Introduction: Thinking about Indonesian Women and Work

Abstract

Women and Work in Indonesia is an edited collection of papers that aims to examine the meaning of work for women in contemporary Indonesia. The chapters interrogate some of the formerly clear-cut divisions that even the rhetoric of advanced capitalism is now questioning: the splits between work and life, work and family, between paid work and housework, paid work and child care, and between production and reproduction. In focusing on women's life experiences, we assume a broad meaning tor the word 'work', including not only those activities that bring in income but also home duties, child care, healing and civic work that fulfils obligations for maintaining social and community networks. This in turn impels interrogation of assumptions about economic activity, remunerable activity, divisions of labour, state and other formal definitions of work, and ultimately about the public and private spheres. The book thus seeks to make a significant contribution both to empirical studies of the lived experience and meaning of women's work in Indonesia and to feminist thinking about women's work in the non-Western world.