Paper: The stigmatisation of widows and divorcees (janda) in Indonesia society
Reference:
(2016) The stigmatisation of widows and divorcees (janda) in Indonesian society, Indonesia and the Malay World, 44:128, 1-6, DOI: 10.1080/13639811.2015.1111647
My Summary:
I was raised to value marriage as a source of pride and a dream for an Indonesian woman. I was also aware that the value of being a divorcee is taboo and those are considered as a failure and are stigmatised. The stigma even extends to widos who become single beyond their will and power. The representative of a divorcee (Janda hidup) and widow (janda mati) is considered a threat to other wives in society due to a belief they are sexually and promiscious in Indonesia. Even some women tend to maintain their disharmony marriage to avoid this stigma. On the other hand, I also saw some divorcee and widow in my community, are independent women, raised their children with their own efforts, and maintain their dignity by not to be a promiscuous.
I learned in this reading that destigmatisation through social, cultural and religious values were proved by some divorcee and windows that they survived for their life and their children. They are not what people thought. Some of them even decided to immigrate to avoid the stigma related to be JANDA.
In this special issue, I learn some value of being a Janda kembang (young widow or flowerly widow), Janda hidup (divorcee), Janda PKI (communist widow) and Janda mati (widow) in some archipelagos of Indonesia. It seems the value of being 'JANDA' Hood are influenced by political, cultural ('Adat'), social, and religious values in Indonesia.
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Important quotation:
This special issue is devoted to the study of janda (widows and divorcees) in Indonesia and the stigma that they experience. The single word janda refers to both widows and divorcees in Indonesian, but can be made more specific with the addition of qualifiers: janda mati (widow) and janda cerai (divorcee). pp1
Many janda are also vulnerable because of their uncertain marital status. Many do not have legally recognised marriages and/or divorces, as is common in Lombok (Platt 2010). Some were child brides, not meeting the minimum legal age of marriage for women of 16 years. Many were married secretly or unofficially (nikah siri – see Parker et al. 2016). Many are poor and live remote from government offices and so cannot afford the cost of a formal marriage registration or divorce (Akhmadi et al. 2010). Some have been abandoned by their husbands. Although the concept of the Female-Headed Household is well established in development discourse internationally, in Indonesia the Marriage Law of 1974 makes it clear that men are the heads of households. Thus, in Indonesia the Female-Headed Household eludes both definition and legal status (Akhmadi et al. 2010: ix). Many janda are in these ways living in a legal and economic limbo, neither supported by a husband nor entitled to support for children; some want to remarry but cannot because of their unverifiable marital status. pp1-2
While we understood that janda often experience economic hardship and structural discrimination because of their ambiguous legal status, we wanted to explore the cultural roots and logic of the stigma attached to janda-hood, and what it means to be a janda in contemporary Indonesia. Marriage and parenthood are the markers of social adulthood in Indonesia. All people are expected to marry, and marriage ceremonies are generally large, festive occasions, where families’ wealth and status are on display and the couple are publicly announced as a new social unit. Marriage is also the only religiously and socially sanctioned relationship in which people may engage in sex and in which children are to be raised. Because marriage is almost universal in Indonesia, not being married is anomalous – whether by virtue of being not yet married, separated from one’s spouse, abandoned, divorced or separated by death. However, this anomalous status is distinctly gendered: 30 year old bachelors are not rushed into marriage by their parents or labelled as stranded and unmarriageable; divorced men are not blamed for their ‘broken homes’; neither divorced nor widowed men are made the target of salacious gossip or of sexual harassment, nor are they viewed as a threat to other marriages. The burden of not being married is borne only by women. pp2
In Indonesia, a woman should be attached to a man, by marriage; she should only have sex with that man, within marriage; and she should bear children within marriage. Such a woman is the ibu: the sexually contained, faithful wife, dutiful housewife and loving mother – a paragon of virtue. A woman who strays from this path – whether by choice, chance or circumstance – suffers stigmatisation. The janda stands alone: she is sexually experienced and theoretically an unattached woman. This ‘unprotected’ status, according to Indonesian cultural logic, means that she is sexually available. In turn, this presumed sexual availability makes her vulnerable to sexual harassment and unwanted attention, and then it is a small step to ‘presumed promiscuity’ (Mahy et al. 2016). The community are ready to malign the janda as immoral, and this presumed immorality is the core of the gendered stigma. Any female deviation from normative, reproductive heterosexuality practised within marriage is strongly stigmatised in Indonesia. The stigma attacks the moral identity and worth of a woman, and makes it hard for her to establish herself as a respectable woman of good morals. pp2
Generally in Indonesia, we find that the stigmatisation of young divorcees, often described as janda kembang (literally, flower divorcee) is more sexually marked than that for widows; we also find that sexual stigmatisation decreases with a woman’s age pp2-3
Thus, the ethnographic and historical record shows that the unhappy position of contemporary janda is variable. Precolonial and colonial data from Bali reinforce the idea that the meaning of divorce and widowhood is constructed and therefore not immutable (Creese 2016) pp3
Their discursive effect on social status, life opportunities and self-representation are highlighted in the authors’ multi-sited and multi-positioned exploration of the diverse experiences of a range of janda – from young widows in a village community who are prey to male attention, to middle-aged internal migrants who seek to distance themselves from their past by moving away from their communities, to older women living outside Indonesia, who find the stereotypes cross international borders. Many janda remain vulnerable to the economic and social difficulties experienced by unmarried women in Indonesian society, particularly those with dependent children. However, as this article explores, some are able to successfully circumvent stigma and marginalisation in their communities, particularly through migration. pp4
In the early 20th century, adat (customary) law became the principal site for the regulation of social relationships, particularly the forging of a marital relationship and its dissolution, either through divorce or widowhood. pp4
The first is family and community support, particularly the capacity for religious and social reintegration into their natal families following divorce or the death of a spouse, and the second is adequate access to the often hard-won economic resources that enable them to support themselves and their children pp5
They reflect the tension between stigmatization and agency in contemporary Indonesia, where colonial and post-independence historical legacies, the increasing adherence to conservative religious tenets in Islam and Hinduism, and the force of popular and social media all serve to enforce and reinforce stigma. At the same time, these articles provide evidence of new avenues for resistance and destigmatisation, played out in different ways in rural and urban communities pp5
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