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Who Wears the Hijab? Predictors of Veiling in Greater Jakarta

  • Published:
Review of Religious Research

Abstract

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population. In contrast to much of the Middle East, veiling in Indonesia is neither a deeply rooted cultural practice, nor it is universally practised among Muslim women. Just 30 years ago it was rare to see an Indonesian woman wearing a hijab or veil. Today, veiling has become a relatively common practice, particularly among middle-class Muslim women living in urban areas. Although statistics on the prevalence of veiling are scant, the fact of growing use of headscarves is widely accepted in the literature. This paper examines sociodemographic correlates of veiling among young women in the capital region of Indonesia. We analyse a representative sample of 1443 Muslim women aged 20–34 in Greater Jakarta in 2010. About 26% of the women surveyed wore the veil. We found a moderately strong association between veiling and other measures of religiosity, including self-reported subjective religiosity and frequency of reading religious texts. Our multivariate analysis suggests a positive association between educational attainment and the likelihood of veiling among young Muslim women. In discussing these findings, we draw upon the qualitative component of our study and the literature on Islam, gender, and modernity in Indonesia. The paper highlights the difficulty encountered examining the practice of veiling as a binary choice, and as a measure of religiosity.

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Notes

  1. An example departmental decree on uniform can be found here for employees of the National Civil Service Body (Ind: Badan Kepegawaian Negara): http://www.bkn.go.id/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/PERKA-BKN-NOMOR-11-TAHUN-2011-PAKAIAN-SERAGAM-KERJA-BAGI-PNS-DILINGKUNGAN-BKN.pdf.

  2. Nef-Saluz referred to a respondent with a Chador who regularly attended a Shalafi study group in a particular mosque, did not listen to music, did not watch TV and had generally very low media consumption.

  3. Here, political Islam refers to organised forces who are seeking to bring about transformative change in State and society where Islamic rule and laws prevails. During the New Order, the idea of Islam as a political ideology had been largely discouraged. However, Islamic cultural, spiritual and intellectual forces continue to flourish. The tagline popularised by the scholar Nurcholis Majid—Islam yes, Islamic parties no—embodies this marked difference between cultural and political Islam (see Ali 2005).

  4. Published data from the 2010 Population Census suggests that the distribution of highest completed education for all females aged 19–34 were: 34% had primary school qualification or less, 24% had junior high school certificates or equivalent, 33% had senior high school certificates or equivalent, and 9% had tertiary education certificates. The corresponding distribution for all females aged 19 and above were: 54, 16, 22, and 7% respectively. The age 19 is used in the official tabulation given that formal schooling age ends at 18 (BPS-Statistics Indonesia 2013).

  5. This was a shortcoming in the questionnaire design. The question should have included specific time reference and count intervals for example: how many times did you read the Koran in the last month?.

  6. In the second wave of the Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Survey fielded in 2014, the wording to this question was revised to: ‘It is better for Indonesia to adopt Sharia law’ but still a majority claimed to agree with this sentiment.

  7. The survey also asked partnered male respondents whether their spouse/romantic partner (Ind: Pacar) wears the veil. In this paper, we have not included male respondents’ reports of their partner’s characteristics to estimate the prevalence and correlates of veiling. However, we found that qualitative insights by male respondents are valuable to contextualise our quantitative results.

  8. A woman’s mahram is a person that she is never permitted to marry because of a close blood relationship or a relationship by marriage.

  9. This practice is still continuing in public schools.

  10. See for example media article: Affen Heyder (2015) Mengapa jilbab syar’I merebak dan menjadi trend? [Why did the jilbab syar’I rose in popularity?]http://www.bbc.com/indonesia/majalah/2015/06/150621_magazine_bisnis_trendmodejilbab.

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Funding

The Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Study is funded by the Australian Research Council (DP0881776 and DP130104445), and the Ford Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

    Ariane Utomo

  2. School of Demography, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Anna Reimondos, Iwu Utomo & Terence Hull

  3. Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

    Peter McDonald

Authors
  1. Ariane Utomo
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  2. Anna Reimondos
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  3. Peter McDonald
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  4. Iwu Utomo
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  5. Terence Hull
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ariane Utomo.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 8, 9 and 10.

Table 8 Veiling by type of educational institution attended at age 16
Full size table
Table 9 Veiling among employed women by employment sector in primary job
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Table 10 Veiling transition between 2 waves: 2010 and 2014
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Utomo, A., Reimondos, A., McDonald, P. et al. Who Wears the Hijab? Predictors of Veiling in Greater Jakarta. Rev Relig Res 60, 477–501 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-018-0345-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-018-0345-6

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