Shame and Borders: The ‘Aisyiyah’s Struggle for Muslim Women’s Education in Indonesia

Abstract

In dealing with the patriarchal Javanese Muslim public in the early twentieth century, the ‘Aisyiyah organization employed “Islamic strategies” governed by the concept of women’s awra (modesty shame) in winning women’s access to education and social participation. These strategies included the veiling encouragement among Javanese Muslim women and the provision of women’s mosques. This chapter discusses these strategies and examines them as ways of negotiating the seclusion that impeded women from knowledge and other resources. More than protecting women from men’s gaze, these strategies also ensured the avoidance of upheaval that was feared as a result from women’s appearance in public space. While veiling and sex segregation are often criticized by Western feminist scholars who rest their arguments on the premise of liberal humanity as forms of women’s subjugation in the name of religion, the ‘Aisyiyah case demonstrates that such practices had been useful for facilitating women’s access to social participation and education in public space while constructing the new Javanese Muslim identity in opposing the Dutch colonialism in Indonesia’s pre-independence era.