In the current context, we know Saparinah Sadli, Sjamsiah Ahmad, Kristi Poerwandari, Gadis Arivia, Marianne Katoppo and many other consistent names in fighting for gender equality and justice. Moreover, after the fall of the New Order, various women’s organizations began to show their progress, such as the Women Research Institute, Jurnal Perempuan, Rahima, Kapal Perempuan, and institutions such as Komnas Perempuan and KPPPA and various other names.
The 1990s became a critical era, especially for Indonesian Muslim women. In those years, many new forums, new organizations, and new Islamic books were born with a more “liberating” view. For example, books with the theme of gender equality, such as Women in Islam, written by Fateema Mernissi and Women in the Qur’an, written by Amina Wadud, were published in Indonesian in 1994 by Pustaka Bandung. In the same year, an Islamic journal in Indonesia, namely Ulumul Qur’an, published a special edition containing issues of women’s rights, feminism, Islamic feminism, and anti-feminism (Qibtiyah, 2010: 151).
The birth of Islamic organizations that promoted reform in the early 1900s, such as Muhammadiyah in 1912 and Nahdlatul Ulama in 1926, seem to have increasingly supported the Muslim women’s movement in representing their voices regarding education and women’s rights. As a result, various activities under the auspices of NU and Muhammadiyah, for example, in education, they established Diponegoro Kindergarten, Aisyiyah Kindergarten, Madrasah Ibtidaiyah, Madrasah Tsanawiyah, and so on. Then within NU itself, the IPPNU, Fatayat, and Muslimat NU organizations vigorously promote women’s empowerment.
Women’s empowerment is the key to the Indonesian women’s struggles that accommodate by women organizations, is closely related to the methods and strategies used by women activists in deconstructing gender relations that generally exist in society and in revising the existing gender hierarchy (Parvanova, 2010). 2012). This is not easy because women’s empowerment often collides with community resistance that is not yet open. Women’s empowerment, sometimes considered as something that violates Indonesian women’s nature; who should stay at home, cook, serve their husbands, give birth, and raise children, instead of going to high school, then working and earning a living.
Feminism and Indonesian Muslims
Talking about feminism in the view of the Indonesian Islamic community is very interesting because the term feminism itself is problematic. Apart from being considered a Western’s stooge, talking about feminism is often accused of being bullshit. Rarely do people want to see feminism as a struggle for justice, such as liberation from ignorance, discrimination, and oppression. Instead, feminism is seen as anti-male, anti-family, not good women, even lesbians.