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CHAPTER 2

SOCIETY AND DAILY LIFE

From the office to the schoolroom, and from Saturday night to Monday morning, it’s time to take a look at Indonesian society and daily life. This is where we’ll find out why Indonesian kids get so stressed at exam time, what it means to be an Indonesian feminist, how to hang out Indonesian-style, and why it’s never normal to want to be on your own…

WORKADAY LIFE IN IDONESIA

When my class at primary school did a project on Indonesia we were given the idea that pretty much everyone in the country was either a pre-industrial rice farmer, or a becak (pedicab) driver! Needless to say, the world of work in Indonesia is a bit more complicated than that…

Traditionally, the Indonesian view of employment broke down quite simply. If you were from a poor, uneducated background you were set for a life of labor, probably on the land, and without much by the way of prospects. If you were rich, well you were rich already. And if you were somewhere in the middle, you aimed to join the public sector. The idea of a successful salaried career in the private sector was unusual: if you weren’t set for hard labor or public service, and didn’t already have a silver spoon in your mouth, then you went in for entrepreneurship, be it selling snacks at the side of the road, or creating a booming import-export empire.

But things began to change from the late 1960s as technological advances in agriculture suddenly freed up large numbers of one-time field laborers—especially women, who’d traditionally done much of the planting and harvesting. So where did they go? Into the factories, of course, where Indonesia’s manufacturing economy was just getting going. And as the country industrialized, burgeoning financial and service sectors and a growing consumer economy were part of the package too. There’s been a bit of turbulence along the way, but these days Indonesia’s economy and workforce are as diversified as anywhere—even if some people actually do still work as rice farmers or becak drivers!

Office life at a Jakarta cable TV company.

A JOB FOR LIFE

For much of the 20th century the most attractive employment prospect was a position in the ranks of Indonesia’s vast body of state employees which included military, police, and the sprawling apparatus of the Pegawai Negeri Sipil, PNS, the Civil Service. A civil service position might not be particularly well paid, but it was a job for life with lots of extra formal benefits, not least a pension. There were also, it has to be said, often opportunities for considerable illicit additional earnings in a system notorious for its institutionalized corruption. But perhaps even more importantly than the financial rewards, a civil service job brought prestige. Many of 21st-century Indonesia’s solidly middle class families attained and consolidated that status through the civil service careers of previous generations.

Poking fun at the pegawai negeri—A cartoon mocking civil servants; the captions read “What my friends think I do. What the public think I do. What my boss thinks I do. What my parents think I do. What I think about. What I actually do.”

Even today, amongst the ranks of the lower middle classes, especially in outlying provinces away from the big cities, the chance to don the olive-green civil service uniform remains a very alluring prospect, not least because of the security and prestige it offers.

LIFE IN THE KANTOR

It sometimes seems to me that the various primers and orientation courses aimed at Western expats heading to Indonesia for work do their very best to cast a pall of mystifying orientalist bunkum over the Indonesian office. Take them too seriously and you might come away with the idea that Indonesian employment is an impenetrable labyrinth of arcane eastern mysteries where nothing is as it seems. In reality there’s nothing particularly exotic about the average Indonesian office, although, just like wider Indonesian society, it usually consists of a layer of easy-going warmth over a careful framework of hierarchy and respect. There’s a lot of unspoken emphasis on harmony, and so being disrespectful or doing anything likely to mess with someone’s hierarchical prestige will always cause problems.

Another endless round of meetings and presentations…

The importance and respect given to formal hierarchy in Indonesian workplaces reflects the values of wider society. But I suspect it also has something to do with the fact that Indonesian office culture was originally forged in the civil service, which, like civil services everywhere, is very hierarchical indeed. Indeed, the very word “office” in Indonesian—kantor—still conjures up images of a dimly lit space, filled with untidy files and shuffling olive-green figures, even though these days it’s more likely to refer to a bright room full of frantically motivated techies.

“Rubber Time”—Punctuality, Indonesian Style

You’ll hear a heck of a lot about a concept called jam karet in Indonesia. It’s a very well-worn cliché—something that longtime expats discourse on as if delivering the ultimate cultural insight, and that Indonesians themselves mention with a certain dash of self-parodying irony, like Irish people going on about their national love of “the craic”. But there’s definitely something in it!

