The Obedient Wife? Marriage, Gender, and Social Change in Indonesia

• In Event: 216 - Regular Session. Gender in the Muslim World: New Perspectives

Abstract

Like other majority Muslim societies, Indonesia is experiencing a confluence of transnational forces, especially economic development and Islamic revivalism. What consequences do these have for gender and family? In particular, how do married couples reconcile the potential contradictions between increasing access to education and jobs for women and the growing popularity of Muslim edicts for wifely obedience? This paper investigates such questions through interviews with married couples in a modernizing Indonesian city. The interviews make evident the increasing prominence of rhetoric about women’s obedience to their husbands. Many respondents argued that men are supposed to be the heads of households, and often explained this with reference to the differences between a more egalitarian public life and a household where male authority still holds sway. Many cited religious values to argue that wives must obey their husbands. While such rhetoric might be seen as evidence of re-traditionalization, I argue that it demonstrates a grudging acceptance of greater gender egalitarianism in public life. I propose that the rhetoric of wifely obedience has become a more widespread cultural script, arising from the fact that, in a fast changing society, the household is viewed as the last bastion of male privilege, and as a realm ruled by religious or cultural norms. The rhetoric of wifely obedience can be understood as an index of social changes and the ambivalence toward them on the part of both men and women. (This paper is a draft and will be more finished by the time of the conference.)

Author

• Rachel A. Rinaldo, University of Colorado, Boulder