Women
• 4 Negotiating Modernity: Women Workers, Islam and Urban Trajectory in Indonesia
• 5 Traditional, Islamic and National Law in the Experience of Indonesian Muslim Women
• 6 Between Texts and Contexts: Contemporary Muslim Gender Roles
• Index