Jam karet means “rubber time”, and it refers to Indonesia’s supposedly innate sense of flexibility when it comes to deadlines and fixed schedules. If the bus is an hour late, or your co-worker fails to turn up for that important meeting, it’s allegedly all down to jam karet, and you’ll never be able to do anything about it. Jam karet is intimately connected with another common Indonesian phrase: nanti saja, which means “just later”. And if the reply to a question about when something’s going to get done is “nanti saja”, you know you’ve just become a victim of jam karet!

One thing that has always struck me about Indonesian workplaces, is the importance of food! In the office of the school where I first worked in Indonesia the office boys (and they’re another feature of Indonesian offices—poorly paid but very obliging men who double as cleaners, runners, general skivvies and tea-makers) were continually coming in and out with take-out orders for the teachers and admin staff, and I’d find myself constantly assailed with offers of oily snacks and sweet treats from every side. Even when I was working in a tiny newspaper office with no more than half-a-dozen coworkers, someone was always eating.

Traveling to Work

Climb aboard any long-haul bus or interisland ferry towards the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and you’ll meet them: Indonesia’s millions of working class economic migrants, making what is often their only annual trip back to their home region. Economic pressures have long prompted people from all over the Indonesian archipelago to leave home in search of employment, and many regions have their own particular traditions of migration. The small towns of East Java provide many of the domestic staff for wealthy families in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Middle East; people from the eastern regencies of Bali have been staffing cruise ships for decades; and the hard-grafting folks of Madura pop up selling sate or doing whatever else will pay in just about every corner of the country.

But there’s one part of Indonesia that raises migration from an economic necessity to a rite of passage, and that’s the Minangkabau region of Sumatra. Minangkabau culture is matrilineal: the women get the inheritance, so unmarried young men have always found themselves disenfranchised, and have always gone out into the world to seek their fortune. The Minangkabau word merantau—which literally means something along the lines of “to go into non-Minangkabau territory”—has entered the Indonesian language as a term for migration. But the idea of merantau conveys more than just migrating for work; it invokes a sense of honorable wandering in search of wisdom as well as wealth. The reality might well be a construction site in Kuala Lumpur, but merantau is still very much a respected tradition.

YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE: THE SUPER SOCIABLE NATION

Apart from “Hello mister”, the phrase I hear most frequently as I make my way around Indonesia is “Kok sendiri?” It’s hard to give a direct translation of what’s really implied by the question but it basically means something along the lines of “You’re on your own??? What the hell are you doing on your own??? No, seriously, mister, what is wrong with you??? Don’t you have any friends???” Because in this most social of countries, wanting to be alone is a downright deviant act.

Big-name brands and icy air-con—the irresistible lure of the mall!

In Indonesia life itself is a social affair, and although this is what makes it one of the friendliest places on earth, it can cause difficulties for those who do relish a little quiet time. If I want to enjoy a peaceful Sunday afternoon on my own, I’ve learnt to lie when Indonesian friends message and ask what I’m up to, and more importantly, sama siapa?—who with? If I answer truthfully, well, you can guess the response: kok sendiri??? And then they’ll probably jump in the car and drive over to rescue me from this terrible fate…

Social life in Indonesia is a simple matter of grabbing any passing excuse to be social, to hang out. Foreigners coming to Indonesia for work sometimes complain that what is supposed to be a business meeting often turns into little more than a group hang-out, with absolutely no discussion of the matter in hand. That’s partly down to a key element of business etiquette in Indonesia: an importance placed on developing personal relationships ahead of the nitty-gritty. But it’s also about the irresistible social inclination.

Hanging out at shopping malls is a full-time occupation for some.

MALLRATS

When I first worked as a teacher in Indonesia I used to ask my Monday classes what they’d been up to over the weekend. But I soon gave up, because the answer was almost always the same: “Went to the mall…”

For many urban Indonesians of the aspiring or actual middle classes, hanging out at the mall is the major weekend activity. I used to think it was an expression of mindless consumerism, until a colleague pointed out that most people don’t actually buy anything at the mall. All those glitzy boutiques and brand outlets are really just a backdrop for the important business of being in the company of your buddies—and in a pleasantly air-conditioned setting.

Clubbing Together

Indonesia’s inclination towards social interaction is behind the country’s great galaxy of clubs and “communities”. There are communities for everything from fishing to heavy metal, and from mountaineering to vintage vehicles, in just about every city in the country. Some amount to little more than a Facebook page and a few bumper stickers, but many are major social organizations—albeit usually organized organically without much of a formal structure—with regular meet-ups and road-trips. On a Saturday night the streets of downtown Surabaya are often clogged with the city’s myriad motorbike “communities”, groups bonded only by ownership of a single type of bike, be that Vespa or Vario, Harley or Honda, but using that connection as an excuse to hang out together.

CAFÉ CULTURE, INDO STYLE

I have a suspicion that Indonesia invented café culture, long before the people of the Mediterranean took to sipping espressos on shady terraces. After all, Java is a place quite literally synonymous with coffee, and a cup of the black stuff is a staple from one end of Indonesia to the other. And the cornerstone of Indonesian social life, ngobrol (“chatting”) is always best when you combine it with ngopi—a lovely bit of Indonesian slang which simply means “to coffee”.

Starbucks opened its first outlet in Jakarta in 2002, but local caffeine-heads quickly realized that they could do better themselves, and in the last decade independent coffee shops with serious hipster cred have become a boom industry. The best ones in Jakarta, Surabaya, and Yogyakarta could easily give their New York rivals a run for their money.

But still, my own preferred places for ngopi and ngobrol would have to be the ones that were already a part of life in Indonesia long before anyone knew what a barista was. On the most scenic bends of mountain roads you’ll find bamboo shacks where the seating arrangements are lesehan-style—you lounge on the floor at low tables—and where you can order a steaming cup of local coffee sweetened with a great dollop of condensed milk. It might not have the finesse of a barista-crafted flat white, but it tastes just as good.

“The Small Change of Friendship”

The author Nigel Barley brilliantly describes cigarettes as “the small change of friendship” in Indonesia—offered endlessly between old buddies and new acquaintances. And as a non-smoker I’m always at a distinct social disadvantage, for this is a country where something like 70 percent of adult men smoke. The major domestic tobacco manufacturers—companies like Djarum, Dji Sam Soe, Gudang Garam, and the Philip Morris-owned Sampoerna—are amongst the biggest businesses in the country. They spend millions of dollars on highly sophisticated advertising campaigns, each company with multiple cigarette brands delicately targeted at different demographics, from aspirational urban creatives to good ol’ boys back in the kampung. And while there are some official restrictions, tobacco money plays a huge role in the entertainment industries in Indonesia. The classic style of Indonesian cigarette is the kretek—clove-flavored, accounting for well over 80 percent of all domestic tobacco sales, and adding an unmistakably evocative fragrance to the atmosphere of Indonesian public spaces.

HITTING THE TOWN ON MALAM MINGGU

It’s malam minggu—literally “Sunday eve”, i.e., Saturday night—and it’s time to hit the town. A low-key malam minggu with friends typically features a bout of general jalan-jalan, wandering around. Ideally someone has a car. There might be some mall time early on; there will definitely be food at some point; and things might end up with a long stretch of general ngobrol over coffee—in either a hipster café, or an old-school street-side hang-out, depending on how trendy, or how moneyed, your crew is. And that might well be it—unless, of course, you’re hanging out with some proper party animals, in which case you’ll need to be prepared to venture into the gloom of the Indonesian nightlife scene.

Bars and clubs in Indonesia do have a tendency to be divided between outrageously pricey and pretentious lounges where the indolently rich sip extravagantly priced cocktails, and a gritty netherworld of sticky dancefloors and vice. A happy medium does exist in most bigger cities, but if you’re looking for afterhours drinking in small-town Indonesia you will be heading for some decidedly rough and ready places.

But then, of course, there’s Jakarta, which has long had a reputation as one of the best places in Asia for nightlife. The central and southern part of the city, stretching southwards from the traffic and commerce hub of Plaza Indonesia, is home to an ever shifting array of seriously sophisticated clubs and bars where you might not want to order a drink unless you’ve got very deep pockets. Head the other direction, meanwhile, northwards towards the sea, and you’ll descend into a world of mind-boggling sleaze, even though the original linchpin of the North Jakarta scene, the monumental den of iniquity known as Stadium, has now closed its dark doors.

Beer, handphone and cigarette—classic malam minggu ingredients!

“DO YOU LIVE IN A MUD HUT?”

No one in Indonesia lives in a mud hut; they’d get washed away by the monsoon. “Do you live in a bamboo hut, then?” That’s an actual conversation I had more than once while living in Indonesia with folks back home in the UK, where some people genuinely struggled to come to terms with the fact that I lived in an actual house, with walls, windows, doors and everything!

Modern minimalism and traditional touches mix in an upscale villa in Bali.

It’s true that there are a few people, out in the deep countryside, who really do live in bamboo huts. And there are also a good few people who live in ramshackle shanties. But generally speaking home for Indonesians—rural and urban, from Sabang to Merauke, and across a wide social spectrum—is a modern house, almost always single-story, with concrete walls and a tiled roof. But while the typical Indonesian home might not tally up with some people’s exotic imaginings, it does have some distinctly Indonesian characteristics.

A HOME AWAY FROM HOME

The first house I lived in in Indonesia stood at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the vast suburban acreage of eastern Surabaya. It was the archetypal middle class dwelling, with a heavy green gate in front, a garage to the left, and a narrow porch opening to a cool space beyond. Immediately inside the front door was a long room, stretching right to the back of the house, with a sofa, TV, and dining table in the middle. Three bedrooms and a bathroom opened directly into this communal space. At the very back, tucked discreetly to the side, was the kitchen, and beyond that was a tiny yard, and opening onto that tiny yard was an even tinier bedroom where Sutinah, the maid, lived. That’s right: the maid; we had a maid; I’ll talk about that later.

I’ve lived in various other Indonesian houses in the years since, and they are almost always a variation on this simple theme. The emphasis is always on being in the company of others, and that’s what that space at the heart of the house is for—hanging out with your family.

An old-school middle-class home in Jakarta of the kind rapidly giving way to modern villas and apartments.

A typical Indonesian living room.

BEING AN ANAK KOS

When a young Indonesian leaves the warm cocoon of the family home to head for college or work in some far-off city, they don’t end up living on their own in a studio apartment. They move into something called a rumah kos. This is usually translated as “boarding house”—which conjures up grim Dickensian visions of gruesome landladies and drafty corridors. But the classic rumah kos is usually just a family home with space for a lodger or two. And the classic ibu kos (“landlady”) is less a gimlet-eyed Victorian tyrant than a surrogate mother—though she’ll certainly keep a close check on her lodgers, particularly if they happen to be girls (most respectable rumah kos only take lodgers of a single sex). There are also purpose-built rumah kos, which are more like budget hotels with a dozen or more identical rooms, but they’re not such nice places to live, and they don’t always have such wholesome reputations.

Oh Mandi! The Indonesian Bathroom

Traditional Indonesian kamar mandi, “bathrooms”, aren’t quite the same as what you might find back home. For a start, they don’t usually have a bath. What they do have, though, is a big tiled tank called a bak mandi, full of unheated water, with a little plastic scoop for sloshing it over yourself—which is how you take a shower, Indonesian style. It’s actually both quicker and more refreshing on hot days than standing under the meager trickle of an underpowered showerhead (though these days, modern middle class homes usually do have a conventional shower as well). Traditional squat toilets are vanishing from middle class homes, replaced by sit-down flushing toilets, usually with a sort of squirting hose contraption in lieu of toilet paper—you’ll get used to it!

I’ve been an anak kos (“lodger”, literally “boarding house kid”)—a couple of times—and they were great places, full of that unmistakable Indonesian social warmth. It’s almost impossible to find a house for a short-term lease in Indonesia, but your board in a rumah kos is paid by the month. For economic or educational migrants from poor backgrounds a budget rumah kos is the only affordable accommodation option, but around the swanky private universities in major Indonesian cities you’ll find rumah kos complete with swimming pools and monthly rent that runs into the hundreds of dollars. The main attraction of these places is the chance to live communally, to find a home away from home—because in Indonesia a house without other people in it is no home!

Floor-level seating, tea, snacks and cigarettes—the essential elements of hospitality in a traditional home.

Helping Hands: The Pembantu

“You have a maid???” exclaim my British friends when I’m living in Indonesia. “You don’t have a maid???” exclaim my Indonesian friends when I’m living in the UK…

Having live-in domestic staff is as much a middle class necessity in Indonesia as having a television. I’ve met Indonesians who simply can’t comprehend that while I was growing up my parents—a teacher and a journalist—not only didn’t have a maid; they couldn’t possibly have afforded one. “But who did the housework?” they ask, aghast, and when I tell them they’re still more incredulous: “Your dad???” Wages for domestic staff are very low in Indonesia (the attraction for young women from poor rural backgrounds is that with room and board provided you can, in theory, save everything you earn), so even families on relatively modest incomes can often afford at least one maid. Those with more cash to spare might have a whole gang of them.

The Indonesian word for maid is pembantu, which literally means “helper”—a somewhat softer concept than “servant”—and in many middle class households the pembantu is almost a member of the family.

A THIRST FOR LEARNING, BUT AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM THAT OFTEN FALLS SHORT

It’s an image that defines the Indonesian morning. From straggling villages on far-flung islets to classy suburban compounds, the roads are alive with noisy chatter of 55 million children heading for school. They go in early—usually at 7.30am—and they’re generally done by early afternoon when the flow reverses, the same neatly uniformed horde fanning out towards food stalls, hang-out spots, and homes.

Heads down! Struggling through the dreaded Ujian Nasional.

All Indonesians are supposed to go through 12 years of compulsory schooling. From the ages of six to 11 children attend Sekolah Dasar, Elementary School, usually abbreviated to SD. Kids in SD wear white and brick-red uniforms, and they definitely set the color scheme of the Indonesian streets first thing in the morning. After that it’s on to Sekolah Menengah Pertama or SMP, Junior High School, for three years. The uniform for SMP is usually white and navy blue. And then there’s three final years of Sekolah Menengah Atas, SMA, Senior High School, where the students wear white and slate-blue. The school year starts in mid-July, with a break in December and another break wherever the end of Ramadan (defined by the lunar calendar) happens to fall.

Remarkably, for such a vast country with a great deal of inequality, Indonesia manages very nearly 100 percent enrollment at Elementary School level. And Indonesia also manages near-universal literacy, with no meaningful disparity between male and female literacy rates. But if that all makes it sound like an educational Eden, you might, unfortunately, have to think again.

Indonesia routinely scores appallingly in international assessments of skills amongst school children. It’s a conundrum fit to make you grind your teeth: how can a country with a universal schooling system and total basic literacy do so badly? But you don’t need to go very far beyond the school gates to start finding problems. For a start, Indonesian education puts an old-fashioned emphasis on rote learning and memorization of meaningless information. When I was teaching English in a private language center it often seemed that my main job was undoing all the damage done in state schools, where kids were drilled in convoluted formal grammar by teachers who could barely speak English themselves.

Secondly, on paper Indonesia might have one of the best teacher-to-pupil ratios on the planet (in fact, several critical World Bank reports have actually claimed that Indonesia has too many teachers), but that doesn’t always match the reality on the ground. The country’s three million teachers are mostly poorly trained, poorly paid, and poorly disciplined. They’re also more likely to play truant than the kids.

Senior high school girls hanging out after class in Bali.

Not long ago I was sitting waiting for a ferry on a small island in eastern Indonesia. The Independence Day celebrations of 17 August were just a few weeks off, and group after group of schoolkids—some of them nothing more than first-graders—came marching past in perfect formation, diligently practicing their parts in the upcoming celebratory parades, and without an adult in sight. I asked one of the older children what was going on; their teachers hadn’t turned up that morning, so they’d organized themselves!

TESTING TIMES

As the month of April looms, Indonesian kids start getting decidedly twitchy at the approach of the dreaded Ujian Nasional, the national tests sat at the end of each of the three stages of the schooling system. These exams—which are basically tests of memorization rather than applied learning—put a huge amount of pressure on students. Until recently you had to pass to graduate to the next level of schooling, and the shame of failure was awful. But the weird thing is that each year the national pass rates for the Ujian Nasional are so close to 100 percent that I always find myself wondering exactly how the unfortunate 0.5 percent have actually managed to fail. The problem, of course, is institutionalized cheating on a quite spectacular scale—often with the collusion of teachers who are as terrified of poor results as the kids.

There are those who are trying to improve the education system. When President Joko Widodo was elected in 2014, he handed command of the Culture and Education Ministry to experienced educationalist Anies Baswedan, who set out on a program of reform (his progressive reputation was later tainted by his victory in a dirty fight for the Jakarta governorship). But it’ll be a long time before all the problems are ironed out. One of the unfortunate upshots of this is that those with cash to burn take their children out of the system altogether—sending them to privately run international schools at home or abroad, and then packing them off for university education overseas. This is creating a tiny youthful elite, speaking fluent English with an American twang and enjoying an outlook that places them poles apart from even the smartest of their stay-at-home compatriots.

University students in class.

STUDENT LIFE

Those who do make it through to the far side of high school go on to university. There are around 3,500 universities across the country, the vast majority of them privately run. As with so much else, gengsi comes into higher education in a very big way. Extravagantly overproduced studio portraits of sons and daughters in their graduation gowns adorn the walls of many Indonesian homes, and just how much prestige these images are worth is directly related to which university awarded the degree. The best of the hundred-odd state universities carry particular kudos (though none get much of an international ranking)—Gajah Mada in Yogyakarta (UGM), The Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), The University of Indonesia in Jakarta (UI), and Airlangga in Surabaya (Unair). In the private sector, however, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the relative prestige often has more to do with the scale of the course fees than the academic standards.

Being a student in Indonesia does, however, earn you a certain level of well-deserved honor. The student community has had a role on the national stage since the early days of modern Indonesia. ITB in Bandung was a hothouse of the independence movement in the 1920s; the vast student protest movement was a decisive factor in the seismic shifts that brought an end to the New Order regime in 1998; and Indonesia’s huge student community continues to give rise to movements for social change.

I lived for a while close to the main UGM campus in Yogyakarta—a city with no fewer than 21 individual universities, plus various further education institutes and colleges. It was a brilliantly bustling neighborhood with a permanent hum of lively conversation. It also had an epic array of cheap and tasty food and trendy cafés. British students might spend most of their extensive leisure time in an alcohol-induced stupor, but their Indonesian counterparts tend to stick to the much more sensible business of eating, coffee-drinking, and conversation.

Women in Indonesia: An Interview with Devi Asmarani of Magdalene.co

It’s always difficult to make sweeping statements about the position of women in Indonesia. On the one hand, Indonesian women work; they study; they run businesses; they are elected to government. At a glance they don’t seem like an oppressed gender. But on the other hand there are powerful undercurrents of religious and social conservatism, weak legal protection and many other challenges. I’m neither Indonesian, nor a woman, so I thought it would be useful to get some insight about these issues from someone who’s both.

Devi Asmarani

Devi Asmarani is the chief editor of Magdalene.co, an online magazine which she set up with fellow journalist Hera Diani in 2013. It’s one of the most interesting and taboo-busting of all Indonesia’s media outlets, with articles—most in English—on many edgy subjects which you’ll rarely see discussed in the mainstream press, including race, sexuality, and above all, women’s issues. I asked Devi to share her thoughts.

Why did you decide to start Magdalene?

We realized there was a gap in the choice of popular reading for women who wanted to read something of substance, a publication that provides a different perspective when it comes to women-related issues. We thought we could offer a certain edge that other Indonesian media didn’t have.

There’s no way you could write and have a healthy and nonjudgmental conversation in the mainstream media about not wanting to have children, or about being gay and an observant Muslim, or about growing up being told your breasts were too big and you need to cover them up only to find out later that it’s OK to have big boobs. There is a very strong sense of self-censorship that we don’t encourage at Magdalene.

How do you see the situation with regards to women’s rights in Indonesia today?

Not as good as it should be. I’m worried about the growing religious conservatism that has had negative implications for women in many parts of Indonesia. There are real concerted efforts to keep women in the domestic domain. There are 365 legislative products of local governments across Indonesia that discriminate against women or have implications on women’s freedom of mobility or expression. Many of these bylaws were issued in towns and districts in Aceh, West Sumatra, West Java, and Sulawesi.

I also think that not enough resources are being channeled to address the basic issues when it comes to women’s rights. There is the insistence to maintain the legal marrying age at 16 (when even the Indonesian law on child protection defines a child as someone below the age of 18). And there is still poor handling of sexual violence, while a weak legal system lets the perpetrators off easily. Female single parents also often still face challenges in obtaining legal or social protection.

I’m usually pretty positive when describing the position of women in Indonesia to other foreigners; do you think I should be more critical?

Yes, you should be. Do Indonesian women have a high level of empowerment and equality? Yes, when compared to some other countries in Asia and the Middle East. But there is a lot of room for improvement.

So what are the biggest things that still need to change when it women’s rights in Indonesia?

For one, the whole government structure must have strong training on gender perspective to mainstream gender equality across all levels of the bureaucracy, law enforcement, and the legislative bodies. Right now, women’s issues, including women’s rights and protection, are seen as the scope of only one ministry: the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection.

The weight of tradition—a woman gets made up for a Javanese wedding in the traditional style.

This is very important in the efforts to reduce violence against women, but its implication will be seen in all areas from education to workplace, from the public domain (including the media) to the domestic domain. It will definitely empower women and allow for more conversation on gender inequality.

Some Westerners seem to think “Islam” and “women’s rights” are incompatible, and worry about the fact that more Indonesian women are adopting Muslim dress codes. But I get the impression that in Indonesia it’s sometimes possible for Muslim women to become more religiously observant, and more empowered at the same time. Do you have any thoughts on this?

You’re quite right on this one. What I love about Indonesian feminists who come from religious backgrounds is that they see their religious credentials as empowering assets to help them bring about change from within. They are informed and they are critical and, in a way, they are so much better at fighting patriarchy (and definitely so much more courageous) in a religiously conservative society than the rest of us, who can only criticize from “the outside”.

Kartini—an iconic role model from Indonesia’s colonial past.

Controversial writer and feminist Ayu Utami.

But one must also be cautious when applying this to the general trend of hijab-wearing women in Indonesia. I see the growing tendency of women wearing hijab as an issue of conformity. We are quite a communal people who generally loathe to be different. I find that some women feel pressured to wear the hijab because everyone in their family, or everyone in their workplace, or in their neighborhood, or in their social circle wear it.

I also find it a bit shocking that some people my age, middle class women, have even grown more conservative than our parents’ generations. They start making their children wear the hijab earlier, which is very problematic, because as the girls grow up and start to question their identity or want to express themselves authentically by removing their veil, people, even those who don’t wear the hijab, see it as an act of betrayal. They have to be extraordinarily brave to remove the hijab.

What does it mean to be an Indonesian feminist? Does Indonesian feminism have its own unique characteristics?

This is a tough question that I have pondered for some time. I have met so many Indonesian feminists who would not fit the tired and clichéd stereotypes of angry feminists. I find that Indonesian feminists are very good at living and working in that gray area that separates patriarchy and feminism. They are empowered but they are very good at navigating within the social and religious confines without unnecessary hostilities. It’s like they choose their battles carefully.

Different identities—two women, two styles in downtown Jakarta.

Final question: Kartini—the aristocratic Javanese woman who pioneered education for girls and wrote on women’s issues at the turn of the 20th century—is a national hero and still the best-known symbol of the women’s movement. On 21 April each year, schoolgirls across the country get done up in traditional Javanese dress to honor her memory. Is she really still a useful icon for women’s rights in modern Indonesia?

I will have to say, yes. However, she would be a more useful icon if her actual significance hadn’t been so diluted throughout history, and by the ridiculous kebaya-wearing celebration we do every year. Kids grow up never really knowing her significance, never once reading any of her writings.

Her significance to me is not that she opened up the girls’ school (though that was important, too), but the fact that she showed that even in those years, a Javanese woman could have such sophisticated critical thoughts and ideas, and could articulate them. I think Indonesian women, specifically middle class young women, need this kind of hero to inspire them, although the millennials might find it hard to relate to this quiet strength.

DATING, SEX AND MARRIAGE

The Internet is awash with articles claiming to offer definitive insights into the world of dating in Indonesia. But they are usually written by expat men, and they seem to focus almost exclusively on the kind of dating that originates in the seedy bars of Jakarta’s notorious Blok M quarter. There are also plenty of more formal, anthropologically-inclined articles which paint a portrait of a deeply traditional society where all aspects of courtship are overseen by conservative parents, where holding hands in public is forbidden, and where premarital sex is completely unknown (beyond the boundaries of Blok M, presumably). It shouldn’t take a genius to work out that these contradictory portrayals in truth represent opposing extremes, and don’t really have much to do with how most young Indonesians go looking for love.

Weddings are an excuse for extravagant traditional dress, as with this Balinese couple.

It didn’t take me long when I started teaching English to Indonesian teenagers to realize that they were pretty much like teenagers everywhere. There was always plenty of gossip about romances blossoming between classmates; someone was always broken-hearted; and the girls were forever huddled in a corner dissecting the latent romantic inferences extractable from a text message.

The first step on the road to forming a romantic attachment is pendekatan. This is a gentle process of “getting close” to your potential beau in general social settings. Mind you, Indonesians tend to move fast: a couple of trips to the mall as part of a group of friends and a subsequent flurry of text messaging is all that’s needed before formal pacar (the gender-neutral word for boyfriend/girlfriend) status is achieved. And from then on, it’s time for pacaran (dating, with a specific person; dating in general is perkencanan), which typically involves going to the movies, hanging out in coffee shops and at food stalls, and, inevitably, going to the mall.

For young people, still living with their parents—and especially for girls—life is definitely a bit more restrictive in Indonesia than it is in most Western countries—probably comparable to how things were in the USA a couple of generations ago. It would certainly be very, very unusual for an unmarried young couple to be allowed to share a bed under their parents’ roof. But at the same time, there’s an awful lot of parental blind-eye-turning going on, and it certainly seems to have become more socially acceptable for university-age couples to take backpacking trips together. All of which, brings us conveniently to the topic of sex…

The happy couple dressed in the traditional Minangkabau wedding costume from West Sumatra.

SEX AND SEXUALITY

According to public morality—and according to those anthropological primers—premarital sex just isn’t allowed and doesn’t happen in Indonesia. But of course, wherever you are in the world, public morality has never really tallied with what people actually do. There are great variations between different communities, different regions, and different religious outlooks, but there’s certainly nothing particularly unusual about premarital sex in Indonesia. More than quarter of a century ago, one study revealed that over 50 percent of unmarried couples in urban areas were having sex, and it would be a safe bet to say that the percentage has increased considerably since then. Unmarried cohabitation is still highly unusual, however, and having children outside of marriage likewise. Unmarried (as opposed to divorced) mothers face a good deal of stigma in most parts of Indonesia. It’s unfortunate that sex education is rather lacking. I’ve been to a depressing number of wedding ceremonies for what in Indonesia are known as “marriages by accident”—where the bride is displaying a distinct bump beneath her wedding dress…

Regional ethnic identity comes to the fore on the wedding day for a Batak couple in Sumatra.

TYING THE KNOT

If the dating scene in Indonesia is more liberal than many foreigners might imagine, marriage is still a very important thing, and choosing to remain unmarried is, for both men and women, something akin to a deviant act—and certainly something that will result in incessant hectoring from parents, aunts and uncles, and society at large. The question in Indonesia is not “Are you married?”, but “Are you married yet?” And if the answer is “Not yet,” then the next question is, inevitably, “Why not?”